UX Toolkit for Product Owners - a full-day workshop!

Personas

In October my team and I created the "UX Toolkit" - a collection of 10 UX methods that can be used in a project. In the toolkit we explain the method and give some basic information about it. In addition we provide some links and references at ux.techtalk.at.

Based on the toolkit and my talk at the Agile Tour Vienna 2015 I will do a full-day workshop called "UX Toolkit for Product Owners".  The main goal of the workshop is to learn the basics of 7 UX methods and practice them. In this workshop we will do end-user interviews, contextual inquiry, personas, scenarios and storyboards, wireframes, paper prototyping and some usability testing with end-users (with think-aloud).

This workshop is for everybody working in a project who want to put more focus towards the user: understanding the user and getting feedback early.


Wireframes

Some details:

• Workshop will be in German.
• Date: 7th of April, 9am - 4:30pm
• Location: TechTalk Vienna, Saturn Tower
• More information and registration (German)

Hope to see you :)

UX Toolkit for Product Owners

UX Toolkit

About one week ago I did a talk at the Agile Tour Vienna called "UX Toolkit for Product Owners". As I'm working as a Usability Engineer in several agile projects I learned that the team and especially the product owner can benefit a lot from directly talking to the users.

Because I think that UX is no magical thing that only can be done by people studying several years, I created a small "UX Toolkit" explaining 10 UX methods that could help product owners and other team members to get a better understanding of the users and that should help to validate their designs. The methods are End-User Interview, Contextual Inquiry, Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards, Card Sorting, Wireframes, Paper Prototyping, End-User Testing, Think Aloud and Heuristic Evaluation.

We tried to describe the methods briefly and we visualized how much experience is needed and how much time/effort is necessary.

In addition to the printed UX-Toolkit we provided a tiny Website (in German) for providing additional links to blogs and videos: ux.techtalk.at.


ux.techtalk.at

In the talk I presented then five methods including some real-life examples ... the slides (in German) are provided on Slideshare.

If you want to get the printed version of the UX-Toolkit you can directly contact me: claudia.oster[at]techtalk.at.

Besides that I want to highlight that the videos of the keynotes of the Agile Tour are online - for all UX-Designers the talk by Jeff Patton is a must-see. Have fun!

User Experience Conference in Vienna @ linuxwochen

Hi,

I want to announce a great UX track at the linux weeks in Vienna next Saturday - May 4th, 2013.

In the morning I will do a workshop session with paper prototyping and usability testing. If you have an app idea or want to try out these techniques, you are very welcome.


More information regarding the UX sessions can be found on the User Experience Konferenz-Website (german).

Hope to see you there,
Claudia

PS: Of course free entry at all workshops and sessions.

Windows 8 App-a-thon in Vienna

Hi,

next weekend - August 25th and 26th - already the 2nd Windows 8 App-a-thon in Vienna will take place.

In the morning I will present 6 easy-to-use UX tools in 60 minutes, covering Interview Techniques, Personas, Wireframing, Paper Prototyping, Think aloud testing and heuristic evaluation.

Looking forward to see you there - free admission, but registration is necessary.
More information and registration you can find on the Microsoft website.

Br, Claudia 

The Power of Wireframing - Kits

Hi everybody!

Now it's autumn (already with some snow) (at least in Vienna & Salzburg) and it has been a long time since my last post. In the future I will try to share with you at least one interesting information per month (because I have a lot in my mind).

Now back to the topic ... Wireframe Kits.
The great Smashing Magazine published an huge article with a lot of useful wireframe kits. A few of them I want to share with you directly.

As I'm a big fan of magnetic protoyping this kit is a real help - the Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit).

A also very useful kit is the User Interface Design Framework for Illustrator and OmniGraffle including GUI Elements, Icons and Styles. 

And the last Wireframe Kit is the Free Sketching and Wireframe Kit, available for illustrator, as svg, pdf and eps.

If you want to see/try more wireframe kits - have a look in the article.

Br, Claudia

Anybody can do usability ...

Hi everybody

I just read the new blog article by Jakob Nielsen and I want to share this great statement with you:

Usability is like cooking: everybody needs the results, anybody can do it reasonably well with a bit of training, and yet it takes a master to produce a gourmet outcome.

I also have the opinion that everybody - if he/she is interested in the topic - can learn the basic skills to find usability problems in advance (by scribbling screens) or afterwards (by reviewing the application). So, read the article ... it's really great.

