Posted at: 4:52 PM by Marianna

Yesterday (12th November 2009) was this year's World Usability Day. This celebration started 4 years ago in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) so as every year to remember that products & services important to human life have to be accessible and simple to use.

I am really happy to announce that every year more and more clients discuss with us how they can create a website having in their mind: "How to create a website accessible to all?", "Redesign their website so as to approach more people than they do know", "How can they improve the website interface, navigation in order to help people use their site, help users understand their products & services".

This year's theme is "Design for a Sustainable World". Sustainability which can be reassured by taking four main actions: Recycle     Reduce     Reuse     Restore is applicable to almost every facet of life on Earth, from local to global scale. In technology area, digital innovations continue to getting cheaper, faster, better and easier to use enabling the invention of new and expanded uses for Information & Communication technologies every day. As a result the new uses provide sustainable economic, environmental and social benefits on a national & global basis. (source)

You can find the most recent news about events taking place around the world on @WUD2OO9

Popular events that took place across the UK:

A) Web site usability drop-in clinic in Birmingham

B) Usability Open Day in Bristol

C) UK UPA World Usability Day in London

Feel free to share with us how you celebrated this day or ideas of how technology can ensure long-term maintenance of human wellbeing, wellbeing of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.

Labels: experience, ia, sustainalbility, WUD

Posted at: 9:29 AM by Laura

After lots of work and some sleepless nights brainstorming ideas in the office, we are proud to announce that we have won a contract with the British Heart Foundation.

BHF have chosen us to undertake the task of putting together the information and content architecture for their redesigned website, ensuring their users get everything they need quickly and efficiently and that the site is easy to use.

This is not the first time we have dealt with a charity, as, amongst our extensive portfolio of clients, are the British Red Cross and Headway, so we are confident we can deliver the goods and exceed expectations on this project.

The British Heart Foundation understands how beneficial Information Architecture is in reducing design time, managing scope and generally ensuring that the end user is always the focus of the design. We firmly believe that an information architecture stage is beneficial to all projects. The strategy and structure of the site is just as important as a good look and feel.

We always encourage clients to feedback when we produce sitemaps and wireframes, which ensures that once the project reaches the graphic design stage, our designers have a clear and focused design to work from. Our experience shows us this reduces design time, allows the client more time to think about the structure of their content and helps keep both time and budget on target. Good news for everyone!

Labels: BHF, British Heart Foundation, charity, ia, information architecture, user centred design, web design, website

Posted at: 10:53 AM by Marianna

On 20th April 2009 I attended the first IA mini Conference organised by Ken Beatson taking place in Guardian Offices in London.

The purpose of the conference was to bring IA London group members (who are more than 500 now!) together to discuss about Information Architecture issues, networking and understand how other people work. The conference was a real success and as a result it is going to repeat next month in 16th June 2009 in "The Sense Loft" in London and is already sold out.

During the 1st IA mini Conference 6 presentations took place after Guardians' Information Architect Martin Belam welcome presentation:

· Agile UX presented by Cennydd Bowles

· Why users don't follow instructions presented by Phillip Winwood

· Spec docs from Axure wires presented by Ken Beatson

· Design Consequences workshop presented by Leisa Reichelt

· Interacting with forms presented by Matthew Solle

· Interactivity - how IA's learned to stop worrying and love designers presented by Tom Coombs

You can view presenters' profiles and their presentations' slides here if you sign in to London IA group.

It's good that efforts are made for Information Architects, Designers and Developers to meet together. From the 1st IA mini conference discussion topics between the presentations such as "How to get your clients sign off your deliverables to continue to the next step" or "What's the best way to design a form and necessary fields to include" I realised that there are lots of controversial issues that is good to bring to the table and discuss to find optimum solutions. Leisa Reichelt's presentation involved a collaborative wireframe exercise that we all had to participate which again revealed the different ways each project can be approached.

