User First Marketing Blog

User First Development Blog

Development vs. Marketing Blog

client login
  • Tobii Eye Tracking
  • Web Analytics 2.0
  • UI / UX Development

Posts Tagged ‘usability’

Loop 11 Adds New Features, and Why They Rock

Monday, June 28th, 2010

If you have ever ran an un-moderated usability study you know that most solutions don’t provide advanced features for research panels or the functionality for custoloop-blog-imagem analysis. We personally use Loop 11 for un-moderated usability studies. Although we love the tool and the great insights we get we always sigh when it’s time to crunch the numbers. But not anymore!! Loop 11 just released new features that will make setting up and analyzing un-moderated usability studies a breeze. Within this post we will review the changes and why they are important.

1). Tracking participants using unique IDs
When using a research panel for a usability test tracking individual participants is important not only for segmentation but also to know exactly what participant completed the study and should be paid their incentive, terminated, or was over-quota. Previously, I had to ask the participant to fill in their Ids and as you can imagine some participants didn’t answer correctly. I would also download all of the IP address Loop11 gave me and try to match it back just to double check, which took hours!

Why this rocks: Now all you have to do is customize the end of the URL with a unique ID for each participant. You can now easily pay your participants and segment your users without having to invest a lot of time.

blog-image

2).Re-Categorise multiple URLs at a time
Instead of re-categorising one URL at a time you can now re-categorise multiple URLs at the same time.

Why this rocks: Some websites have dynamic URLs, and you can’t set-up a goal for every possible combination within Loop 11. Now instead of re-categorising one URL at a time you can select what pages you want to re-categorise. This saves time during the set-up process of the study and analysis because once you re-categorised the URLs the data re-configures!

3). Pop-up invitation controls
If you are recruiting your participants by intercepting them via your website; you now have a feature allowing you to control the percentage of visitors that you ‘invite’.

Why this rocks: Selecting what percentage of your visitors is super valuable because too high a sample rate might mean you are surveying more visitors than you really need to in order to get valid results. Remember, too small a sample could produce results that lack statistical validity.

blog-image-22

4). Individual participant path analysis in exports
Full path analysis of individual participants can now be exported into reports. This allows you to segment the conversion funnel by your top segments, whether you segment participants by female only or participants that clicked abandoned when they actually succeed the task.

Why this rocks: In the past, the way we collected this data was by using the interface within Loop 11 and simply copying and pasting each link for each participant for each task. Needless to say that it took awhile and there was lots of room for human error. Now all you have to do is download the report. Once you have this data you can segment your funnel analysis to view how different users completed or failed the task based either on their demographics and/or geographic.

5). Individual responses for Rating Scale Matrix questions
The results for rating scale matrix questions, while always available at an aggregated level were never available so you could see the individual participant responses.

Why this rocks: Let’s say you asked a gender question because you wanted to know how many females or males participated in your study. Loop would just tell you the percentage but not who was female or male. Now you can download the report and know who was who. This type of information is important if you had follow-up question after the task, you can find what type of user rated the task easy or difficult. Or if you didn’t use a research panel you can start your test with some demographic questions so your analysis can get a little juicer with segmentation.

What is your experience with Loop 11, are you excited about these changes? As Toby Biddle would say “Happy Testing”!

Mobile eye tracking - part 1 of 3

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

For many years eye tracking has been limited to a controlled, virtual environment, making precise data collection and analysis relatively simple:

  • the computer screen doesn’t move,
  • participant movement is limited,
  • and stimulus presentations on screen are generally consistent across participants.

The biggest challenge researchers face is correcting for head movement (turning sideways or leaning forward) and managing point of gaze data on sometimes unexpected dynamic stimuli (pop-ups, animated ads, video, scrolling, etc.).

Nonetheless, it was relatively simple to track samples of 100 or more and evaluate their viewing pattern as they looked at on-screen presentations. Dynamic backgrounds posed a challenge, but as long as all participants looked at the same stimulus, it wasn’t too big of a deal to analyze this. It was time consuming to identify the areas of interest (AOI) for a background that is constantly changing, but once they are identified, everyone’s data can be run against the same AOIs (as identified, for example, in a television commercial). The output is then the same as for static backgrounds: precise dwell time and fixation information for areas of interest that can be aggregated across all participants. And this can easily be plotted on a static image of the background for visualization.

This type of testing was great for websites, TV commercials and software usability testing to name a few, but was less realistic when evaluating stimuli such as shelf displays, package designs, magazines or products in hand. This posed a problem; a golden rule in user research is to test real users in real environments. Eye tracking participants looking at virtual shelf displays on a computer screen just isn’t the same as eye tracking them as they look at actual packages on a shelf (though this certainly is up for debate).

