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What’s in a Title?

While filling out the registration application for the Solutions for Inclusion Conference at the University of Guelph, I was confounded by the “title/position” box. This box is easy to fill out if you have a corporate job, but what if you’re an entrepreneur and a soon-to-be student? I just realized, it’s not so easy to fit into a title box. In fact, I tried “Entrepreneur | UX Strategist | Student” but this was too long. Some of my writing has been recently published, so should I also say “author”? Does title even matter? Should I just skip it? Perhaps it’s not mandatory anyways.

The fact is, most of us have many roles and it’s difficult to explain ourselves in a short box or a two minute “elevator speech” (that I’ve learned every entrepreneur should have). And how do you put this into a small box or even describe yourself in two minutes?

So…I left the box blank and the form worked! I have registered for the conference and really look forward to learning a great deal more about responsive web design and web accessibility.

And…I’m relieved I don’t have to decide on a title just yet.

Why I Want to Attend WebVisions in Portland, Oregon

I haven't written a blog post in a long time, but felt compelled when I saw that Jared Spool was a speaker at the #WebVisions Conference .

Why would I like to attend?

Jared Spool changed my life in 2003 (true story--see my blog post from Dec 2, 2006). I attended his seminar in Toronto, Canada called "The Secret Design Strategies of Highly Successful Websites". It was the first I had ever heard of usability. I was completely transfixed by his message. I began the in-house adventure (8 years now) of advocating for the folks who use our websites.

What an awesome array of speakers at the WebVisions Conference! Chances are one or more of these speakers will change your focus and direction as happened to me.

Best of luck to all involved. #wv11

Finding Participants for Usability Sessions

I've been asked recently where we find participants for our usability sessions. We don't use an outside agency. Instead our clients find the participants. This has worked very well because the clients are already networking with suitable participants. And this gets the clients involved with the testing. And the more involved the clients are, the better the sessions are.

I call the participants the "testers". That's because I want to get across that they are testing us and our websites. We're not testing them--they're testing us. I find that to emphasize to testers that we want their opinions sets them at ease. They don't have to know how to work the website or application because they just need to give their opinion as to whether they like the way it is working or whether it's working the way they expected it to.

The last session I did before the holidays, one of our testers was a novice internet user. In fact, she had never been on the internet before and couldn't use a mouse. But she wasn't a novice on the subject matter of the site. So I took the mouse in hand and she told me where to click and what to do. It turned out to be really fun, and did she ever bring a new set of eyes to the website.

Web Analytics

Just took a course in web analytics at U of T. I'm hoping to use my new found web analytics knowledge in conjunction with usability testing.

Don't Know Who Your Audience Really Is?

You may discover that the client doesn't really know their audience. Then you can't do usability testing.

No Usability Testing

The reason is your testers must be from the correct audience. If they're not, your observations are meaningless.

And besides, you need to really know your audience and their top concerns to set up a usability test anyways.

Now What?

You have to get your client to go back to the drawing board. Survey customers and conduct focus groups. In fact, this has lead me to facilitate focus groups. The nice part of facilitating focus groups with a web design background is that I can really lead the discussion to discover the correct trigger words and suitable navigation groupings. It's also a bonus if you can get a prototype look and feel in front of them.

Step Two Towards Usability - Know Your Audience

Once you have the purpose sorted out, then you have to really know who your audience is. And it's not everybody. And if it was everybody, who makes up the greatest proportion of your viewers?

Percentage

Ask your clients who their audiences are and what percentage they make up.

Percentage here is key. If your primary audience is 70% or higher of total audience, forget about the secondary audiences. If your audience is teachers, forget about parents. Focus on teachers, otherwise you start to confuse your primary audience and they begin to feel the site is not for them.

You may discover that the client doesn't really know who the audience is. Then you have to do some back-tracking.