• The design just isn’t “fresh” enough!
• It needs more spunk!
• There’s not enough pizzazz!
• It lacks glamor.
• The tables are exploding!

Do you see what all of these phrases have in common? None of them actually mean anything. All of the above comments are subjective. When you ask them to define further, they’ll say something like “I won’t know what I want until I see it”. That my friend is total bullshit.

This is where you have to take a step back and figure out what it is going to make this particular customer happy. Personally, I don’t take web design customers that don’t (a) know exactly what they want, (b) respect and trust my design judgement, or (c) at least utilize actual users when they make design decisions. If they don’t follow any of the above criteria, it’s really hard for me to make them happy. Another caveat to add here: generally, when client’s sway away from my design and incorporate their “ideas”, the designs almost always look like shit. They’re rarely ever portfolio worthy. I recommend if this is the case to fire that client. It’s a win-win for both parties involved. 

Another thing to watch out for with this type of client is that it’s impossible to get something right the first time. No matter how good the design is, they always want endless iterations. Many of them want 3-4 demos before they’ll even get started—the best designers in the world do ONE demo and iterate from there—that’s how I roll.

This is precisely the reason why I advocate a user-centered design philosophy. I think it’s a terrible idea to design by committee and what stakeholders ask for rarely amount to anything that improves the user experience, usability, or sales—on the contrary—it usually hinders all of these things.

If you’re using this godforsaken tag, I think you’re making a big mistake. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve observed users accidentally clicking the reset button and leu of submitting the form. The two are obviously not interchangeable and I feel the reset button does more harm than good. Quite honestly, I’ve never been through scenario where the user actually had a need to click on the reset button.

Here is an example of what I mean. There are so many problems with the way these buttons look. For one, two buttons that perform completely different actions look exactly the  same. Some users, who may be accustomed to traditional button behavior, like the like you would experience in Windows or Mac OS for example, make a inclination that all progressive buttons appear to the right—like you would experience in a wizard. I’m not getting into an argument about button placement,  but I can at least recommend deemphasizing the reset button or eliminating it altogether.

Here is an example I recommend: As you can see in the figure below the submit button—the button you want them to click on—is clearly highlighted and recognizable, while the reset button looks much less important. I learned this approach from a colleague a few years ago (@cindyblue, follow her, she’s awesome):  there is a button you want them to click on and then there are the other options.  Always put emphasis on the actions you want the user to take, and deemphasize the actions the users are less likely to take.

Here is one important thing you should always remember: any time you are performing an action that is not recoverable, like resetting a form, deleting a file, or performing a cancel operation, you need to prompt the user first that their changes will be lost if they continue with the operation.

Have you ever accidentally hit the “reset”  button by mistake?

One rule I believe to be almost universal is:

Failing to leave a phone number on your website for people to call and allowing them to get in touch with someone right away.

I have no idea why so many websites make this detrimental mistake. After all, it’s one of the most common website scenarios: getting in touch with someone. It’s also one of the most common usability problems. The data is pretty consistent: people want to talk to someone—especially if they’re genuinely interested in investing their time and money with a company.

Even when showing qualitative data to organizations that have a strong UX culture, I almost always get push back in the end. Here are some reasons people get worried about this:

• Cold calls/marketing solicitations
• Sales team isn’t prepared – they want to talk to customers on their terms

1. Check your ego at the door. Your ego has no place when it comes to writing software. If you’re writing software based on how you feel, you’re making a big mistake. It should be made from data. Nobody likes an egomaniac! You don’t want to have that kind of atmosphere
2. Make it feel like it was their idea. Make it about the person you’re trying to convince. It’s way easier to get people on board this way.
3. Don’t be an asshole. You can’t make a difference if you’re fired. Be the voice of the user, but don’t be the voice that is nagging everyone. “There goes AJ again…”.
4. Position yourself as the expert on the user and do this by conveying a message based off of the facts.
5. Use good excuses (but not an ultimatum): “You can’t hold me accountable for usability if we don’t do usability testing.” or “You can’t hold me accountable for the user experience if you don’t put me in front of users”.
6. Get everyone involved. Don’t think that because you’re a UX designer that everyone else can’t do it to. You should be creating an atmosphere where everyone is thinking about user experience. Be an advocate for the user and an evangelist for user-centered design.
7. Listen more, speak less. I’ve learned to only speak about something when I have a really good reason to. One great side effect is that people tend to genuinely respect my ideas and opinions—that’s because I don’t dilute what I say with useless filler.

Usability recruiting is often a very convoluted and under-invested task that is by far one of the most important parts of usability testing. When usability recruiting is not done well, you often get no-shows, flakes, and non-relevant participants. Here is some advice that will help you select good participants for your next usability study.

