Incorporating UX Audit Tasks into a User Research plan

The Beyond User Research presentation, from World Information Architecture Day, got me thinking about a related article called The UX Audit: A Beginner’s Guide, from Usability Geek. My other blog post about World IA Day was long enough, so I didn’t mention it then. But, the similarities in the article and the presentation were close and I wanted to mention it.

Alternative Methods for User Research

Unlike the article, the Beyond User Research presentation isn’t a strict guideline. It doesn’t mention any particular research methods to follow. It shows that a UX team can schedule different research methods within a UX research plan. The presentation mentions at least two types of data sources: web metrics and user research.

Web metrics examples included: search query data, logs from a call center, data from analytics reports, voice of the customer reports, CRM applications, and so on. A web analyst might try to reduce the volume of calls to call centers. A user researcher might want to know what most people are calling about. Rather than use this information as a web analyst would, a UX team can use this data as UX research.

UX Audit Methodology

The UX Audit article, being a guide, does mention several methods, including:

  • Review of business and user objectives
  • Conversion metrics
  • Customer care data
  • Sales data
  • Traffic/engagement
  • Compliance with UX standards

It suggests using, for example, conversion metrics this way:

Conversion rates or sales figures: If the premise of your site or app is eCommerce, sales or download figures can be useful to a UX audit. For example, here at Justinmind, we measure how many blog readers download our prototyping tool and from which particular posts…

It breaks down an audit into individual steps and mentions 3 goals that should be clarified before getting started: audit goals, time limit, and resources.

There are a lot of resources in this article, including links to Usability.gov, and even a sample UX audit report. There’s definitely a cross-over between these two information sources.

Differences

The article warns that a UX audit can be time-consuming and expensive. For an external team, which they recommend, it states that a UX audit can cost “upwards of $1000 for a couple of days with a one-person team; the full monty of a UX team coming in for four weeks and providing in-depth, goal-orientated insights could cost up to $10,000”. It presents a UX audit as an official stage of a design cycle, and should be completed early on.

The presentation, meanwhile, makes the case that teams can incorporate a variety of user research methods as an ongoing part of their UX activities. Rather than conduct a full-fledged UX audit, for instance, a UX team could schedule one of these methods periodically. The research cost, in time, money and resources, depends on the method and the goals.

Discussion

Quoting a high price tag for a usability study could be a limitation for teams eager to get started on conducing user research. The article mentions that a UX audit is most beneficial at the beginning of a project. Even with everyone knowing that, the high costs might dissuade a team from getting behind the research. What sounds like a boring activity might push them to just start designing.

And it’s a rare opportunity to have the time and resources to publish an official report, like this. There’s a lot of other work to do.

Instead of treating UX audits as a costly, one-time activities, why not use UX audit methods throughout the year?

Conclusion

These two information sources can work together as complements. The article is very informative with specific guidelines. But the presentation shows how to ‘break the rules’ a little, by conducting research on a regular schedule. This allows a team to keep up with their product throughout the year. A custom approach, such as doing repetitive quick hits seems like the best option.

In any case, I recommend taking a look at the UX audit article. It links to many useful usability resources and websites providing analytics data.

World Information Architecture Day 2017, Slides

In a previous post, I mentioned attending World Information Architecture Day 2017, in New York City, and how I connected with a few of the presentations. I also mentioned a decision to put together a post collecting videos and links from other cities.

Since I only speak English, I’ll only include the videos and presentations that are in English. But, presentations took place all over the world and there are presentations in other languages, so do your own search if you are looking for more presentations.

It was a little difficult to find presentations, but I found some from 5 cities. I’ll post more if I find them.


New York, NY USA

Flag for New York City
Flag for New York City

line drawing of a woman in marker on a sticky note
From the presentation activity
 Leading Creative Ideation – World IA Day (NYC) 2017

 

Washington, D.C., USA

Coat of arms for Washington, DC.
Coat of arms for Washington, DC.