So if you are keen to discuss with IA experts, if you want to participate in future IA conferences or you want to know what Information Architecture is all about or even if you want to check out what IA London group is, visit: London IA

Labels: conference, experience, ia

Posted at: 10:28 AM by Marianna

The Theory

Many companies have already established e-commerce web sites, and in the next few years, many more e-commerce sites will come on-line. According to Tilson (1998) companies choose to develop e-commerce sites for different reasons, for example to reach new customers, to stay abreast with their competitors, and to meet their needs. E-commerce websites are proved to be a valuable channel for selling products and interacting with customers as well as an important intermediate for communicating with the general public and prospective consumers. (Hoque & Lohse, 1999).

As the e-commerce market is highly competitive businesses providing better user experience have a strong advantage towards their competitors. As Jesse James Garrett states: "it is the user experience that forms the customer's impression of the company's offerings, that differentiates the company from its competitors and it is the user experience that determines whether your customer will ever come back". Ask yourself the question - if you walk into a high street shop and can't quickly find the item you are looking for, do you stay in that shop long? In general the answer is "no", and exactly the same is true of websites.

The Practice

At Per-so-na the past couple of months we were working on a large scale e-commerce site, our client has tasked us with creating the site right from designing the site architecture and user experience through to the design, development and deployment of the site. Some areas that required higher attention were the product details page, the shopping basket page and the check-out process pages.

Undoubtedly primary goal of any e-commerce site is to connect users and products and once products are chosen users should be able to access and begin the ordering process quickly and simply. As a result the initial step of the user experience process was to design an informative "product details page" with a clear "buy now" message. Then we formed User Journeys for various website paths as the "sign-in" (picture 1) and "check-out" (picture 2) processes. From these exercises some guidelines came up that I will discuss in Part II.

Picture 1. "Sign-in" process, Muhimbi project

Picture 2. "Check-out" process, Muhimbi project

The second part of this article will have references to well known e-commerce sites and guidelines for the shopping basket page and "check-out" and "sign-in" processes.

Sources: a) Tilson, R., Dong, J., Martin, S. & Kieke, E. (1998). Factors and Principles Affecting the Usability of Four E-commerce Sites. 4th Conference on Human Factors & the Web. Ease of Use, IBM, Austin, TX, USA.

b) Hoque, A,. Y., Lohse, G., L. (1999). An Information Search Cost Perspective for Designing Interface for Electronic Commerce. Journal of Marketing Research (36:3). pp. 387-394.

Labels: e-commerce, experience, ia

Posted at: 9:10 AM by Marianna

While finishing the first draft of a website's project wireframes; I noticed that one of the pages that troubled me most was the "Thank you" page. This wireframe can be just designed as a plain page with a simple "Thank you message" being polite to the user after accomplishing a purchase or an action.

On the other hand this page can be a lot more than that and I believe it should be designed with a lot of attention to detail:

• This page could have effective calls to action so as to bring the users back again to your website instead of saying goodbye to them and lead them to navigate away. If the message is "Thank you for purchasing a product", this page can be a great opportunity to advertise more products. Statistics have proven that a big percentage of consumers (39%) continue to purchase another product if they are prompted in the "thank you page".
• This page can also show some authority of your website by reminding the user that his card details were securely used. Furthermore it can inform the user that the details of the purchase will be send to him through an e-mail.
• This page can provide a signature or a photo making your website more personal for the user. As a result a trustworthy relationship will develop between your website and the user (Alexandria K. Brown).
• It is important to provide the customer with instructions in case something goes wrong with the purchase or if he requires any other help.
• Last but certainly not least, you should provide a path for the users to exit the "Thank you page" without having to close the web browser or navigating away from your website.

I am sure there are other reasons why we should carefully design "Thank you" pages for websites. I am looking forward to hearing your ideas too.

Good examples of "Thank you" pages:

Picture 1. "Adobe" website "thank you" message after downloading free trial software.

Picture 2: "East Midlands Trains" website "thank you" page after completing a form to receive ticket offers information.

Labels: experience, ia, theory, website, wireframes

Posted at: 11:04 AM by Marianna

There is a thin line between designing a web site to increase the company's sales and to increase the users' experience.

A clients' main reason for creating a web site or redesigning their existing web site is to increase profit/company sales, which can happen by improving the web site's traffic.

Sometimes Information Architects have the dilemma of whether to design with focus on a client's or a user's needs. Don't get me wrong, both should be taken into consideration, but some circumstances dictate more attention should be given to one than the other.