Br/Üdv/LG
Claudia

Review: A project guide to UX design

Hi,

last weekend I read the book "A project guide to UX design - For user experience designers in the field or in the making" by Russ Unger (Twitter) and Carolyn Chandler (Twitter).

I found this book because Robert Hoekman, Jr. mentioned it in his Userability Podcast as one of the top 3 books he would recommend.

In general the book is nice and fast to read, the content is very basic and is a good introduction if you want to start in the field of User experience (for me a little bit to low-level). The book focuses a lot on the topics that are relevant for a UX consultant and cover topics like the project ecosystem, proposals for consultants and freelancers, project objectives and approach and Business Requirements.

More interesting chapters for me were about user research, personas, Transition: from defining to designing, Site Maps and Task Flows, Wireframes and Annotations and Prototyping.

Especially the chapter "Prototyping" was interesting because a few weeks ago I discussed with a colleague and he put the need of prototyping into question. Here are some of the key facts from the book...

"... Remember that prototyping is a process and not an artifact. [...] The outcome of the prototyping process is actionable feedback from concepts that can be used to enhance and improve the design."

And Todd Zaki Warfel, president of Messagefirst said the following regarding the goals of Prototyping:

"Prototypes are a way to achieve one or more of the following goals:

• Work your way through a design
• Create a common communication platform
• Sell your design ideas internally (e.g., to your boss, other designers, etc.)
• Test technical feasibility
• Test design concepts with end users/customers"

So in my point of view there are a lot of good reasons for prototyping, because the best or most useable design can only be created in an evolutionary process with a lot of feedback from users, customers and stakeholders.

Br, Claudia

@ TechTalkers: If you are interested in the book I can borrow it to you.

Improving design of web pages

Hi,

today I just want to post a short article about improving the design of your web page. Therefore I want to link you to the post of Matt Cronin who collected some ideas about improving factors.

In his article "8 Layout Solutions To Improve Your Designs" he presents 8 different kinds of new web controls to improve designs. Almost all of them are based on new web technologies like AJAX.

The reason why I got aware of this post is the fact, that I am currently having a problem with a menu that takes away a lot of space. Therefore I thought about using a different control to improve the layout and save some space on the page. After doing some paperprototyping I found a good way to layout the menu using the Accordion control.

The following pic shows my paperprototype of this Accordion control.


In his post, Matt Cronin describes Accordin controls as the following:

Accordion menus are based on the same concept as sliders and tabs: it takes a large amount of information and encapsulates it in a smaller area.

So this control is exactly what I need. And he also provides some good examples and links to existing controls and sample sites which reduces the effort of searching for good controls.

So if you need some inspiration to improve your design, check out the 8 layout solutions. Maybe you'll find some nice controls.

Kind regards,
Harald

Paper Prototyping @ Usability Week

Hi,

last week I visited the Usability week 2009 in London and today I want to share with you my experience regarding paper prototyping.

On the last day we should work in groups to create a paper prototype in about 1 hour and then test this prototype with a person from another group. I have to say it was really fun and it worked really well. Especially we recognized how easy and FAST a design can be tested and improvements can be found.

In the following pictures you can see fast and creative work :-)

The topic of the paper prototype was part of a shop application where the user has the possibility to create a customized duvet.

In the following short video you can see the start of the test session and our favourite sentence "We are not testing you, we are testing the application".

Hopefully in the next days I have time to add more interesting topics related to the Usability Week.

Br, Claudia

Prototyping & Sketching

Hi,

in the last days a read a lot of articles about prototyping and sketching and today I want to share with you some interesting links about this topic.

The first link is a IxDA discussion about "How many alternatives, concepts, or sketches are enough?" . So how can we be sure to create the best (or one of the best) design solution -> here a short visualisation.

Magnetic prototype
Another nice idea I read about in the last week is the magnetic prototype. I think this could be a really good method to test different UIs if you already know which controls you will need. I haven't used it so far, but i will try it.

Prototyping with Visio
The third link I want to share with you is a tool that could support you to create wireframes with Visio. There are controls and widgets available, also in a sketchy style. The ressources and a introduction are available >here.

The Website Stencil Kit
And for all they want to draw by hand, but are not so skilled .. here a tool that could probably help you a lot.... (Design Commission Shop)

Br, Claudia