In this episode of Usability Tools, Brian Christiansen and I continue on how to moderate a usability test. As I mentioned last week, the episode got so long that we decided to break it into two parts. You can find part 1 here. This week’s show focuses upon the step-by-step tasks of running the session with a participant and your observers.

Good moderating is critically important to a successful session. Here are a few points we touched upon in the show:

• Practice and repetition improves your moderation skills. Start the session on the right foot by greeting your user on time and by laying out exactly what will happen during the session.
• Inform your user of their rights as a participant; their comfort is key. Have and follow a testing protocol which will lead you through all the information, and through all the testing steps. It should also govern your observers.
• End your session on time. Respecting the time of your participants and observers is paramount. Walk your user out, both out of politeness and because small talk may lead to critical insights.

There’s much more in the show. If you have questions about the role of the moderator, feel free to ask them in the comments. We’ll try to answer them and may even work them into a future show.

[This show is the first in a series we're going to do on the fundamentals of usability testing. In future shows, we'll cover the entire gamut of testing, from initial planning, through task design, to data analysis and beyond. We want to create a complete resource that you'll share with your entire team.]

In this episode of Usability Tools, Brian Christiansen and I talk about how to moderate a usability test. Turns out, the episode got so long that we decided to break it into two parts. This week’s show focuses upon the different roles a single moderator needs to take on during the session.

The usability test moderator has a lot of influence on the success of the test. Moderating isn’t rocket science, but you’ll need to understand the basics before you sit down with your users.

In this week’s show, I talk about the three roles a moderator needs to play during the test.

First is the scientist. The scientist makes sure your tasks get done, notes get taken, and keeps the show on track.

Then we have the sportscaster. The sportscaster gives play-by-play so the design team members don’t miss anything the user does.

Lastly, there’s the role of the flight attendant. This is the most important role. Keeping your test participant happy and comfortable is your number one job.

Tune in to learn the specifics of each role and how they affect one another.

If you have questions about the role of the moderator, feel free to ask them in the comments. We’ll try to answer them and may even work them into a future show. Stay tuned for the second part of the Moderating show next week.

[This show is the first in a series we're going to do on the fundamentals of usability testing. In future shows, we'll cover the entire gamut of testing, from initial planning, through task design, to data analysis and beyond. We want to create a complete resource that you'll share with your entire team.]

Update: Part 2 is now posted.

It’s now fixed, so you should have no trouble getting future podcasts.

If you haven’t been listening to our podcasts and would like to hear the great things we’re talking about, just click here if you use iTunes or copy this link into your podcast application. A third option is to look at all the great interviews, presentations, and tips we’ve recorded and play them directly from your browser.

Do you have ideas for future recordings? Have you been enjoying the recordings we’ve made so far?

Let us know your thoughts right here on the blog.

[Many thanks to Josh Porter at Bokardo Design for helping us fix the problem.]

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

A button is a button right? Move the mouse over it. Click. Not much to it, eh?

Well, when it’s a well-designed button, all the work your brain is doing to click the button is invisible to you. However, when it’s poorly designed, things start to become harder. Maybe you overshoot the target area? Or maybe you have trouble clicking because the button is too small. Often its not difficult to recover, but it costs attention and attention is expensive.

In this week’s podcast, we discuss the implications of Fitts’ Law. In short, the law states, “The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.”

While this seems obvious, it’s surprising how often it’s forgotten and the trouble that causes. And there’s magic that can happen when a designer takes special care to use Fitts’ law to its full advantage. Listen to the podcast to hear about how that can work.

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Duration: 22min | File size: 12.5 MB
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[ Text Transcript ]

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

In this week’s podcast, Brian Christiansen and I continue exploring usability techniques for web-based applications. Web-based applications are different from content-based web sites because the users are involved in a transaction. When we’re researching the usability of a content-based site, we’re focused on how users will find and react to the information. However, with web-based applications, there are many other considerations that we need to account for.