• Have a list of all the probable questions and answers that could come up prior to beginning recruiting. Theses questions could be along the lines of “How long will it take?” and “Will you be timing me?”. It might be a good idea to run through this exercise a few times prior to picking up the phone.
• Write a “call script” for the participants you are contacting. This will make it easier to get your message across.
• Have a list of questions ready. These questions should qualify your participants and give you a little background that will help you make a good choice. Start off with where you work, where you live, what your job title/description is, then move onto tougher questions.
• Each question should have a disqualifier. Once the user is disqualified, that is when the call should be terminated and moved onto the next person on the list. For example, you may want to disqualify individuals who are not familiar with the Internet or do not use computers.
• Offer an honorarium (a gratuity) to your participants. It is very likely they will have to take time away from their jobs to participate in your study—so paying them is just a little incentive.
• Don’t wait until the last minute! Recruiting individuals to participate in usability testing is not an easy task and many may abandon you at the last minute. (Tip: if you’re worried about cancelations, consider leveraging a higher honorarium. Maybe $300 vs. $50.)
• The evening before the study, remember to call the participant and verify their appointment and the rest of the details.
• Have backups. Almost every time I do a usability study, someone bails at the last minute. You want to have backups ready throughout the day just in case. It may be a good idea to pay them a gratuity as well. One thing I’ve done in the past is to put the backups on-call. Preferably, this would be someone who is close to the facility, lab, or test site. Call your scheduled participants two hours prior to their appointment to verify they are still coming.

“I’m preparing my first usability test. Any recommendations?”—well I’m so glad you asked this question.

I’m going to give you the “low-down” on how to do usability testing that is both effective and eye-opening. By the way, this article is about doing a very small qualitative study, so we’ll save card sorting/eye tracking/etc for another day. Here are your action steps to testing software or a website for usability:

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1. Assemble Scenarios. Create a list of scenarios and prioritize them. It is very possible that you may not get through all of them. I recommend no more than 8 or 9 for a one hour study. You don’t want to have too many and your user get fatigued.
2. Assemble interview questions. What kind of questions will give your test results perspective? You can ask these questions before, during, or after the study.
3. Assemble a survey. This can be sent to the user via email before or after the study is completed using a service like Survey Monkey.
4. Get “buy-in” from upper management. You need to make it sound like it’s their idea. It’s so important to create an environment where everybody is thinking about the users and this is driven from data—not ego. Use the arguments “you can’t hold me accountable for usability if we don’t do usability testing regularly” and “if we’re not making decisions based on data, we’re just guessing!”.
5. Recruit Participants and make them sign waivers beforehand. Have a list of trigger questions that will disqualify them. You want to eliminate participants that may skew your results. You want to recruit 5-6 users and also try to recruit 1-2 backups in case some of your users don’t show up. By the way, someone almost always bails!
6. Choose testing style. Are you doing lab testing or field testing (ethnographic)? If you’re doing lab testing, make sure the lab has an observation room in case stakeholders want to observe. Regardless of the testing type, make sure that there are no more than 2 people in the room with the user (one person to facilitate and one person to take notes). Often times, management will want to sit in on these things—fight it if you can.
7. Figure out what equipment you’re going to use and keep it consistent for each user. I prefer a simple Windows 7 machine with Internet Explorer or Firefox. I recommend installing Morae to do picture-in-picture video recording. If you’re doing this in a lab, they may have the configuration available for you. Another option, if you’re using a Mac, is to try Silverback (much cheaper than Morae).
8. On the day of the study, make sure that refreshments and snacks are available. If you’re budget is very small, just have bottled water on hand. Your users will appreciate the gesture.
9. When the user arrives, kindly great them and thank them for participating in the study. Inform them what you are doing, that they’re being recorded, and that their contributions are going to be used to improve your product.
10. Begin with a few interview questions to get the user warmed up. Instruct the user to “think out loud” so you know what they’re thinking as they move through each task.
11. Start with a simple scenario, like “Navigate to Acme’s home page” then gradually move on to harder scenarios. Pay very close attention to what they’re looking at, their facial expressions, their complaints, etc. This is where it’s nice to have one person who’s role is strictly to take notes so you can focus on the subtle things.
12. Have your note taker discreetly record the time it takes to do each scenario. It isn’t a good idea to tell the user that you’re recording the time—and it doesn’t have to be too scientific, just glance at your watch.
13. If the user asks you a question, use “the echo effect” and repeat the question back to the user. Example: “How do you search for keywords?” reply with “How, DO YOU THINK you would search for keywords?” if the user doesn’t know, say “How do you think search should work?”. Remember, you’re not there to give the user training, you’re there to uncover usability problems so they don’t need training.
14. Make sure the user tells you when they would have normally given up on a task. It doesn’t mean you have to stop the scenario, but it’s important to indicate the timing in your report. If you strongly feel the task cannot be completed, definitely move on to the next task—but don’t give up too soon. There are often many navigation and search paths, you never know which one your user may discover.
15. When the study is over, pay your user an honorarium or gratuity for their support. Anywhere from $50-$100 for normal users. If the user is a subject matter expert (like a doctor or lawyer), it’s customary to pay them more their contribution.
16. Send a survey out to each of your users. Sometimes, I like to send out a thank you card in the mail as well.
17. Assemble all of your data together and create a report. Annotate the number of times a problem occurred and indicate whether or not a problem is a trend or not.

Website performance is not just a usability issue, also a overarching user experience issue. Learn my 8 ways to Improve Website Performance and Usability.

• Want website traffic? Google factors your page load time into their algorithm—placing skinnier websites toward the top of the search results.
• Want your users to take action on something, like contact you, get a quote, or opt-in to your newsletter? Studies have shown the they’re more likely to leave your website in as little as a few seconds if you haven’t delivered content fast enough.

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