Bring your business cards for our iPad draw – we’re giving away an iPad loaded up with some of our favourite apps! The UM team will be blogging their app choices in the days ahead.

Can’t wait to see you at UM10!

This was the case recently on a project with a major health-focussed non-profit. The project owner was forced to balance input from the UX designers (Usability Matters) as well as internal stakeholders, an external content advisor and subject matter experts (healthcare professionals). One of the more contentious issues was outlined in our recent IA Summit 2012 poster Making “Scientifically-Accurate” Information Meaningful to Health Information Consumers.

Our recommended solution was the use of plain language, chunked content, progressive disclosure and, where possible, graphic representation of information. While many of our recommendations were followed, the end result was still too dense and hard to absorb. So – our question to ourselves and our client – what can we do differently to improve the end product?

On a current project with the same client, Usability Matters has responsibility for the content strategy, writing and layout. It is still early days but so far we are pleased with the process and outcome. While we have saved our client from being the one who has to find the balance between the UX designer and the content editor, he still has to shepherd the content through the approval process including the “science police” and translators. This sounds like fodder for a follow-up poster at IA Summit 2013!

Need to conduct focus groups with participants who live across a broad geographic area? We have some advice for you.

We recently completed a strategic plan for a client with a customer base across Canada. We learned in our stakeholder interviews that they had no real data on who was using their websites, or why. They had guesses. When we asked them what they’d like to ask their customers, the top question they came up with was “Why are you using our websites?”

Well, ethnographic research was out—although a three-month UM road trip would have been awesome—so we settled on three focus groups, conducted entirely online, with participants from across Canada. Each focus group had eight participants; each session lasted two days. Over the course of two days, we would post questions on the bulletin board and send participants reminder emails to answer them, or to follow up on earlier questions.

Software: Pick Your Poison

Our first issue: what software to use?

We ran through a few options:

• Facebook Groups. But we’d need participants to be Facebook members. And use their personal accounts. We (or they) could set up dummy accounts, but even if we got past the privacy issues, we wouldn’t have been able to easily export the exchanges.
• Google Groups: Very tempting. Using an email system would’ve put the discussion right in participants’ inboxes where it’s hard to miss, and the setup was dead easy. But our raw data, even sanitized with dummy email addresses issued to the participants, would have been in 24 inboxes. That didn’t feel right.
• Free bulletin board software: We had conducted online focus groups before using PHPBB, a free package that gave us lots of control. Privacy locked down, data easily exported, emails alerts—the whole show.

We went for the bulletin board software.

But, while we got the control we wanted, we also got a lot of hassle. The setup and management weren’t difficult, but they were time-consuming. This route is worth it only if you’re doing many online focus groups. (By the way, we’ve found SurveyMonkey handy for consent forms.)

Tricky Questions…

We quickly ran into a few issues that don’t come up in a one-hour in-person focus group:

• If a participant has two days to join the discussion, when can you safely call them a “no-show”? We had a few participants who didn’t answer our reminder emails, let alone join the discussion, until the second day—our “slow-mo no-shows.”
• What’s stopping participants from writing the minimum to get their incentive? That prompt to quiet participants at the end of the table has a lot more overhead when you have to open an email client, write a note, send it, and see if they respond.
• How do you generate the back-and-forth dynamic that comes about around a table? Is that even possible online?
• Can your participants write well? Our recruiter screened participants by phone, and while the participants may have been articulate, they weren’t all good writers.

The Bottom Line

Our client got a better sense of why people were visiting their sites—in participants’ own words. Having a searchable database of comments was really valuable; just search for a keyword to get all comments, from across all three groups, one a particular topic.

But the logistics were time-consuming, and it was much harder to manage the conversation and get rich contributions.

If we do this again, we’ll likely use Google Hangout or Skype. We’ll still get participants that we couldn’t gather in one room, but we’ll limit the discussion to one hour—and limit the overhead. And showing clients a recording—rather than sharing written comments—will be that much more powerful.

If you’re a visual person, we put together a poster about this project for the IA Summit 2012. Enjoy.

