The first question you’re probably thinking of is, “so, when do we get to do wireframes?”

The world isn’t only wireframes, little grasshopper.

What we are going to talk about is use cases. I write a lot of high level use cases in responding not only to request for proposals, but also for determining user needs when constructing the wireframes. Whether I do wireframes first or use cases first really depends on my mood of the day, what kind of project it is, and how complex the project is. In other words, it depends.

Sometimes I do the wireframe first to determine what the detailed use case is, or to spot any branches or scenarios I might miss. However, wireframes are time consuming (and I do them because I don’t like doing Photoshop mockups even more), and I think in bulleted lists, which is how I usually do use cases.

What’s A Use Case?

A use case is a set of five requirements for a task or set of tasks:

• A description of interactions between the user (normally referred to as the actor)
• The system the user is interacting with
• The scope of the interaction
• Dependencies associated with the interaction
• The goal

The use case covers branches, error messages and edge conditions; the main reason for use cases is they are used as a communication tool with developers so they know exactly what’s going on with the system, and how the system should react. The use case will also list dependencies like “user must be signed in.”

When you describe a use case, use active tone i.e. Register as a user, Pay for merchandise, Read mail are typical examples of how I would describe a task the user would take, and I may describe every interaction that user would make in completing that task.

Paying for merchandise may include error messages like:

• Invalid credit card
• Address doesn’t match credit card
• Name doesn’t match credit card
• Expiration date isn’t valid

A good detailed use case will cover every interaction and what to present to the user.

Why Use Cases?

Use cases are tied to personas in that they should describe what the system has to do and how it meets the needs of the target audience. Use cases also ferret out new needs and opportunities that may expand or control the scope of the application.

Detailed use cases are also used as a communication tool with developers: if the team is close knit, information architects and developers discuss the use cases and do a walkthrough so the interactions can be discussed in context with the rest of the website or application. Sometimes, the use case discovers technology barriers that require rethinking the use case or changing the use case to meet system requirements.

As much as we would like to think it’s the case, we can’t design in a black box: something always works not the way as we thought it was going to.

Use cases don’t talk about specific technologies, but they do talk about what the interactions have to do, so technology needs are a very important component of describing the requirements and scope of a use case.

Well documented use cases translate to excellent test plans because they cover every interaction, and are also useful for writing unit tests, which is what developers use to test their code before it’s complete. Good documentation and communication leads to less misunderstandings of what needs to be built.

Use cases that are well written are very effective tools for considering every situation the user or actor may run into, and limit development time because more communication means less question about what has to be built, and what quality assurance will find upon testing the website or application.

Should You Write A High Level or Detailed Use Case?

That depends.

Sometimes.

Not Always.

If the system you developing for is a platform and has a bunch of functionality already defined, listing out the high level use cases may be sufficient. Where I work at, we do a lot of SharePoint implementations, so we use high level use cases to make sure we’ve covered all the needed content in a website. SharePoint (as with a lot of software platforms) has a lot of functionality out of the box, so describing a use case at a high level is usually enough to get the developer started in development and figure what tool or component to use to satisfy the use case.

Detailed use cases are very useful if there’s a lot of custom development that needs to be done, because the last thing you want to leave to software developers is for them to determine the user experience. Detailed use cases also expose flaws the design patterns or technology that may require workarounds or alternate solutions.

What Tools Should I Use To Create Use Cases?

I know there’s a lot of people out there that spend a ton of time creating use cases using Unified Modeling Language — all the power to them — but the tool I use most often is Microsoft Word.

I hate stick figures. I dislike stick figures. I hate stick figures.

I’ve thought about using or creating another tool using PHP and web-based applications, because use cases are fairly repeatable, but I’m just lazy. I write my use cases out in bulleted or detailed form, depending on my needs, and one of the best books I’ve purchased for serious analysts is Writing Effective Use Cases (Agile Software Development Series). Seriously, Allstair Cockburn is a god in my eyes, because he hasn’t sold himself to the devil like Jacob Nielsen or Jesse James Garrett, and he’s provided a useful publication to boot.

