UX and Usability Testing Workshops

On Monday 4th November we visited two development companies in Brighton to receive talks and workshops on usability testing and user experience.

CogApp
The first company we visited was CogApp, who "help organisations use digital media.
Our speciality is mission-critical projects and our mantra: long-term value for our clients." (Taken from the home page of CogApp.com). 

They have done a lot of interactive work for museums and have also adapted several books into iPad apps, which is of particular relevance to our current assignment. Chris How, who is an Information Architect at the company gave us a presentation on organising information within an interactive application. 


He defined information architecture as "organising content in a way that makes sense to the user." Information can be organised using the 'LATCH' system: Location (geographical or physical), Alphabetical (a good, logical way of organising huge quantities of information), Time (chronological or by date published), Category (separate areas of similar interest) and Hierarchy (order or number, most popular or most viewed). Of these principles, I realised that the 'Category' system applied most to my app concept and I had already decided to organise the content available to the user in this manner. Although the use of the timeline will also utilise the 'Time' method, as the assets will be displayed in chronological order from the selected year.

Chris got us to participate in a couple of exercises and then explained briefly about usibility testing. In this context it refers to providing a portion of the target audience with content from the app/website and observing how they naturally organise them. Card sorting is the main activity CogApp uses to achieve this and Chris recommended Donna Spencer (http://maadmob.com.au/about/bio-donna-spencer) who has written books on the technique of using card sorting to find the best information architecture solutions.

(Taken from the description of Donna Spencer's book 'Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories)

This is an activity I would like to use in the user testing for my app if I have the time/resources. If not I will bear in mind for future user-targeted product designs.

ClearLeft
The second company we visited was ClearLeft (clearleft.com)

"We help organisations radically improve their websites and create exciting new digital products. We combine a unique lean approach with our knowledge of human behaviour and the principles of user-centred design." (Statement from their website).

This session was presented by Ben Sauer, who talked to us about usability and user experience and how to test for these on digital products. We were split into groups and asked to select a website and devise some instructions for a test subject to carry out. We used CogApp's bespoke software (Silverback) which allows the moderator to record and track the users actions on the website. This method seemed very effective in gaining an understanding of how a normal person uses a website, and would be useful in any future web-based projects I carry out on the course.