Tag Archives: User-Interface

A Little Known Idea for Evaluation: User Interface Test

…does the concept User Interface ring a bell? What a User-Interface test?

As I hinted to in my last post, I think the evaluation step is maybe one of the most important steps a marketing plan can include, yet many lack. Doing evaluation, allows one to:

  • Reflect on the strengths of the campaigns
  • Document the process so there’s no reinventing the wheel for next time
  • Identify areas for improvement
  • Lets you gain and track client feedback
  • Find ‘lessons to learn from’
  • Calculate ROI and compare to previous years/cases

For best evaluation results, one should meet with a team, get outside feedback, talk to the client(s), key associates or other employees who had a hand in the project. Now, it the fun part. I want to introduce to you a great, but commonly unknown tool to add to your evaluation methods: the User Interface Test.

User Interface is a concept that describes how users interact with a website. If you’ve ever had any of the following questions, then conducting a User Interface test might be right up your alley:

  1. What should be on the homepage?
  2. Should the main graphic be video, a slideshow, a moving graphic, etc.?
  3. Where should the ‘search’ button go?
  4. Is our website easy to use?
  5. How functional is our website?
  6. What’s the message our users are getting?
  7. What would make our website easier to use?
  8. When someone first comes to our site, what’s the first thing they see?
  9. What would get users to spend more time on our pages?
  10. Does everything on our site communicate our message?
  11. Does our content engage the reader?
  12. What is someone expecting when they come to our site?
  13. Is the site easy to use?
  14. Is our site customize-able?
  15. Does our site have a professional tone? or an appropriate tone?
  16. Does our site speak relevance to those trafficking the site?
  17. Does the design capture attention?
  18. How do our users interact with our site?

If you find yourselves asking these questions and similar others, then a User Interface test could be right up your alley! To test your User Interface, you can use either quantitative or qualitative approaches. Four qualitative approaches are outlined below.

  1. Time to Task: Tests ability for tester to complete an action to user’s satisfaction in a decent time.
  2. Accuracy: Tests the accuracy of the website and the information found.
  3. Emotional Response: Tests how the testee responds to their overall experience on the site or in conducting their tasks.
  4. Recall/Repetition: Tests ability to recall the process it takes to find desired information. Also looks as how the testee’s ability to recall where he or she is on the website and how he or she arrived there.

To create quantitative results, one can have testee fill out forms measuring various categories on a scale of 1-5 (customization, professionalism or tone, design, organization, usefulness, relevance, and interactivity.)

Hope this little research tidbit, and way of evaluating your website comes in hand.

Web 2.0 Wednesday: Building a Field of Dreams

Dream big. When non-profits look at the world of Web 2.0 and begin to learn about all of its possibilities, I think you should dream big. This accomplishes two things:

  1. Can create excitement and a learning culture when presented to staff. If no ‘expert’ knowledge is really held by any, it can bond staff together in that everyone is experiencing a similar learning curve where all inputs and questions are equal and valuable.
  2. Shows that your organization or cause can be limitless and bigger than yourself and your staff. Oftentimes, it brings staff members back to the original purpose of why they are doing what they do by reigniting their passion.

Now, keeping dreaming big in mind, I also empathize with the Non-Profit Tech blogger, Allan Benamer whose post discusses Web 2.0’s barriers to entry in some non-profit worlds. Allan brings up some great points on how a non-profit can approach technology, all technology, and create a culture shift within organizations without the web 2.0 hype.

To share an experience, last summer I was a research consultant for a non-profit organization. This included conducting an e-communications training workshop for all staff, conducting a User-Interface study, gathering relevant case studies, identifying and researching a target audience (Surprise, the millennials), and drafting recommendations for the organizatioan’s e-strategy.

In brief, the whole project was a great success. We purposefully left out a budget section of the recommendations as the chief communications officer and I agreed that a budget section would limit the brainstorming process by placing the focus on what we can and can’t do, rather than bringing the staff together to learn, brainstorm and have fun.

From the experience, the staff as a group, came to the consensus that they were focusing too much on their inputs than their outputs in all their communications and strategy. It may seem like a simple outcome from the project, but it meant great changes for the organization. It brought everyone back under the original purpose of the organization – to help their clients, show how fun doing good can be and to share that with others. Instead of focusing on text bringing in donations and showing how each dollar would be used (which is important) and looking at what the organization could ‘get’ from their donors….they instead made a change. They started to focus on their outputs and what they are offering as a whole.

Now, the organization is changing for the better by the day. These changes include:

  • Updates and additions to their website and e-communications strategy. Some of which include simple presentation changes but others include great uses of Web 2.0.
  • A refreshed staff who is renewed by their passion and greater purpose of the organization.
  • Increased organization internally.
  • More ways for volunteers to get involved.
  • Greater participation and interest in events by the millennial audience.
  • And more!

All in all, yes, technology is great. Yes, Web 2.0 can be fun and helpful. But also:

Dream big. Remember your purpose. And, focus your energy on your outputs and your inputs will follow. (As a quick analogy, if you focused solely on blog traffic, would you get more traffic? Or, if you focused on offering great content, wouldn’t the traffic follow? Think Field of Dreams.)