Look at your organization and decide what kind of tool is best for communicating to your developers: some of them work best with wireframes, others with written documentation, even more with a white board and sticky notes. A few that I’ve worked at loved HTML click throughs or Azure mockups, because the use cases could be walked through from a user perspective. Most imporantly, if it’s agile and prevents rework, you’re doing the right thing.

Other Resources

• A List Apart’s article on use cases
• Rizwan has an effective, if organized, list of tips on writing use cases.
• This is a great post on Use Cases for User Assistance Writers.

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Start rant…

Sometime on Thursday, I’m going to be on a panel at Microsoft’s Tech Days in Costa Mesa, California, and one of the topics thrown around for discussion was, “How do you think Web 2.0 affects your business?”

I’m so far from an early adopter, it’s ridiculous. I have a 9 year old laser printer and 5 year old color laser printer on my desk, and I still believe in using a land line even though it’s VOIP because it sounds better than the cell phone, and it has a decent speakerphone. That MacBook I have is almost two years old, and I can’t dream of replacing it, other than Photoshop’s a bit sluggish.

I don’t believe in adopting stuff just because, and outside of the iPod Touch I have (and I still can’t around to buying an iPhone), I use what works.

That’s why I still don’t believe the hype of Web 2.0.

For most users, they don’t care, seriously. Walk out on the streets and ask any random person these questions:

• How does Web 2.0 affect your life?
• Do you tweet?
• How many RSS feeds do you subscribe to?
• Are you on MySpace, Facebook, Ning, and Digg?
• Do you contribute to Mahalo?

After the first twenty or so quizical looks, you might get an answer to one of those questions. In these times, people just want their problems solved. They want more time, more money, more value. Not more jargon sold to them as snake oil.

Web 2.0 is only important to technology people because:

• We are making money off of selling it.
• We are immersed in it.

For the other 90 percent of the population, Web 2.0 doesn’t mean anything to them, but connecting with their friends on Facebook and MySpace does.

Commenting on articles has existed on the Web for a very long time; blogs just give it a structured form that can be branded. Branding technology with names and explanations makes it easier to sell, but doesn’t diminish the fact that some of these technologies have been for a very long time (Or, ask Jesse James Garrett to explain to Dave Winer how AJAX is different than SOAP). Of course some of the approaches of connecting people to create network effects is important, but it was happening anyways.

Does Web 2.0 have any value? Look at the Wikipedia entry:

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has questioned whether one can use the term in any meaningful way, since many of the technology components of Web 2.0 have existed since the early days of the Web

The point?

In times like this, it’s good to demonstrate real return on investment like, “it’s going to connect your employees and make it easier to find documents” or “your business is going to make or save $20 million a year”. Talking in buzzwords just confuses people. Explain concisely and directly the value of what you are trying to do, like “more sales” or “less costs”. Target what end users need without worrying about the technology, or explaining that the technology that you are using is somehow new when it’s really just improved.

Keep it simple.

Keep it direct.

Keep it with value.

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Learn To Duck gives Search Engine Optimization three years, tops. All those consultants better start heading back to their jobs at Starbucks.

What do you think?

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Talk about proper branding, Cosmic Motors is cool.

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I’ve included a template persona. Download it here.

If I’m working with a client who has an idea for a site or application but he/she can’t identify the target audience (i.e. users of the site), I sit the client down and ask, “So who are these people that you want to make money off of?” The client usually doesn’t know. In an effort to define that audience, I do so with personae.

How important are they?

Your target audience affects almost every decision you may make for a website or application.

This includes technology selection, look and feel, interface design patterns to use, and the tone of voice the content may take. Personae are used by the business owners to define their target audience and can be used for understanding the application. It gets everyone up to speed from designers, information architects and developers to business users.

