UserExperienceWebroot

User Experience at Webroot

Webroot Software

June 2005

N. Shepard

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User Experience Group

• Cross functional team

Human factors or usability experts • Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

• Ergonomics or human factors

• Cognitive psychology

Graphic artists or visual designers

• Mission

Ensure the best possible user interaction with Webroot products, services, and website

• Method

Variety of approaches, methodologies, and processes, but…

User-centered design is at the core of what we do…more later

http://www.webroot.com/wb/index.php


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Characteristics of Usable Products

• Improve the end-to-end user experience of all products and services so that products are:

Easy to learn

Efficient to use

Easy to remember

Few errors likely

Subjectively pleasing



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Why Invest Time and Dollars in Usability?

• The user interface is estimated to be 40-60% of the lines of application code; our developers have estimated 25-30%, not including design or graphics time

• A GUI can be 30% of software development project

• 80% of software lifecycle costs occur during the maintenance phase

80% for unmet user requirements/needs

20% bugs

• 63% of projects overrun their budgets

Requests for changes from users

Overlooked user tasks



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Why Invest Time and Dollars in Usability?

Point where usability becomes

much more important

Early and late majorities now

the target market for

SpySweeper Consumer



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User-Centered Design – Key Components

Whiteboard Design

Cognitive

Walkthrough

Usability Testing

Design Goals

User and Task

Analysis

PrototypingRevise

Revise

Revise

Release Follow-up

•Interviews

•Site visits

•Support call data

•Previous usability testing

•Webroot business goals and product requirements

•User stories, goals, and tasks

•Usability goals and technical constraints

•Step through the design

using personae

•Initial, high-level design

•User flows that support tasks

•Low-fidelity prototypes or mockups

•Usability review

•Test prototypes with

real users

•Monitor support call data and customer surveys



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User-Centered Design and Agile

1 Design and

prototype

2 Cognitive

walkthroughs4 Usability

testing

5 Refine

prototypes

3 Usability

reviews

User Experience

Sub-processes

Design

Code

Unit & Integration

Testing

QA testing

Help File Development

Localization

Reporting

Manage Builds

One Sprint

Cycle



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User-Centered Design – and Agile

Whiteboard Design

Cognitive

Walkthrough

Usability Testing

Design Goals

User and Task

Analysis

Prototyping

Release Follow-up

1 Design and

prototype

2 Cognitive

walkthrough4

Usability

testing

5 Refine

prototypes

3 Usability

reviews

User Experience

Sub-processes

•User-centered

foundation

•Initial high-level

designs



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Scope: Full Customer Lifecycle

1 Research and discover

Call Sales

2 Purchase and download

3 Install and use

product or service

4 Get support

5 Recommend,

re-purchase, upgrade,

or purchase

additional products

Usability and user

experience focus

until now



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1 Research and discover

Call Sales

2 Purchase and download

3 Install and use

product or service

4 Get support

5 Recommend,

re-purchase, upgrade,

or purchase

additional products



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Spyware Audit Tools

SS 5.0 (Moonraker) UI Redesign

SSE Customer Site Visits

SSE Web Console

Usability Testing and

Recommendations

Conversions Usability

Testing (done)

Renewals

Usability

Testing

(done)

Complete Website

Usability Testing

SpySweeper

Download Process

Support Website

Usability

Research Asian cultural

needs for Asian SS UI

Identify localization issues

with SS UI; make recommendations

Shopping cart

usability

Online registration

usability

SS 4.2 (L2K) design changes



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User Research

• Purpose

Who are the users?

What are their tasks and problems?

What are their goals, needs, environments and skills?

• Methods

Site visits, interviews, support call data, usability studies, focus groups, surveys, diary or camera studies, and more

• Results

User characteristics and needs

User profiles and personae

User goals, stories, and scenarios

User interface design points



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Market Research vs. Human Factors

Area Market Research Human Factors and Usability

Main Focus Attitudes, opinions, perceptions

Behaviors, performance

Interviewees “Choosers” – buyers of the product

“Users” – those who use and interact with the product – can also be buyers

Sample Size Usually large; interested in statistically significant mass (quantitative)

Small scale with focus on understanding user behavior (qualitative)

Depth Research depth is horizontal, superficial, high-level

Horizontal and vertical, in-depth, richness

Segmentation Demographics focus is on users as a group, such as location, age, gender

Focus is on users as individuals with specific characteristics

Primary tools Large surveys, focus groups, questionnaires, click-path data

Field (contextual) observations, usability testing, one-on-one interviews



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User Stories, Scenarios, and Personae

• User Stories or Scenarios

Work flow scenarios based on typical users and their tasks

Helpful for initial design work and subsequent usability evaluations

• Personae: archetypal or representative users, created from data we have collected about our customers

Help maintain a strong focus on users

Direct design arguments back to specific users

Personae are used to

• Prepare user scenarios or stories

• Help guide design decisions

• Perform cognitive or design walkthroughs



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Task Analysis

• Purpose

Identify user interaction that must occur to achieve user goals

Aggregate functionality for tasks that use multiple functions

Identify high frequency and common tasks

• Methods

Observation

Workflow analysis

Task modeling

Usability studies

Affinity charting

• Results

Level of visibility and access for product functions



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Task Analysis

Used by Many Users

Used by Few Users

Frequent Tasks

Frequent by Many

Frequent by Few

Occasional Tasks

Occasional by Many

Occasional by Few

Make less visible

Require

more

clicks



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Storyboarding and Prototyping

• Purpose

Task flow review and UI feasibility

Storyboards map user task flows to interface design

• Methods

Hand sketches

Visual Basic

Visio

Low fidelity

• Results

Detailed user task flows and low-fidelity prototypes for testing

Reduce screens and shorten paths



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Storyboarding and Prototyping



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Cognitive Walkthroughs

• Purpose

Simulate a user’s sequence of steps to accomplish tasks

Uncover design gaps

Provide human element into task flows

• Method

One “typical” user or

Several primary personae

• Result

Uncover previously unidentified usability issues

Help redirect design arguments back to users and their tasks



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Cognitive Walkthroughs



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Usability Testing

• Purpose

Verify and refine interface design

• Methods

Uses rigor and structure with specific goals

Recruiting and screening done carefully

Informal or formal – hand sketches or low-fidelity prototypes

Different types – for example, benchmarking, exploratory, criterion, comparative

• Results

Identifies remaining usability issues

At the start of a project, identifies known usability issues –nice for benchmarking and comparisons later



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Usability Testing



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Heuristic or Expert Usability Review

• Uses experienced usability people and well-known usability best practices based on experience and sources of research

• 70-80 percent of usability issues can be uncovered with reviews from two or more experienced usability people*

• Economical and saves usability testing time

• Used regularly and often can create significant usability gains

• Fast way to respond to time-pressured projects

*Nielsen and Landauer, 1993



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Guidelines for working withUser Experience Group

Earlier is better

While a full cycle of user-centered design is ideal, user-centered design methods can be used individually for small and incremental improvements

Expert usability reviews can go a long way

Usability testing is only one tool in the UX toolkit – other options exist

We can empower other groups with more usability knowledge


UserExperienceWebroot

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