If you missed the first part of the show, you can listen to it here:
Usability Tools Podcast: Useful Web App Usability Techniques, Part 1

This week, we explore the usability technique toolbox, focusing on those methods that help us with web-based applications.

In this episode we start with the basic usability test, move onto variants, then talk about field studies. In each case, we explore the web-app specific advantages and talk about how we get the information we need to make informed design decisions.

We talked about several books in this episode:

• The Handbook of Usability Testing—by Jeff Rubin
• A Practical Guide to Usability Testing—by Ginny Reddish and Joe Dumas
• Paper Prototyping—by Carolyn Snyder

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

In this week’s podcast, Brian Christiansen and I explore usability techniques for web-based applications. Web-based applications are different from content-based web sites because the users are involved in a transaction. When we’re researching the usability of a content-based site, we’re focused on how users will find and react to the information. However, with web-based applications, there are many other considerations that we need to account for.

Because this is a big topic, we’ve divided it into two podcasts. In Part 1, Brian and I lay down the framework for what our usability research needs to tell us about our web-based application. In Part 2, will look at the techniques for finding that information.

In this episode we cover,

• The differences between hub-and-spoke and interview-based web applications
• When in the design and development process we look to user research
• 5 major classes of usability concerns to consider when testing web apps

Here are some UIE resources on web apps that relate to this episode,

• Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications—Research Article
• The Designer’s Guide to Web Applications: Web Apps Tour 2007 – Learning from Successful Designs—PDF Report
• The Designer’s Guide to Web Applications, Part I: Structure and Flows—PDF Report
• The WebApp Summit, March 2008—in beautiful Coronado, California

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. We’ll share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

It’s tempting to spend a ton of time creating slick flyout, dropdown, or pop-up navigation on our site, but is it worth the effort?

This week, Brian Christiansen and I discuss interactive mouseover techniques for navigation. Are they a good idea when it comes to actually using your site? Based on our testing, we don’t think so.

Some of the issues we address are:

• Why would designers want to use mouseover navigation?
• How do mouseovers become an obstacle to navigation?
• What effect does mouseover navigation have on users finding their trigger words?
• What sites are good examples of navigation without mouseovers?

Here’s our list of referenced links for the episode:

• The UIE research article that started it all: User’s Decide First, Move Second
• Our research in link-rich home pages: an article, Lifestyles of Link-Rich Home Pages; a podcast, Home Page Design; and a 90-minute Virtual Seminar, Initial Scent: The Latest Thinking on Home Page Design.
• Our research on gallery pages: an article, Galleries: The Hardest Working Pages On Your Site; a podcast, Gallery Pages; and a 90-minute Virtual Seminar, Gallery Pages: The Hardest Working Pages on Your Site.
• Two sites we believe are good examples of link-rich designs: Staples.com and Analog.com.

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to win is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Brian Christiansen and I discuss avoiding redesigns. When we talk about avoiding redesigns, we don’t think your should stay anchored in the past, far from it. But we think the best route to change is through incremental deployment.

Some of the issues we addressed were:

• Why is a site-wide redesign in one major relaunch a bad idea?
• What are some of the leading sites doing when they want a new design?
• How can staged redesigns help avert risk?
• How do users react to staged redesigns?

We find the staged redesign is the most effective way to go about changing your site. Listen in to find out how you can harness this technique to make your next project more effective.

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to win is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Brian Christiansen and I discuss On-Site Search. Our research has shown us that no matter how great your search technology is, it will fail your users if the experience hasn’t been carefully crafted. You may be surprised by how easy it is for even the best sites to get it wrong.

Some of the issues we addressed were:

• Why are your users searching your site?
• What separates the best search experiences from the worst?
• What can be done to improve search results?
• How can you tell Search is succeeding on your site?

You’ll want to tune in and hear about the results of our Search Obstacle Course and to learn about the four types of search results. We feel a little time spent improving your site’s search can go a long way.