Recently, Usability Matters had a) an RFP posted for a graphic design partner and b) an opening for a new User Experience Designer. The RFP led to a few meetings with design firms, and the response to the UX Design position garnered several dozen candidates!

During this process, the UM directors realized they could fulfill both needs at the same time if they found a UX designer who had a graphics background: the mythical “UX Unicorn”. As luck would have it, they found two people so compelling that they couldn’t choose between them. So they hired both.

Alex Leynes has recently moved to Toronto from the west coast. His experience in communication design brings coding, layout and typography to our team’s skill set. And a lovely smile.

Violet Edwards began her career as a graphic designer and has been a fan of UM since hearing our lovely Meredith Noble speak to her college class last year. She describes herself best in her cover letter as a `hybrid thinker’ who is visually literate, empathetic, technically savvy, endlessly curious and fond of collaboration.

So welcome to the newbies! We’re so glad to have you on our team!

Unlike large retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Sears and eBay, we weren’t dealing with thousands of items to sort through, not even hundreds. Our filtering needs therefore needed to be tailored to quick ease of use rather than large data sets.

Our solution was a filter design that makes it extremely easy to apply a single criterion. Additional filters can be added but because this is an unlikely need, we felt it was OK if multiple filters took a little more effort to apply.

This is the final entry in a 4-part case study that took us through vision for the mobile website, navigation design, focusing on what’s local and designing a key interaction. Let us know if you’ve found it useful and interesting in relation to your own mobile efforts.

And finally, thanks to the TSO for agreeing to share this series before the website goes live. We just couldn’t wait to share it.

One of the essentials of mobile design is getting local. For the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s mobile website, local means things like:

• Where is the concert?
• How do I get there by transit, car or on foot?
• If driving, where can I park?
• Where can I go for dinner or drinks before or after the concert?

Most TSO concerts are at their home venue, Roy Thompson Hall in downtown Toronto, but each season also includes several concerts in a terrific recital hall in the city’s northern periphery. Thus when we designed the local features, a prominent toggle between the primary and secondary venue became essential.

For ease of reading, restaurants are presented in a list by default but a map view is also available. To reduce visual noise on the map, we allowed parking and restaurant features on the map to be turned on and off.

All-in-all, there’s a lot of toggling available but by focusing on a default view that is easy to peruse on a mobile device and allowing people to reveal additional information as they need it, we sought to make it feel effortlessly easy.

Trickier however was devising a navigation design that felt equally comfortable. Several approaches were considered and refined into 2 rival proposals. The first adhered closely to iOS conventions.

The second approach includes a global navigation menu that’s available from everywhere in the website.

In terms of the number of taps to accomplish any given task, the two options were roughly equivalent. The iOS approach, however, just felt more effortful and restrictive – too much climbing into and out of rabbit holes.

We investigated mobile websites with navigation menus including the NFL, Subaru and others and our confidence to deviate from iOS’s dominant practice was bolstered.

And so after examining both options with the TSO (and some healthy internal debate at Usability Matters), the second option prevailed.

[Update: we are happy to report this role has been filled. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement in the next few weeks!]

The Opportunity
As a member of the UM team, you will create strategic solutions for our clients using UX tools and best practices.

We want someone who is passionate about user experience and will share that passion with our team, our clients, and our colleagues in the field.

We are currently seeking entry-level or intermediate candidates but are always interested in talking to colleagues at every point in their career development.

The Company

Usability Matters is a dynamic firm devoted exclusively to user experience. We are an established boutique agency with a stellar reputation in Toronto and beyond.

We offer a dynamic and supportive working environment. We believe in work-life balance, as well providing a breadth of experience and education. Our varied client list affords us the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects across many industry sectors.

Our pride in our team and our work shows in everything we do. 

