Good Road Network is a pseudonym for a Seattle startup that provides music performers and bands with a Facebook style interface to help simplify the hard work of booking venues and tours. It could be a real game-changer in that industry, handing some control back to the musicians. I was invited to participate in their real-world protosite usability testing. I served as both moderator and observer in numerous tests. We had musicians test the site. We also had test participants who knew little or nothing about the music business. Then I went to work writing a report on the testing and the site.
I was striving to be a user-centered designer even before the web. That's what I was taught in design school. It just seemed like the only way to design, from the end-user's point of view. Otherwise design is just self-indulgent. The one thing I love most about web design is that user-centered design is a concept that everyone seems to sold on. Designers do actual research about it. There is real data. Usable data. That brings design forward as a discipline that serves people. That's a really big step forward.
Good Road Network
Seattle Tilth
The Seattle Tilth UX research Methods case study was a team effort. While I served as lead and principle writer, I had another excellent designer and a really sharp developer on the team. We developed user personas and pathways. We formulated design and performance criteria. The site was subjected to card sorting and usability testing. We really took this thing apart. It was an excellent project, with new discoveries at every stage. This project really improved our understanding of UX analysis and testing methods. This is where I knew UX was the thing. I loved how it intelligently informed a design, planting itself firmly where is where client requirements and human experience meet.
Metrotextual
Designing the Metrotextual site was both a UX and e-commerce case study. I analyzed countless e-commerce sites to get at what made so many of them frustrating to use. I observed that so many e-commerce sites were visually exciting but once you got to entering personal data, the quality of the overall experience dropped off quite a bit. I know that filling out online forms will never be fun. But by teaming great images with a very tight grid structure, I wanted to keep the transition as smooth as possible. I can’t help but think that lot of white-boarding, pathways and personas, and tons of wireframes paid off in the end.