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to win is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, we will be sitting down to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, we follow up our Virtual Seminar presentation on Building Robust Personas In 30 Days or Less, with answers to questions attendees asked during the session. I highly suggest you take a listen. You’ll uncover some wonderful insights even if you didn’t attend the seminar.

During the podcast, Brian Christiansen and I discussed the following topics:

» What are personas?
» Should your organization have dedicated UX team members for maintaining updated personas?
» Can just one person participate in the persona building process?
» Should you develop scenarios for multiple personas that all fit one task?
» Can you create personas based solely on survey results?
» How do personas relate to Actors and Use Cases from the Rational Unified Process (RUP)?

During the podcast, we also mentioned several valuable resources for incorporating personas into the development process:

Steve Mulder’s The User is Always Right

Alan Cooper’s About Face, 3rd edition

Alan Cooper’s The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

John Pruit and Tamara Adlin’s The Persona Lifecycle

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We love to create shows based on your questions, just like we did with this episode. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics we discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to win is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Christine was tied up getting ready for our upcoming UI12 conference, so Brian Christiansen joins me for a show whose topic came from our reader, Colin. He wrote in to ask about the statistical significance of usability or field tests.

Statistical significance revolves around having enough participants to make your findings valid. However, the number of participants necessary can vary widely, depending on what you’re studying and how.

During the podcast, Brian and I answered these common questions:

» Many people talk about statistical significance, but what does it really mean?
» How many people does it take to produce reliable results?
» Why do usability tests require many fewer participants than surveys?
» How do we know we’ve gathered enough data from our research?

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? We’d love to create a show based on your questions, just like we did with this episode. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to win is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast series, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

In the design world, there’s always been an assumption that some users demonstrate “search-dominant” tendencies by going right to the search engine when they first visit a web site looking for content. But back in 2000, UIE made a groundbreaking claim that blew away the web design world. From our research, we concluded that users aren’t Search dominant. A few years back, I wrote the article, Are There Users Who Always Search?, and have received tons of questions about the findings ever since.

In this podcast, Christine Perfetti and I discuss the study, including:

» Why no user always went to the search engine on a site
» How the design of a site’s page determines what location strategy users employ
» How the design community reacted to UIE’s research on Search Dominance
» Why your site’s navigation may be poorly designed if your users are gravitating to Search

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. (We first published the results of our research on Search Dominance in our email newsletter.)

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Christine Perfetti asked me about one of UIE’s most popular usability testing techniques, Interview-based Tasks. A couple of years ago, I wrote an introductory article about interview-based tasks, and we’ve been getting questions about the technique ever since.

In usability tests where we incorporate interview-based tasks, the participants interests are discovered, not assigned. Unlike traditional task design methods, the test facilitator and participant negotiate the tasks during the tests, instead of proceeding down a list of predefined tasks. Because each task is drawn from the experience and interest of each participant, no two participants perform exactly the same tasks. In this podcast, Christine and I discuss:

» How interview-based tasks successfully engage users
» How to create interview-based tasks
» Why User Interface Engineering’s researchers moved away from traditional task design
» How to recruit users with this technique
» How to combine interview-based tasks with other types of tasks
» Where to learn more about task design: The excellent book by Ginny Redish and JoAnn Hackos, User and Task Analysis for Interface Design

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Christine Perfetti asked me about User Interface Engineering’s groundbreaking study on download time. In this study, we found the actual download time of a page didn’t impact a site’s usability. In this podcast, Christine and I discuss:

» What users *really* mean when they say a web site is too slow
» User Interface Engineering’s methodology for conducting the study on download time
» The strong reaction of the design community to UIE’s findings
» UIE’s shift in perspective regarding download time due to the prevalence of high-speed connections

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. [We first published our download time findings in UIEtips.] We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Christine Perfetti asked me about one of UIE’s most valuable usability testing techniques, Inherent Value Tests. Inherent Value Testing gives the team important information about how well a web site communicates the inherent value the designers are putting into the site. In this podcast, Christine and I discuss:

» How inherent value tests help measure how your site communicates your product’s value
» How inherent value tests are different than traditional usability testing techniques
» How to recruit users with this technique
» How to combine inherent value tests with other types of tasks

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

This week, Christine Perfetti asked me about one of UIE’s most popular usability testing techniques, 5-Second Tests. A couple of years ago, Christine Perfetti wrote an excellent introductory article about 5-Second Tests, and we’ve been getting questions about the technique ever since.

