What I Learned at Usability Week 2011

Back in March I packed my bags and jetsetted down to chilly Melbourne for the Usability Week 2011 Conference.  Run by the Nielson Norman Group (NN/g, professional home to the guru himself, Mr Jakob Nielson), Usability Week is actually a series of conferences rolled out in cities all over the world featuring five full day intensive tutorials from the NN/g international experts on all things User Experience. 

In the field of User Experience design and Information Architecture where there are no degrees or diplomas to tell you how to do things, this experience was no less than pure gold.  I learned so much over the five days, not only from the amazing presenters, but from the incredible group of like-minded people who had converged from across Australia and New Zealand to lap up the knowledge and share some of their own hot tips and techniques. 

The tutorials I attended included two full days on my old favourite, Information Architecture (one on site structure and one on navigation design); a day of Usability Fundamentals (which included a couple of special talks from the master of usability himself, in the flesh, Jakob Nielson); a full day learning how to rapidly create wireframes and test paper prototypes with users; and on the final day a fascinating look at How Web Users Think – a psychology perspective, deep.

The week was intense, and I feel like I have six months’ worth of blogs to explore all of the things I learned and to see how they can be applied to the web projects we work on here, but just for starters, here are the five key takeaways I’ll never forget from Usability Week 2011.

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

One of Jakob’s favourite sayings – “Designing a beautiful website with poor usability is like putting lipstick on a pig”.  Not sure that I’m totally comfortable with the connotation that all pigs are ugly (pigs have feelings too!), but the message is loud and clear.  We all respond to things that look amazing and creative (and so we should!), but in the world of digital, if the designs aren’t based on solid navigation structures and usable interfaces, then all the design in the world won’t stop your users getting jack of it. 

Usability is like Gravity

"Usability is like Gravity” – Another gem from Jakob Nielson in response to the notion that sometimes designers and developers can get a little peeved at the usability folks for suggesting that their beautiful designs or awesome functionality aren’t as user friendly as they could be.  Ignoring usability laws won’t stop the usability problems from existing any more than kicking Sir Isaac Newton in the shins will stop an apple from falling to the ground.

The Information Scent

The Information Scent, based on a paper called Information Foraging by Peter Pirolli and Stuart K.Card, compares web users to hunting animals following a scent.  Basically, the stronger the scent (or the hint of what information you’ll find) is, the more confident a user can be of finding what they need, so the more likely they’ll be to continue down a given pathway.  In other words, it doesn’t matter if users have to take extra steps, as long as the Information Scent is strong enough to assure them they’re heading in the right direction.

The Importance of User Testing - Kindy Style

Throughout the whole week the importance of User Testing was brought home to me time and again, it just tells you so much about how users really interact with your site (rather than how you imagine they will from the comfort of your office).  Luckily for me, in the Wireframing and Prototyping tutorial with the amazing Hoa Loranger, I learned just how easy it can be to test interface designs for usability before you even switch the computer on.  I’m talking three users max, a stack of white paper, sticky notes and coloured textas, and an hour later you know what works and what doesn’t.  I knew all the arts and crafts in kindy would pay off some day…

The Psychology Behind Banner Blindness

The power of the subconscious human mind can not be underestimated.  Most of the work our brain does is done unconsciously without our express permission.  You might have heard of ‘banner blindness’ in web before, where users completely miss important content within a banner or visual design because it looks like an ad.  Well, I can confirm with you that this is real and it’s everywhere!  Even in a room full of web and user experience designers, we all missed really obvious content that was right in front of our eyes, even when we were told specifically to look for it. Our minds were simply not letting us read certain parts of the page that it had already decided were not relevant – we literally couldn’t see it!  If you want to test for yourself, try this old favourite of the psych world, the selective attention test.

Look out in the coming months for more blogs on Usability, User Experience and Information Architecture – or ask a question in the comments below!