Thoughts on creating better digital experiences

More on the ideal user

When most people think of performing usability testing, they think of using novices to see if the website is apparent to someone with very little experience. However, having now reviewed several hundred user tests done by both novice and experienced internet users, we’ve realized that both yield interesting information. The novice user is interesting because they don’t have a predictable model in their minds, so it’s illuminating to see how.. Read More

Looking for the ideal usability tester…

Let’s assume we’re about to embark on a user experience study and want to solicit the opinions of a handful of users, be it for a moderated or unmoderated study. How should we decide what users to pick and listen to? Would any person off the street work, or are there key criteria we should pay attention to?

It lives…

Finally! We’ve developed a lot of sites in the past few years, but I’m still mentally unprepared for the truism that when you think you’re 95% done, you’re really only 50% done. That little bit that differentiates almost done from done just doesn’t seem to end. We’d been in alpha testing for several months when we decided to redesign the look & feel and make some improvements in response to our alpha testers. It really didn’t seem like much at the time. Anyway, we’re now live…