It's Flex'O Mania

Hi everyone,
It has been a long time that I have written something thoughtful about Flex or Usability. I was suffering from what they call 'writers block'. So I thought why not to try and write something which is very useful yet simple. How many times have we been in a situation to put an ‘Icon’ on a button? Well it is very easy in Flex to add an icon on your beloved button. However, if the situation demands you to move your icon all over the places on the button then how does it feel?? You will not find any property called as iconPlacement or something like that. So then if the Icon does not move here and there, then let us move the button label. Logic isn’t it? So here it, a simple property that makes like quite easy and it is called ‘labelPlacement’. Below is a simple application which describes the power of this property. You can check the source code here

It has been quite a long time that I have blogged. So here I am and there is one reason to celebrate and that is I have been recognized by Human Factors International (HFI) as a CUA of the month. You can see my interview here.

Use the standard page viewer web part of the SharePoint Portal Server.Many organizations use SharePoint Portal Server widely as a portal or website. If you want to plug in your standalone Flex 3 application inside SharePoint Portal Server, follow these steps:
1 .Compile your Flex 3 application using Flex Builder 3 and run it. This will create a .swf file to be embedded inside your SharePoint Portal Server. You can get this swf file inside the ‘bin’ folder of your Flex project.
2. Log in to your SharePoint Portal Server; make sure you have the rights to edit the site or page of this portal. Upload this compiled .swf file into a document library of your portal.
3. Add a web part named “Page viewer web part” to your page. In the link property, specify the URL of the uploaded swf file. You can get this link by clicking the file from the document library.

Your Flex application should now be running inside your SharePoint Portal Server.

Now that I am a CUA, I got some interesting job in hand. One of our projects was just taking off and my company decided to make use of my recently gained knowledge on usability. So I was introduced in the project as a Usability Analyst. As the name sounds good, so does the work. In this endeavor I had to do user analysis and data gathering. My job started with a quick survey to know who the end users of our client were. I had an 18 question survey which got 90% completed response. That’s too good by number. By this I was able to come up with User profile, Environment Profile and Task profile of the user group.

Survey gave a strong foundation for usability interviews or end user interviews. For all those who got baffled by the thought of taking end user interviews, let me tell you this is the first and a major step in any user centered design. As the name ‘user-centered-design’ itself includes ‘user’ as the first term, we too keep users in first place while designing a good interface for them.
Usability interviews are done at various stages of a project to gather data about users, their conceptual model and their working habits. One-on-one interview is a good choice if it is difficult to have people perform a task while being observed. Once you know your users and their conceptual model, you go back and come up with a design which now needs to be tested with the users. Again you can conduct user interviews as a part of usability testing.

Following is a quick guide for conducting usability interviews to gather data.

Purpose: To uncover users’ conceptual model, assumptions and thought process.

Number of participants: Now this has always been a debatable issue. Ideally I recommend 5-7 which is a good number to gather data as well as test a sample interface.

Screener: You need to find out right candidates for interview purpose. Write down the criteria’s you want in your candidates. For example you want candidates with at least 3 years of computer experience, who are familiar with internet apart from checking mails. You desire candidates who have done online shopping at least 2-3 times and are aware of the process etc. These screeners are handy for recruiting firms who fill find out suitable candidates for you.

Setup: A closed cabin, question set, voice recorder (if needed), rough sketches of design, mints and water for participants, card sort material and gifts for participant

Questions: There are a lot of questions which you need to bombard the interviewee with however; it’s not just the questions but also their sequence which matters a lot.
Start your interview by giving your introduction, purpose of the meet, duration of the interview etc. It should include a blend of open ended questions followed by close ended ones to get to a proper insight.

Focus of interviews must be demographics like age, work profile education roles and responsibilities, computer experience etc. Interview must also include questions to know users’ domain knowledge, terminology used, past experience with the system, current information source and so on. To be an effective interviewer, you have to focus on the insights. During the interview if the user narrates a story or incident about the system, you are on the right track. Capitalize on it, try to find the reason of that kind of user behavior and document it. This means that the user is not beginning to open up. Try to pull the thread of a topic till the time you have got all the information desired. During interviews be absolutely non judgmental and neutral. Practice active listening which gives the interviewee a feeling of being heard inherently he/she will be keener to answer more questions with ease.

One more burden that the interviewer has to carry is the task of documentation. It’s not a bad practice to note points during interview itself, but it slows down the process and sometimes the focus is lost. It’s better to have one more person with you with a job to note down important points. You two can discuss on more inputs after the interview has finished. Finally note down interview results as soon as possible as these minor but valuable information may slip from your mind.

Card Sort: Card sort technique is useful to open up users mind and know how they tend to group data. Perform card sort with the participant and ask them to group similar labels under one heading. Enquire why they have made certain choices. This will uncover their thinking about a particular label and give you inputs on redesigning labels if needed.

Closing: Inform the participant that you have completed all the questions and were glad to have him. Enquire whether interview has any questions for you. Hand over the gift to him/her and let them leave on a pleasant note.

I forgot to mention the cons of one-on-one interview techniques

On a closing note, mastering interviewing technique is not a one night job. Do not let newbies conduct user interviews as they may tend to loose the focus of interviews and gather data may not be fruitful. Instead ask them to join in as an observer or for noting interview points for first few interviews. This will give them the right set of skills needed for interviewing candidates in future.