Live from HighEdWebDev 2007: Designing Compelling User Experiences
October 17th, 2007 by Karine Joly
Yesterday morning, Beck Tench of Duke University lead an engaging presentation on new alternatives in strategic planning for the web. The session was covered by Jonathan Steffens. This is his third post.
Beck begins the presentation posing a question: “what makes a user experience compelling” and humbly admits that she does not have the answer, but that doesn’t stop her from unloading an arsenal of tools and techniques to enable you and your institution to find out.
Beck then wastes no time in breaking down these techniques, starting with to approach the theory of classifying ideas and concepts. To best illustrate this, I encourage you to click through the Slidecast of her presentation below. The first few slides will orientate you to ways we perceive information and how we sort concepts-based attributes such as names, shapes, imagery and placement.
Concept Mapping – a brain storming technique that will generate a domain of ideas, tasks, and related material.
Bullseye Diagram – A unique way to help prioritize tasks in project, create a concept map of all user related tasks that are needed to accomplish a project (Beck illustrated this with the goal of doing laundry – yes laundry!).
Proceed to break these down further by asking yourself what categories the tasks belong to; Critical; Important; or Peripheral.
Here’s how to set it up:
- Make a list of task user perform
- Draw a bullseye with three rings
- Place tasks in rings (post it’s are nice)
- Look for natural relationships/structure
New & Improved Navigation Map – Beck turns the standard web map on its head with new tack on the classic site map (index.html link tree – we’ve all used) by changing the approach to look at your landing pages our pages 3 or 4 levels deep and mapping around them and their siblings by following these steps:
- Pick a land page/pace
- Loosely define the UI for that place
- Backup one step. How do you get there?
- Sketch Siblings that are connected.
- Step back and look for patterns/relationships.
Workflow Diagram – Another technique, which has a dual purpose in both task management and writing copy for the web; focuses on the anatomy of a sentence. Below, Beck highlights the process setting it up.
- Write a short and descriptive sentence
- Using sentence, define decision points
- Uisng decision points, define milestones.
- Using all three, define participants.
- Consider alternate paths for workflow.
To round out the presentation, Beck recaps some of the more common techniques many institutions have come to use that work to reinforce the concepts above.
User Research Methods
Web Based Surveys
Appeal to user’s ego/area of expertise
Make survey submission painless
Indicate progress, give visual feedback
Card sorting
Use Index cards
Aim for more than 30, less tan 100
Allow users create cards and labels
One-on-one interview
Come to the interview unprepared
Take user off subject to gain understanding
Write a thank you note.
Ethnographic Study
Research how things were done pre-www
Show your target user for a day
Have conversations with relevant non-users
Write thank you notes.
Beck wraps up the presentation with these encouraging statements
“Have trusted methods”, “Ask good questions”, and “Trust yourself”. Good words to work by. If you’d like to see more… visit
Related Posts:
- University Business Column: 10 steps to better blogs
- Live from HighEdWebDev 2007: Let’s try Twitter to keep in touch
- HighEdWebDev: Today is the last day to send your proposal to get a chance to present at this great conference
- HighEdWebDev 2007: Got an idea for a presentation? There’s still time to submit a proposal before the new deadline of June 12
- Live from HighEdWebDev 2007: Mark your calendar for the 2008 edition of the conference
