Workiva Discussion

I’ve added the details of this document to BlackBoard so that we can continue the discussion and collaborate as a class if anyone is interested.

https://bb.its.iastate.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&forum_id=_202297_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_135610_1&course_id=_48122_1&message_id=_1886622_1#msg__1886622_1Id

Questions for discussion

These are my questions from the Week 4 Google Docs, in case they are not included in class maybe we can discuss them here?

• How big is your UX/UI team?
• Who do you consider your stakeholders and what kind of evaluation/testing do you do to ensure ongoing feedback?
• Is the iteractive container (computer buttons that expand) part of an open source frame work- is that polymer (https://www.workiva.com/content/wdesk-platform-b)?
• What considerations have your team made for 508 compliance and Accessibility testing? (not including performance, I did see it's SSAE 16 Type II compliant and looked at a couple of the case studies - https://www.workiva.com/customers/case-studies)

Reviewing Workiva's Website

• I noticed that their primary site is missing key components of accessibility compliance and web standards. I scheduled a demo, but doubt I will be able to do it before Friday's class. This may or may not reflect on the Workiva product line, but would be a consideration for me as a corporate client.
• The site is responsive
• The site is written on HTML5
• Uses http://ogp.me/ Open Graph Protocol
• I'm curious why they choose to use IE=Edge
• The site appears to use a framework
• They use Google Analytics on their main site, I wonder what kind of analytics they use for their products and how they integrate results.
• Built on Drupal
• Google Tag Manager Integration
• Using Clicktale

Other Topics for Discussion

Since we are on the topic of empathy in relation to UX, I found this article the other day  (Seung Chan Lim, 2014). It's a well written piece that starts off with a story that leads into scientific research and evaluation of empathy.

References

• Workiva (2016). Case Studies. https://www.workiva.com/customers/case-studies
• Seung Chan Lim (2014, Article No :1338 ). What is Empathy? UX Magazine. Accessed 2016. https://uxmag.com/articles/what-is-empathy
• Tutorials Point (2016). Software Development Lifecycle. http://www.tutorialspoint.com/sdlc/sdlc_overview.htm
• Wikipedia (2016). Software Development Lifecycle.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle

Do you have any experience trying the same methods? If yes, describe a situation when you used a similar method and what were the results/outcome?

Do you have any experience trying the same methods? If yes, describe a situation when you used a similar method and what were the results/outcome?

Yes, I have experience using many of the methods mentioned in the week 3 presentation. In my work, I’m often required to create pattern libraries, flows, defensible criteria, and have many stakeholders to answer to. While I may use some of the methods differently from the presenters, I think they have a great start to integrating UX into ISU’s IT department.

What factors researchers must consider when planning a UX study?

What factors researchers must consider when planning a UX study?

When researchers are planning a UX study they must consider factors like budget, stakeholders, design/development/project management methodology, the timeline, stakeholder feedback, business need, business requirements, user needs, user feedback, availability of users for testing, legislation, restrictions, organizational policies, team members, training skill sets, existing knowledge base (analytics, past studies, known standards, an existing site), and criteria.

FEDEX Customer Compliant

Dear Fedex,

I went into a Fedex office this afternoon to make a shipment and prepay for a return envelope. I was told it would cost $8 to ship the envelope one way, but HAD to create an account if I wanted to prepay for it to be returned to me.

So I setup an account. After the account was setup the cost to ship the envelope was $18 and to return it to me was going to be $22-32. I chose to just ship the envelope without paying to have it returned and almost left to go to the post office or UPS instead. This process is illogical. I signed up, for convenience, which *should* make me want to use your service more often. I get, that over time the idea is that eventually I am suppose to save money. However, you should realize that you immediately just lost business from me.

I opted not to purchase that one envelope and nearly left altogether. Then, I asked if - in the future - I showed up to ship a package if someone would be asked to show their ID before using me account. The customer service representative reassured me, that NO ID would be needed. I was not assured. So I asked if he could add a note to my account to make an ID be checked, he said he could not and no password was needed. WHAT?! How is this a useful service?

So I asked if he could just CANCEL the account, he said no but it's okay because when my card expires the account would no longer work. WELL GREAT you just added a card I got this week. It's good for YEARS from now. I'm writing this message, not to file a complaint against the branch but to corporate.

Your processes are corrupt and you need to hire a user experience professional to professionally evaluate this workflow. How did anyone think this was a good idea or a good way to attract customers?

I eagerly await your response to determine if I should just take my business elsewhere permanently.

-- Confused and unsatisfied customer

How UX can be measured/evaluated?

How UX can be measured/evaluated?

There are many ways the UX can be measured and evaluated. The presenters only mentioned a few tools and did not dive too deeply into their actual implementation, outside of the presented case studies. A few tools shown where card sorting, interviews, surveys, and analytics. The implementation of these tools is the key missing component of this presentation.

How do you see academia benefiting from UX? Do you perceive any changes in near future? Why?

How do you see academia benefiting from UX? Do you perceive any changes in near future? Why?

Many academic websites are extremely cumbersome, with lean budgets for design, and a high ratio of users. It is important that users are able to efficiently find and use applications for educational purposes, registration, activities (sports, clubs, band, career fairs), and to further promote the institution as a leader in their field.