The personae may even affect whether or not you do the project at all. If your web application can’t meet the needs of the personae, is it really worth spending money at all?

Personae are used to enforce the spirit and direction of the application; and more often than not, are the foundation of a website or an application design.

What Is a Persona?

A persona describes a fictional character, or who your target audience is. Usually, personae describe five typical actors that cover 80 percent of the site audience based on demographics that can be ascertained from what the site is or what the competition already has. Sometimes that can be hard, especially if you are starting service that no one’s ever seen before or are defining a new market segment. For other projects, the personae are easy to define.

Take the Apple iPhone versus Google’s Android G1, for example. Who are using these phones? Does open source or cost of applications affect the customers’ buying decisions? Do they need or not need keys on their phone? So they like slick versus ease of use? All of these details would be used to describe the consumers that may, or may not, fit the personae required for your project.

Why You Should Create Personae For Every Project?

The biggest issue I’ve seen with many of the consulting and internal projects that I’ve worked on is that we didn’t have a single document describing the target audience for the website or application, because the client hadn’t done any market research. Usually, the client or the company wanted a website, and we built it regardless of whether or not it fit the target audience.

In absence of studies and other detailed information about target audience, personae are the first attempt to define a target audience and, thereby, any decisions made about features and functionality. In a few cases, the personae further defined the project that we were working on and those definitions radically changed the direction of the application or website. As a result, the feature set changed drastically.

Clients forget their audience shouldn’t be everyone, because an application designed for everyone fits precisely no-one. Think about it. Just how many 90 pound children like wearing an XXL t-shirt? Now, imagine telling your client this approach wasn’t going to work at all. That’s a fun conversation to have.

Personae not only define how the target audience should be approached in human to computer interactions but the complete brand experience. How you speak to a person with limited computer knowledge versus an expert is very important, even in email and customer service communications.

The personae can be written by the client, the web designer or the programmer. Usually, they are constructed by the information architect or business analyst. Most importantly, personae should be created by a key figure who has an intimate knowledge of who the design is targeted toward and can communicate each persona to other team members.

Who Should the Personae Describe?

Once we have five typical users selected, describe them in semi-fictional detail:

• General Information:
  • Age
  • Ethnic Background
  • Occupation
  • Education
  • Home Life
  • Lifestyle
  • Activities
• Web Usage:
  • Web Competency
  • Frustrations with the Web
  • What kind of information is hard to find
  • Frequent sources of information
  • How they find the website
• Why/How Barriers
• Typical Use Cases

It seems like overkill; but typically, we are able to fit this into one page. The amount of information to include should be enough to be intimately familiar with the personae as friends but not too much to overly define them (like, do they drink Coke vs. Pepsi?). For fun, attach pictures. Your co-workers and clients will identify with them as a target audience easier with a visual representation.

I like injecting a bit of humor here, because people inherently have a sense of humor. One project I worked on, we named the personae Jim Coder and Johnny Bedroom. After a few weeks, the personae became so ingrained that the developers used them in conversations. This approach defused a very stressful situation and made the project more fun.

If you can get each persona on one page, post it on the wall — everywhere!

Even the smallest websites benefit from at least sketching out who the typical users are.

Another project I worked on was a shopping cart for niche aftermarket automotive parts. The products covered six years of a specific make and model manufactured by an American automotive company, and the site was targeted as such. This is a potential audience of no more than 100,000 people, but very targeted. The result? The site had a mailing list of 6,000 members, and the owners sold the company for a huge profit.

Where Can You Find Information for the Personae?

One of my clients had the information needed to start detailed personae. The client provided us with reams and reams of reports based on focus groups that the company had done on their audience. Their target audience was a few hundred thousand people. Additionally, there were resources online that further defined who the client was targeting. The research did not extend to psychographics, but it was sufficient enough to affect project approach and design.