We need someone who:        

• Has aptitude, experience AND passion, in the UX field
• Is a college or university graduate in a related discipline or equivalent experience
• Has experience surfacing requirements from clients for complex user interfaces
• Can provide high-level strategic recommendations on all aspects of the user experience, across various channels (web, mobile, social media)
• Can dive deep: designing the structure, navigation, functionality and interfaces of effective and engaging user interactions
• Can do this using wireframes, flow diagrams, conceptual models, IA diagrams and other deliverables
• Understands the sweet spot between business requirements and user needs and can bring this to life in the design of an experience
• Has demonstrated their ability to work within constraints – technical, business or other
• Has experience coordinating, running and reporting on usability studies and other forms of design research
• Understands how to present and communicate their recommendations and designs to client teams
• Can wrangle Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Is an expert with Omnigraffle, Azure, Morae and/or other UX tools

• Graphic design and/or technical expertise
• French fluency, oral and written

You might be the right person if you:

• Can inspire and motivate colleagues and clients to achieve the best possible design
• Have a great client manner and are comfortable in any professional setting
• Know what’s trending but are more interested in innovating based on user needs
• Can think big, then roll up your sleeves and get hands-on
• Know the rules, and know when to break them

To fit into our team you’ll need to:

• Adhere and adapt to tight schedules and project conditions
• Be able to roll with the punches and adapt when things change
• Appreciate collaboration and encourage debate
• Have no problem pitching in where needed to get the job done
• Put your dishes in the dishwasher, not the sink

This opportunity may be filled by contract (minimum 6 months) or full-time, depending on the suitability and preference of the selected applicant.

Forward resumes to recruiting@usabilitymatters.com.  Please include:

1. Portfolio or samples of relevant work
2. Your salary/compensation expectations

We are interviewing as we receive applicants and will close this opportunity when we’ve found the appropriate fit for our team. Hope to hear from you!

To ensure we achieved an engaging, fun and useful user experience, we began by building upon Josh Clark’s terrific “mobile mindsets” framework (Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps). The aim was to sharply focus on the tasks of TSO enthusiasts on the go.

Iʼm microtasking…

• Find out what concerts are coming up
• Purchase tickets
• Get answers to common questions such as “what should I wear?“

Iʼve got a little time…

• Find out about pre-concert chats and other concert-related events
• Listen to TSO concert excerpts, recordings and podcasts
• Watch TSO videos

Iʼm local…

• Get directions to the performance venue
• Find out where to park
• Find nearby restaurants and discounts

Far from being restrictive of the design, this disciplined task focus was an utter delight – sloughing off the barnacles that too often get affixed to a website was liberating. Over-burdensome display ads were replaced by discreet sponsorship provisions. Stakeholder efforts to put a slice of everything on the home page were rendered impossible.

The result? It has been a delightful collaboration with the TSO and I eagerly await the launch of the website in the coming months but in the interim, I know that all my upcoming design efforts will reap the benefit of this project’s task-focused influence.

In subsequent posts we’ll unveil some of the design solutions.

One of the daily tasks around here is the sorting of data and information – applying these skills to the sorting of 3 skids of donations seemed a good fit for us. As newbies to this Challenge, we were unsure of what the process or environment would be, and since I was elected Team Captain, I was bit nervous about letting down my team as well as the honourable staff at Daily Bread. They did a great job in giving us an orientation first and explaining the do’s and don’ts:

1. do check expiry and best-before dates on all donations
2. do check under peanut butter and Nutella lids for “sampled product” (how yuck!) or surprise cash gifts hidden by donors (how sweet!)
3. don’t hurt the food (i.e denting the cans or rip the packaging, etc)
4. don’t sacrifice attention to these details in favour of speed
5. don’t interfere with other teams

Armed with these points in mind, a quickly hobbled together plan of attack (2 people on box making, 1 on labeling, two teams of 3 sorters and 1 scanner/palletizer) and our snazzy matching Tshirts, we whipped through 3 pallets of donations in… 58 MINUTES! Whew! And yet we were still not the fastest that day – Congrats to last year’s returning champs: the Ranstad team, who also won overall this year.

The U-Stars Team!

With new skills in hand, we’re hoping to shave 3-5 minutes off our time next year! The Food Bank fell short of their Fall Drive goal this year, so being able to pitch in towards their next target was a great feeling AND a fun team building event.

If you are able, please consider the Daily Bread Food Bank in you charitable giving this year, or run your own food drive!