User-Centered Design – Kelikuru.com

Time to have some fun! 

TG at Kelikuru.com has not recommended interesting site for a while. I take this moment to share one with you in this post. 

Promise.. nothing related to user centered design, usability or SEO this time.  We need to chill out a bit as the Year of Tiger is drawing near. However, the following trick can be applied for blogging, web design or social networking  

Take a look the photo below. Looks familiar?  Which part is fake? 

Cat and MJ-moonwalker

 Next one.. which part is not real? 

PhotoFunia-flip book

Yeah, I guess you are smarter than I am.  TG placed MJ Moonwalker in the computer monitor as wall paper and the photo images in the flip book.   Trust you think TG is a master of photo image manipulator? Not all all, I am using an online photo editing tool – PhotoFunia to do the trick.   

All you have to do is upload a set of photos, hit a button, lean back and the software does all the dirty work for you. Have fun!!

If you have something else to share with us… come forward and tell us more!! 

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TG at Kelikuru.com got a chance to talk to Christopher di Pietro, marketing and merchandising director of Vivienne Westwood in a special occasion in Hong Kong.  Christopher told TG that the international fashion brand is revamping its website to cope with the fast-changing Internet environment.

Vivienne-Westwood-Website

“The new website is about to launch in the middle of the year, probably around July.” Christopher said.  Vivienne Westwood is a leading British designer whose philosophy is known for “consuming less, buying quality”

He explained that Internet marketing posed a challenge to his marketing department as they have to reorganise the whole business structure. Participating in social media like facebook is essential to create dialogue with customers . In the meantime, it helps keeping the designer’s brand worldwide.

He also told TG that Vivienne Westwood is also very excited about taking part in social networking tool twitter in order to get more closely to her customers and get hold of  thought and feedback on her runway projects.

“Watch out, she’s coming out very soon!” Christopher joked.

Christopher-di-Pietro-of-Vivienne-Westwood

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User experience and usability are important aspects of web development. They work hand-in-hand to turn surging web sites, blogs, online marketplaces and online applications into a pleasant customer experience. 

More importantly, it helps making marketing and strategic decision by providing a road-map to management how to run their business from customers/users’ point of view. 

It’s about time for Kelikuru.com to review a couple of user research methods and tools being deployed in Hong Kong and China last year.  I have them grouped into 2 major types: quantitative and qualitative research tools. Today we start with quantitative tools first

 Quantitative Research  Tools

1. Data warehouse feed

Quite honesty, our data warehouse is far from satisfactory!  Hardly can fully make use of its data report.  In some instances, TG would use Google Analytics as a supplementary tool to track down important data including traffic sources, absolute unique visitors, user session etc

 2. Heat Map Tracking device

Heat map can create a layer of hotspots or density of userclicks on web pages enabling TG to view the pattern of user behavior, what they click and what they don’t click. 

Heat map tool is useful to find out the effectiveness of  new home page design, landing pages or search result pages. There are a few open-source tools  such as, ClickHeat , Clickdensity  and Feng-GUI . If you can afford more, spend more, you can check out Tobii Eye Trackers.

3. Online Surveys

In order to acquire feedback and gain input from a large number of users from different regions, TG prepared online surveys and questionnaires oftentimes. With an in-house survey system armed with filter settings, TG can get hold of  their opinions and aptitude  in general.  The greatest challenge of designing a survey is to make it brief and right to the point.    

By the way, happy new year to my friends

2010 Happy New Year

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The clock is ticking, time is running out. Yahoo! Hong Kong decided to close down its forums by the end of next month.

The news came yesterday’s afternoon at Yahoo! Hong Kong forum.  Beginning on January 26th, 2010, users are no longer use Yahoo! Hong Kong forums to express their views and share their thoughts online, according to the news release.  

Yahoo! Hong Kong said the decision was made after the US-based internet company has plans to deliver better services to users. While focusing its resources and efforts in developing future projects, Yahoo! Hong Kong will lock its forums doors and take all messages, documents and pages offline.

A sidenote: Contributor Aliuser has set up a community forum for small medium buyers, traders and suppliers .

Yahoo-Hong-Kong-Forums-close-down

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No matter how powerful your customer service tool it is, no matter how much user data you have, TG at Kelikuru.com assures you that qualitative research cannot be replaceable.  Facing your users, customers and talk to them one-on-one will build up a formidable relationship that can be long-lasting and rewarding in the long run.  

Qualitative Research tools

1. User Task and Scenraio Anaylsis

Customers’ task analysis is not a tool but it is the most fundamental and critical step in using the user test tool during user research and test. Normally TG got a very brief idea from quantitative data analysis which vaguely shows what the issues are. And then we will come up with task cases, task goals and user scenario based on business requirements and past experiences with customers.  

2. Contextual User Study

Instead of  asking an array of questions or discussing issues with users, contextual enquiry is frequently used at trade shows. It involves observing users performing a number of preset tasks. TechSmith Morae becomes TG’s defacto tool to record, analyse and comply reports, which will translate into business insights to project team for further implementation.

3. Remote User Test

One particular reason we use remote user test tool such as, Morae UserVue is it’s difficult to get users from different parts of the world in a short notice. Or when TG gets stuck in a place where meeting users is not possible. Using this remote user test tool is an option. However, the outcome is not as good as talking to users one-on-one and face-to-face, and it’s a norm that it has to be completed in a very brief moment.  

Techsmith-Morae-Tool-and-Uservue

4.  Five-second Usability Test

Late last year, TG  has conducted a 5-second test to find out what users think about a set of new user landing pages. From  TG’s point of view,  the result is amazingly great. I have learnt 5 lessons from my users participating in the onsite 5 second quick usability test.   The tool is best for landing page and advertising pages optimization.

5. Card-sorting

Card-sorting “game” is a way of understanding users, asking them to sort cards into sensible groups and is also a helpful starting point for the design of information architecture.   TG used it for navigation design.  There are two types of  card sortings:  open and closed. Open sorting is the most common but also the harder one to do (analyse anyway).

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