The result: detailed personae that the team could use to match just about any user. This included being able to walk into any bar or restaurant in the website’s targeted location and identify if patrons were the target audience and which persona they fit.

For most projects, this is not the case. The best way to go about creating personae is to sit down with the stakeholders and ask them, “So, who’s going to use this application?” After defining a target, use anything you can find such as web reports, similar applications and market research to further categorize personae.

If you are really lucky, meaning the client has money to pay for this, you get to do contextual interviews such as watching in the target market in its native audience. This can be everything from watching for just an hour to diaries full of daily activities. Most imporantly, figure out what the target market is doing, not what it is saying, by watching its tasks.

I usually research websites that are close to the feature set but don’t completely match what they are developing. For internal projects, we model websites after some stakeholders who we met in face-to-face meetings, changing the names and ages of the personae to protect the innocent.

What Happens If Personae Aren’t Defined?

Good question. What happens if you don’t know what the target audience is, and the application built doesn’t meet their needs?

There are studies about the failures of software projects and not all of them are due to inability to meet the target audience; but if ten percent of them are, how much money are we talking about? Millions? Billions?

I’ve been involved with a lot of software projects, and there’s nothing more frustrating than a project that goes off the rails and doesn’t meet the needs of the user. Money is wasted, time is lost, and we’re non-the-better for it, other than surviving another frustrating experience. We do learn from our failures, but we should have more successes.

But here is a better metric to use. A Standish Group survey found that the number one reason IS projects succeed is because of user involvement, stolen from Classic Mistakes Enumerated. That’s an old study, but think about it. If the target audience gets involved, projects succeed.

Number one reason.

End of story.

So, just how important is that target audience again?

Other Resources

• I’ve included a template persona to start from. Download it here.
• Our tax dollars have gone to a really good resource over at Usability.gov.
• George Olsen has a good article on Boxes and Arrows about personae.

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I’ve been receiving inquiries about posting jobs here. Because of this, I’ll be posting new opportunities every Monday. Some of them aren’t pure User Experience, but they do have some kind of User Experience or SharePoint slant to them. If you see anything here, or are looking for a job, send me your resume at jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

Senior Level Flex Developer, Southern California

The opportunity

A technology product and services company is looking for a Flex Developer  with two years experience to join their User Experience team. The company is international in scope and a leader in their field, and their client list includes Fortune 500 companies that use their award winning, enterprise-level products and solutions. They may consider the right candidate if they have experience in a J2EE environment and are looking to expand their skill set.

The position is either a full time or contract.

Requirements

• Rich Internet Application (RIA) development experience, preferably with AJAX or Adobe Flash
• Experience with the Adobe Flex development environment
• Advanced HTML and CSS skills
• ActionScript skills
• JavaScript skills

Pluses

Background

• Good communication skills
• Well versed at working with User Experience teams and processes
• Proven track record of delivering innovative solutions

Pay Range

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No matter what, your site is the first thing your users see, and in effect your brand; a true brand will build loyal customers

I buy way too much photo equipment. Way too much. I got some high end lenses, the prosumer Canon 5D body. It’s fun stuff.

For lighting equipment, I want to buy good quality stuff, but I don’t want to break the bank, so Alienbees come highly recommended. They are a company based in Kentucky, and their customers rave about them.

Most importantly, they know who they are, which is more than I can say about most of the customers I know.

Their website isn’t the most attractive site on the planet; however, it’s really easy to use, and reflects the personal nature they use when dealing with their fanatical customer base. No elaborate graphics, no flash, but there’s a simple shopping cart that’s straightforward.

The site has this clunky, midwest feel to it, but that’s okay, that’s who they are, and they even include links to other vendors for products they don’t have. It’s a true resource for the camera buff.

They are religious about customer relationship management. Keep it simple stupid is their motto.

How religious about their superior customer service?