Monterey, CA USA

Flag for Monterey, California
Flag of the city of Monterey, California

Also available as an essay on Medium.

Okinawa, Japan

Flag of Okinawa Prefecture
Flag of Okinawa Prefecture,  Japan

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Flag of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Flag of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Older man with brown skin standing by a road
Not an image from the presentation
Empathy is Not Enough – Designing Systems for Emerging Markets

I like this insight: “When we look at our products in North America, trust is generated by institutional cues, like how well a company did the past year, how many awards a product has won, etc. But in others cultures, people’s trust in a system is highly dependant[sic] on already uses it.”

Impressions: World Information Day 2017 and Meetup

Several weeks ago, I attended World Information Architecture Day, held at Bloomberg. In case you’re wondering what World Information Architecture Day is, here is an explanation from their website:

“World Information Architecture Day is a one-day annual celebration hosted by the Information Architecture Institute and held in dozens of locations across the globe.”

It takes place in 58 locations, across 24 countries, on 5 continents on one day. Pretty neat. As it was one day long so there weren’t that many presenters. Two presentations stuck out for me.

Favorite World IA Day Speaker Presentations

The first presentation was about team building and team dynamics. It was called Designing Teams for Emerging Challenges – available on SlideShare.

The speaker had a friendly demeanor and it’s easy to feel an emotional connection to the topic of team dynamics. I felt an easy connection to this presentation. On slide 24, the speaker talked about helping people feel comfortable being themselves. He warned that this is not the same as fitting in. He made the observation that sometimes team members can end up forming little cliques, because people like hanging out with others who are like them.

The other presentation was called Beyond User Research. It promotes using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research to continuously improve a user interface. This presentation got me thinking about the field of User Experience and remembering that it’s not all about making things look pretty. The speaker made a well-observed comment about introverts, which I connected with, too. 🙂

The presentation showed that in order to provide real value, UX designers and architects should regularly incorporate a wide variety of research into their practice. UX architects should be open to using web analytics research, in addition to traditional UX research.

I liked slide 36 because it was easy to see the relationship between the different research techniques in one view. The slide comes from an article from Nielson-Norman Group, called When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods:

Summary: Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which user research method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.

Another Speaker Event, Meetup

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to get out more and attend more Meetups. Shortly after the World IA Day event, I attended a Digital Product Design Meetup for the first time. The speaker for this event gave a presentation called Evolving the Design Game. There is a link to a video of the presentation. (This is video is expertly produced. Very well done.) There is no link to the slides themselves.

I didn’t have the same takeaways with this presentation as I did with the other presentations. However, the presenter did get across that he felt his work was misunderstood and under appreciated, and he felt that was true across the industry.

At one point in the presentation, he asked the audience about their experience with a CEO making a color change request. He said that he did not have a solution to stop that type of behavior.


A dark brown chess piece with a gold crown sitting on top, resembling a queen.

Finding Solutions

At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a noble profession. – Queen Elizabeth II (http://Read more at: BrainyQuote)

What popped into my head as a solution to this problem was slide 26 from the Beyond User Research presentation. I was thinking about research, not design.

I’ve observed a growing emphasis on the visual design skill of UX designers, including mandates for specific wireframe software. In contrast, I observe very little emphasis on research methods. My conclusion is that non-UX designers, coming into contact with the field, end up doing the same thing: overemphasizing looks and under-appreciating research.

The solution could be as simple as getting back to basics. A long-term commitment to research, treating every aspect of the work thoughtfully and deliberately, might help designers earn greater respect and appreciation for their work from their clients and co-workers. In an upcoming blog post, I’ll write about using the UX audit as a part of a UX research plan.


Old tube-style TV

Or…maybe the answer is to watch more videos from World IA Day! In an upcoming post, or on my Tumblr, I’ll post videos or links. Or you can search on Twitter at #WIAD17 or #wiad17.