Mobile eye tracker - image courtesy http://www.mangold-international.comThus came the shift to mobile eye tracking - recording a person’s point of gaze as he or she is moving about in a real, 3-D environment. This could be selecting magazines off of a shelf and reading them, moving about a store selecting products off of a shelf, or interacting with signage at a baseball game. The same technology could apply and has been modified for this type of testing, but there have been a number of obstacles along the way involving either the hardware or the software:

  1. Hardware: While hardware has been reduced in scope and size, a fast processor with a big enough hard drive is still needed, as are at least two cameras (one for the eye, one for the scene). The connection between computer and cameras needs to be wireless or all be so lightweight that it’s easily portable. The cameras have to be secured to the head in a way to limit any shift between camera and eye. How to manage these limitations effectively?

  1. Software: The calibration process and recording the data is much the same. The challenge is in the follow-up analysis. How do you identify regions and analyze point of gaze data when the background is constantly changing and is unique for each and every participant? How can you identify AOI rapidly and accurately with such variability? How can we aggregate data across participants when the stimuli varies so significantly? Can it be done to match the stable scene analysis that we are accustomed to, or is it necessary to make a significant paradigm shift in how we approach mobile eye data?

Different manufacturers and engineers have approached and managed these obstacles in unique ways. With the next few blogs I plan to explore that a bit further. I can only provide information based on personal research and experience, and am eager to hear more about experiences others have had. It’s an exciting new technology; although it has been around for years, there have been and continue to be substantial developments that bring this research approach more to the forefront.

Keeping up with the Joneses, a Website Redesign Story

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Summary: If you’re tired of your website’s design and you think you NEED a redesign remember that users spend 5 hours a year looking at a website at best. Successful user interfaces are designed to improve functionality of the familar design and evolve the user experience. Taking a cue from Amazon, incremental changes to the website’s design just might be the best approach.

Lately, we have had people requesting information on eye-tracking for their latest website redesign. At first glance I thought it was great that companies were getting customers involved.  Then I started thinking about what brought on the redesign project, and as analyst I wondered if these companies have set strategic goals that will not only measure the cost of doing the redesign but successful measure user’s satisfaction (example KPI: decrease cost per new customer by 5%).

I have seen and heard of many website redesigns that unfortunately were trying to “Keep up with the Joneses”, embarking on a website redesign only to keep up with the competitors. I think this happens more often than not. If five out of your six competitors have made their website look better, fresher, and more au courant then I am pretty sure a request for a redesign will be coming soon. This “me too” syndrome can simply  come from being over exposed to the website and feel like the website design is dated and tired. I recently read Jakob Nielsen’s post on Fresh vs. Familiar Redesign (a must read in my opinion), he mentions that the number of “exposure hours” usually starts the redesign off on the wrong foot.

When embarking a redesign project  people often forgot about the two most important things:

1). How will this help the user’s key usability attributes (learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction)
Users usually spend no more than 2-3 minutes on a website and at best spend five hours a year looking at a website. When visiting websites or using applications, they don’t spend their time analyzing or admiring the design. They focus their attention on the task.  Changing the design purely to “stay fresh” vs design that enhances usability results in expensive changes that, after all is said and done, don’t really help the business.

2). How will the company’s KPI’s (key performance indicators) be redefined for success
The analytics team and the design team may still  work in silos, but to justify a redesign these teams should open their doors to discuss the purpose of a redesign and clearly define how it will help increase business goals. Understanding the current state of your website’s web traffic data and feedback from users will help you monitor the success of a new site architecture, navigation, and/or design.

When it comes to redesign, being au courant isn’t always better. Major overhauls often generate a lot of resistance and can even upset your most fervent users. That’s why some major brands on the web, such as Amazon, don’t redesign their websites anymore. In contrast, they make incremental improvements that create designs that really pay off for the organization (most changes can be implemented quickly by your team and cost less). In the short-term the design gets done, but the team ends up doing it all over again months down the road.

Where Experiences Come First

Sure, people make a snap judgment about a website based on its look and feel, but keep your KPI’s in mind. If your user satisfaction ratio is up then establishing a new site design might not be worth the cost. However, if a major redesign is on the horizon suggest usability or eye-tracking testing on wireframes or prototypes. These tests can help reduce the need for  risky major re-launches. Simply focus on the areas that need improvement.
User First loves hearing about your experiences. Please let us know if you are planning a website redesign or have gone through one recently!

Other insightful posts that I found on website redesign:
Seth Godin Blog: Things to ask before you redo your website
Grokdotcom Blog: Website Redesign Roundup
User Interface Engineering Blog: Thinking in the Right Terms- 7 Components for a Successful Website Redesign