I had one of their flash packs die on me. I used their website, called their customer service, and was connected directly to their tech person. He explained the issue in English, that it was a bad transistor that’s been showing up in some of their recent products, and that they are making their best efforts of keeping their customers happy.

He said, ship it, we’ll have it out back to you the next day.

I did, they did. I received a phone call, an email notice that it was on it’s way.

How often do you see that?

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You too can be president at Barack Yourself. Just upload your photo, and you can be president too.

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One of the issues with SharePoint is that developing on it as a platform is quite a bit different than normal software development, because of the development is actually configuration of web parts and governance versus writing code.

So what do you do?

Microsoft to the rescue! They’ve released a new site called SharePoint Guidance. It’s a portal that covers all stages of development, from requirements gathering to unit testing and user acceptance. They also have a bunch of links to software that makes the job of developing for MOSS easier.

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Great news!

Usability Counts is a blog partner for the Open Web Awards, a competition that spotlights sites that encourage openness of the technology and/or social aspect with their users, and Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories.

(I stole some of the text from them).

This is the second time around for the Open Web Awards. All you have to do is visit our website and submit a nomination through that big blue sidebar item on the right. Nominations will be open through November 16th, 2008.

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What I remembered most from the movie, “Minority Report” was not Tom Cruise but the touch screen interface. The movie was made in 2002 and I remembered thinking, we were probably 8 – 10 years away from achieving that. Only a few years later, I saw touch screen interface being demo’d online via a video from a university think-tank and now in Microsoft Surface, and I thought, wow the future is here.

Last night, as I watched election coverage on CNN, I was amazed when Jessica Yellin, a CNN correspondent, “beamed in” to speak to Wolf Blitzer.  At first, I thought  the halo around  Ms. Yellin was some technical glitch; perhaps there was something wrong with  the  broadcast. But, no, she was a real hologram.  

It was  just like  princess Lea saying, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Star Wars technology is here. I was also impressed with what CNN called, “The Why Wall,” where the pundits analyzed the demographics of each state wide result. Having just completed a grueling week of user testing, I fully appreciated the visual breakdown.

Obviously, when I think back on this election, it will not be just CNN’s special effects wizardry that I remember, but that’s a topic for another blog. Now if only I can have a C3PO to around the house to take out the garbage for me.

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I’ve done my part (dropped off my absentee ballot at the poll, bypassing the hordes that like standing in line), so now all I can do is wait for the vote. FiveThirtyEight.com feeds that fix — it’s a stat geek’s guide to the election

The site everything from the number of interviews that John McCain and Barack Obama have done (
2,077,765) to projections after projections after projections. It ain’t fancy, but it’s very usable.

Do your part.

Vote. Then visit this site.

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So i was suprised to see a Yes On 8 advertisement on my blog today. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s pure branding, and I’m not making any money off off it.

And I would never want this ad on my site — I’m voting no on proposition 8 tomorrow — but I feel like my site’s been hijacked for political purposes. I run a usability blog, and while I might mention my political leanings (Libertarian, with a slight hint of Democrat in there), to have this on it just ruffles my feathers.

This is the danger of allowing political ads, especially one’s that are so controversial: someone’s going to get upset.

Anyone else have this happen today?

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If you run a blog, there should be a search box somewhere on the site

I might have written another post about this — it might have been Baseball Prospectus — where I described the issue where search was confusing because there were too many different ways. In their case it’s probably a technical issue because they’re on some custom hacked together content management system.

Six Revisions is different: they’re on WordPress, which has search right out of the box (notice the search box I have on this site, nice and big). Yet, there’s no way to search the site except through using google. It’s really disappointing, because the content is off the charts, and I was going to find a Photoshop article along the lines of their Illustrator article to send to a friend, but I can’t. I have to browse through their archives; this increases page views, but I don’t want to take the time.

It’s simple: blog readers sometimes want to see what’s on the inside, and the easiest way to do it is either through free form search, or through tag clouds.

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So, just what is everyone cursing about now?

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