The 5-Second Test Method shows users a single content page for a quick 5 seconds to gather their initial impressions. Five seconds may not seem like a lot of time, but users make important judgments in the first moments they visit a page. In this podcast, Christine and I discuss:

» Why 5-Second Tests should be used primarily to test a site’s content pages
» Why 5-Second Tests aren’t effective on most Home Pages
» How to conduct this test with your users
» What some of the common mistakes design teams make when conducting a 5-Second Test
» How to recruit users with this technique
» How to combine 5-Second Techniques with other types of tasks

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools Podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

In last week’s podcast, we talked about Gallery Pages, which are pages with links to the site’s content pages. This week, Christine asked me about two other types of pages: Department pages and Store pages. These pages become crucial when an information-rich site has thousands (and sometimes millions) of pages.
In this podcast, we discuss:

» How Department and Store Pages help narrow down the content choices for users
» How Department pages help users make confident choices between galleries
» What sites successfully take advantage of Department Pages, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics
» What common mistakes designers make when implementing Department and Store pages

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

UIE’s Latest Research: If you’re interested in the topics Christine and I discuss in the podcasts, I highly suggest you sign up for our free newsletter, UIEtips, to read our latest usability and design research as soon as we publish it. We’ll also notify you in UIEtips when we publish new podcasts.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

Each week in our Usability Tools podcast, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

In this week’s episode, Christine asks me about UIE’s research on Gallery Pages. Gallery Pages, the list of links to content, are a web site’s hardest working page. They are the final page that determine whether users will successfully find their content.

In this podcast, we discuss:

» How galleries help users make confident choices
» What behavior users exhibit when gallery pages fail them
» How to order links so users can successfully find their content
» Why alphabetized links are often viewed as randomly ordered links
» How to utilize trigger words, the specific words that have meaning to users
» Why longer gallery pages may help users

I hope you enjoy our discussion. For a more lengthy discussion on the topic of Gallery Pages, I highly recommend you listen to our recorded Virtual Seminar, Gallery Pages: The Hardest Working Page on Your Site.

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next scheduled Virtual Seminar, with lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!

I’m very excited to announce the launch of the first episode of UIE’s Usability Tools Podcast. Each week, I will be sitting down with UIE’s Managing Director, Christine Perfetti to discuss tips and tools for improving your site’s user experience. The goal of our weekly podcast is to share some of the most important findings from UIE’s research on web design and usability.

In our first episode, Christine asks me about UIE’s latest thinking on home page design. We decided to kick-off our podcast series discussing home pages because they can play a critical role in the user’s experience on your site. It’s the first page users interact with and its design determines whether users succeed or fail to complete their objective.

In this podcast, we discuss:

» Why a site’s home page is actually the least important page on your site
» How the most successful designs focus on understanding users’ main goals and tasks
» How “link-rich” home pages can help your users find their content
» How the most successful home page designs focus on driving users to the most important content pages
» Why users spend little time on the best home pages

I hope you enjoy our discussion.

As always, we’re very interested in hearing from you. Do you have questions or comments about this episode? Do you have suggestions for future episodes? We want to know. Please leave a comment below or email us directly at mailbag@uie.com.

New: Survey and listener drawing!
We would like to give you and your co-workers free admission to our next Virtual Seminar program, with full, lifetime access to the archived program as well! All you need to do to be eligible is give us your feedback on your podcast listening experience. Fill out the following survey and each week we’ll randomly send one survey participant a free admission to the next UIE Virtual Seminar and Archive, a $169.00 value! We appreciate your input!

Participate in our survey to win!