Usability, Design and Human Behaviour
Recently, valsplat dipped its toes in the exciting waters of playtesting. And it felt good.
Swords & Soldiers is a critically acclaimed Wii game, about to be released on PlayStation 3. The Wii controls make the game easy to learn and a lot of fun. The challenge was to match this with the arguably less intuïtve PlayStation controller. For this, a playtest was needed.
Over the last 10 years the internet as a medium became one of the, if not the most important marketing and sales channel. For profit and non-profit organizations alike. As competition grew, organizations became aware of the usability of their websites as an important factor for success. Therefore, in concurrence with the rise of the web, usability testing as a practice, which had been around since the eighties, exploded in the first decade of this century.
Thanks to Thijs Vieleers I was able to attend the third edition of ‘The Web and Beyond’. What struck me most is the fact that the term user experience (UX) has so rapidly been adopted. In the past (2 years ago) you had your interaction designers, information architects, (web) designers, usability experts, developers and so forth.
Now suddenly everyone is a UX designer. User experience is still a very ill-defined field. The job descriptions of the past actually told something about your profession. The stuff you were good at. With everyone calling themselves UX whatevers, the term is devaluating pretty rapidly (please don’t check my LinkedIn profile).
The Web underwent drastic changes throughout the years. It has evolved from a static information resource to a dynamic, interactive and collective playground leading to changes in user behavior (as e.g. in the way we read). ‘Users do not navigate on sites searching for information, but rather interact with an online application to complete a certain task’ [1].
Recently ReadWriteWeb wrote an article on Facebook and its partnership with AOL. Facebook and AOL announced that they were going to integrate users Facebook friends into the AOL Instant Messenger. Nice to know, but the most ‘funny’ thing happened afterwards when ReadWriteWeb began receiving odd comments of Facebook users on their article:
Last friday Centraal Beheer Achmea launched a new campaign using augmented reality. Supposedly the first augmented reality campaign in the Netherlands. In various newspapers a full page was used for the usual slogans and stuff, but the main part displayed a logo. You’re encouraged to visit their campaign website. When you hold the newspaper in front of your webcam, the site displays a little guy climbing a ladder. By wiggling the newspaper you can shake the little guy or have him fall. Nice stuff!
Involving users in a early stage of the redesign process is essential and valuable. It shows the bottlenecks in the redesigns and provides valuable insight in users’ needs. This can contribute to a more efficient redesign process. It will decrease the costs and increase the quality of the final product. So what user centered design principles should you use while going through the redesign process ‘together’ with users?
The Boxee homepage elegantly solves one of the problems with introduction videos on a homepage. Users first scan or skim for essential information: what is this? And only then decide whether to invest any time and attention in watching a video.
Augmented Reality (AR) is no longer science fiction. The usage of AR is rising in our society. What is AR aiming on? On the enrichment of physical spaces with computer generated images and the availability of location based content. AR can be a strong potential for traditional ways of learning. But what does AR do with the withdrawal of knowledge and the processing of this knowledge? What should we take into account if we want to use AR effectively for educational purposes?
Nowadays it seems that – as an internet user – there is the opportunity to rate a product, service or piece of information whenever and wherever you want. From clothing to handymen and from articles to restaurants.