If we create a new user experience that should strongly promote services and products (Picture 1), persuading more and more people to engage with the page, we have to design a web site with authority, give examples of what other users do and add user testimonials. In general, we should enhance understanding, create persuasive visual design, generate confidence and stimulate desire (How to manipulate website visitors). On the other hand, if we are more user-focused (Picture 2) we should for example: avoid blinking imagery (though it could drive user attention to a service or a product), have no more than one animation per page and provide users with a sense of control.

As Spencer Gerrol and Kim Snedaker discussed at UPA 2008 there is a difference between what users "can do" (usability) and what users "will do" (persuasion) while visiting a website. I believe the best approach, is to ensure that users will have access to all the possible options before proceed to the desired action.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Labels: experience, ia, usability

Posted at: 9:18 PM by Hammad

It's not often that I come across a bit of industry lingo that I haven't heard before, but whilst working with a partner agency recently, I came across just that.

A Silent Corridor.

Now apparently the phrase was coined by somebody at BT and it refers (at least in the world of Information Architecture anyway) to a column on a page that becomes completely empty under certain circumstances.

For example. It's commonplace to use a 3 column layout for a web site, with the right column used for related links etc. However, what happens if a page/template no longer needs to use this area as defined? It's not always as simple as allowing the central column to 'flow' into this open space, as it's often restricted by a series of inherited template definitions (especially if the site is developed on a Content Management System; aka CMS). This actually happens quite a lot, like on Privacy policies or Sitemap pages. It can also be relevant during an e-commerce/shopping process, when you want to strip back on the hard-sell and keep people focused on what happening on the core real estate.

The result is a silent corridor; a complete end-to-end column that is empty and has nothing to offer anybody wandering into it. If you try to use it, you will go unheard.

It's not actually a bad thing to happen though, despite the eerie name it has become Christened with.

Template and layout consistency is very important for a good user experience and so by using a silent corridor effectively, you can keep your users focused on the important content on a page, instead of ramming unnecessary links and promos in their face and making them claustrophobic.

(oh dear, I think the hospital connotations are starting to take over!).

Labels: experience, ia, theory

Posted at: 2:07 PM by Marianna

Persona is involved in a new IA project for the redesign of one of a partner's client website. The deadline for designing a new sitemap for the client's website was tight so we conducted a card sorting exercise to identify possible ways to design the navigation layout.

The Card sorting method was chosen among other user-centred design methods as it is a useful tool Information Architects' use when they have to design a website sitemap in a quick, inexpensive, and reliable way. Card sorting helps efficiently structure the information you have. Furthermore, it gives suggestions for navigation, menus and taxonomies. (Donna Maurer)

The card sorting method usually does not provide results that can be used in the final structure of a sitemap, but can help to resolve several initial issues as:

• Structure the Information under the same group
• Find names for the groups
• Identify categories that the Information Architect might have not included
• Identify whether users want to see information structured with focus on subjects, audiences, or both

In order to organise the test sessions, we formed a list with items that could be placed in each card. Then we created 53 different cards with short labels that participants could quickly read but were detailed enough for the card content to be comprehensible. Seven individuals were invited to participate on the exercise. They were advised to carefully read the cards and try to group them accordingly. Throughout the sessions, we tried to answer some of their questions and took some notes to keep track of insightful comments they made. Finally, at the end of each session, we encouraged each individual to add any other cards he thought would be appropriate, or exclude any he thought were not relevant within any group.

Some individuals preferred to organise the cards in groups and then decide which will be the name of each group (picture 1, 2) while others chose to form a sitemap by first identifying the main navigation sections and place each card under them where appropriate (pictures 3, 4, 5). None of the individuals added any new card, though some of them excluded some which proves that we might have added more cards than those needed.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

After the completion of the exercise, we gathered all the results and designed a sitemap, taking into account most of the users' preferences. The whole card sorting procedure proved to be very helpful as we wanted to form a navigation layout that would be more user- than project-driven. This method of involving real users before the design helped reach that goal and it also reduced the research time.

Finally, we would like to thank all the participants involved for their time and clever suggestions.

Labels: card sorting, experience, ia, sitemaps