2017 | Experience Dynamics

18 Usability Musts for Ecommerce [VIDEO]

By Admin User

on August 6, 2017 - 1:01pm

Ecommerce usability best practices recording

Sumamry: Here's a 60 minute VIDEO RECORDING of a webinar from Frank Spillers, Chief Experience Officer at Experience Dynamics.

Keywords: Ecommerce usability: Ecommerce best practices; ecommerce UX; shopping cart abandonment; ecommerce social UX; mobile ecommerce; ecommerce content usability

What are known usability best practices for ecommerce? What has changed in ecommerce that you should be looking at? How does mobile play into ecommerce? What are common issues and mistakes that impact ecommerce user experience and bottom line conversions?

Topic:

Ecommerce is changing for many and stagnating for others. A decade and a half into ecommerce, and usability issues that have plagued conversions still exist. Yet new innovations are being introduced to deal with pesky issues like shopping cart abandonment or weak conversions on product pages.

What's wrong with Focus Groups and How to Fix Them

By Admin User

on July 31, 2017 - 3:34pm

Summary: Focus groups are innapropriate as a research technique to gather usability or user experience requirements. This is due to the fact they are opinion driven and not behavior driven. As a research tool they have a place in market research or early on "market idea" testing. As a way to influence usability or user experience projects, they are useless and misleading. To fix focus groups, they should be either: a) Abandoned in favor of ethnographic field studies or, b) Blended with behavioral research aka user interviews and observations to provide richer insights.

The Power of Ethnography

By Admin User

on June 27, 2017 - 10:59pm

Margaret Mead- Ethnography applied to UX

Ethnography is a technique developed largely by anthropologist Margaret Mead. It involves behavioral observation, contextual interviewing and analysis of users in their work, home or play spaces. The key strength to ethnography is context. Context provides insight into not only who users are (demographics) but what is important to them and what causes them to act and make decisions (psychographics).

Ethnography goes by a few different names. The most common include: Contextual Interviewing, Field Studies and Task Analysis. My personal contribution to the field, called "Cognitive Archeology"(PDF) involves an analysis of user behavior and environment with an emphasis on understanding decision-making, problem-solving and the interaction of tasks, values and beliefs.

[Part 2]: 12 Things Managers Need to Know about Running an Outside-In Design Org

By Frank Spillers

on May 26, 2017 - 2:56pm

Summary: Outside-In design organizations live and breathe user experience. The main differentiator between a technology driven organization and a Human Centered design approach is in decision-making. With Outside-In, design, business and technology decisions are gathered, validated, measured and infused into the Sales, Marketing, Business and Technology fabric. This post (in 2 parts, see part 1 here) explores those key organizational behaviors we've discovered and worked with for over 15 years. We've included to-do items for managers to action these insights.

[Part 1]: 12 Things Managers Need to Know about Running an Outside-In Design Org

By Frank Spillers

on April 26, 2017 - 11:55am

Summary: Outside-In design organizations live and breathe user experience. The main differentiator between a technology driven organization and a Human Centered design approach is in decision-making. With Outside-In design, business and technology decisions are gathered, validated, measured and infused into the Sales, Marketing, Business and Technology fabric. This post (in 2 parts) explores those key organizational behaviors we've discovered and worked with for over 15 years. We've included to-do items for managers to action these insights.

PART 1: (1-6)

1. Gather Evidence and Data

Why it is important: Evidence based design means that opinions are grounded in customer insights, specifically behavior captured and interpreted by trained UX professionals. Data informs design. Whether conversion optimization or efficiency improvement, you can not run on assumption any longer.

50 Reasons Prototyping Saves You Time

By Admin User

on February 9, 2017 - 1:58pm

Summary: Prototyping is a valuable sketching process involved in generating UX/UI. It saves you time, saves you confusion and helps you visualize quickly and cheaply. Here are 50 reasons why prototyping is critical to do. These benefits point to the need to develop a company culture of prototyping.

1. Prototyping saves you meeting time: Without visual sketching, UI's are discussed ad-nauseum without a "shared picture", you end up talking about a UI instead of ideating a new solution.

2. Sketching is easier to socialize. Quick sketches, no matter how crude, are great ways to quickly commuinicate.

3. Prototypes help imagine new solutions.

4. Ideas are easier to scrap, change or re-consider with "low effort" prototypes.

5. Prototypes help you plan.

6. Prototypes help you test your design ideas with users.

Your Personas are Garbage Without Good User Research

By Frank Spillers

on January 17, 2017 - 12:02pm

Summary: Most persona development efforts are self-sabotaging because of one reason: a lack of good user research. The good news is this can be quickly turned around with an incredible impact on your software project and your overall organization's return on investment. This article explores why and how you can salvage your personas once and for all.

Personas as Garbage, but why?

Many organizations use personas. Personas are the fun customer sketches that software development teams use to prioritize user needs. However most persona efforts are junk, owing to the origins of data used to inspire personas. We know several product managers who don't "believe" in personas.