Any company or organization with an online presence may have that online presence be their first impression to potential backers, future students, other institutions, grant foundations and leading organizations.

If a user has issues signing up for classes or registering because of poor UX, other resources may be wasted trying to help that student locate registration or the student may not believe in the quality of a program. For example, if a web design company promotes their services on a 2-3 page table website that is not responsive and has broken code that only works well on the IE7 browser, how confident would you be in giving them your business? This is an extreme example, but the same can be said for a site that is not user friendly or accessibility friendly. Think of how much more Harvard Review or Carnegie Mellon’s published articles and podcasts are promoted and easy to find than colleges like DMACC or the University of Phoenix. Is this because they are IVY League schools or because the school is also better at promoting important materials, simplifying usability, and optimizing content?

UX, with the right implementation, will give academia a better foot forward for education, branding, partnerships, accessibility, and search engine optimization.

How could you apply one of the techniques/methods discussed by the speakers into your research/work?

How could you apply one of the techniques/methods discussed by the speakers into your research/work?

I liked the speaker’s use of Qualtrics. I’ve used many of the methods discussed in this speech extensive and fully intend to utilize these skills in the future. I however disagreed with many of the points made in their speeches, based on experience, and as a corporate employee am often required to write vision documents, software specifications, and have defensible metrics. Even card sorting, with a simple end goal can have metrics. After seeing the survey, I would recommend researchers seek out qualified users with a vested interest and stakeholders. It can be useful to have random testers, but future users of a site are going to be more likely to care about the end goal. Also, if you find users who are experts in the UX/UI fields there will be a lot more attention to detail in comments so programs are less likely to go into production with simple errors or known standards issues.

Is UX a "must" or "cool" tool?

Is UX a "must" or "cool" tool?

UX is a vital part of the software development process. The speakers had mixed reviews to the question of whether or not UX is a trend or a necessity. The key take away, I got was from the speaker who said it’s vital that UX staff are well trained and I would like to add that it is vital they are good advocates for their field. A solid leader with extensive background in UX, UI, UX management, product/program management, and software development is vital for a department to thrive and move forward.

What new information did you learn from the speakers?

What new information did you learn from the speakers?

I liked the ISU tool for surveys, I signed up for my own Quantcast account since it is free for ISU students. I also learned that Qualtrics sponsors a very large conference related to UX and surveys that I wish I could afford to go to. Granted this is not direct information from the speakers though.

According to the speakers what are some challenges/opportunities involved with UX?

According to the speakers what are some challenges/opportunities involved with UX?

According to the speakers, they ran into a lot of departmental problems because UX is new to ISU. Luckily they have managerial advocates and some leeway to move forward, however they also mentioned issues being considered a vital part of the team that needs integrated early. I would recommend to them that they should sit down with program managers and other key leadership staff to create a process flow for departmental projects. If they can define what key methods and processes they would like to use on all projects, project managers can integrate these into proposals and early planning stages. They could also create a team overview of capabilities, this is key for team members and managers who are still trying to understand the value of the team and what skills they are capable of.

UX in IT

Norene Kelly, Jingyu Liu and Kelly Kalvelage Presentation Notes - UX in IT

They work in the University IT Department as the first UX IT staff. Recently the department has been moving towards an Agile methodology.

Misconception: Design is only visual and something that happens at the end of a project.

What is Good Design?

• Broad accessibility
• Simplicity
• Problem solving
• Decoration

Cogs of UX

• Project Management Methodology: Agile + Sprints
• User Research
• Interaction Design
• Information Architecture
• Content Strategy
• User Interface
• Usability
• Visual Design

Case Study: Survey for IT Website

• Open Card Sort (for labels)
• Labels and categories are extensive but some are repeated
• Evaluating the card sort one by one and comparing could be onerous
• Some people responded that the site is difficult - they compared other universities but didn’t find a good way to organize it
• Responses to questions about icons where almost more useful that the straight survey
• Evaluated difficulty of use on prototype but probably should have also timed how long it took to do actions
• Pros and Cons reactions
• Associate one word to an image

Case Studies: GMAP Electronic form and Chemistry Project

Presentation: Jack Polifka

Method Used in Chemistry Project Case Study

Formative Method - Ajax action tracking

Summative Method - Interviews, System Usability Guide/Scale (0-100 scale of opinions)

Examples of lessons learned:

• Learned almost no one used zoom so scrapped that
• Moved items into a parallel line to take up less space, thanks to trial interview feedback
• Navigation on left added contrast - because of lack of interface used
• Discovered inconsistencies in line up, image, and answer choice

GMAP Electronic Form Case Study

Built the initial front-end form, it was fairly straight forward and was quickly approved. After the form was built, the client evaluated submissions and wanted an effective way to search through submission entries. The client also wanted the ability to edit and view submissions.

The edit screen was initially extremely long so the development team moved this data to a new page to narrow it down to one simple screen.

ESL Class UX Case Study

ESL Case Study

Shuhan Zhang and Desarae Veit

Iowa State University

HCI 504

02/12/2016

Benefits of Iteration

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

Benefits of Iteration

• More efficient use of users.
• Five users can find 85% of usability issues for a given application or interface, this speeds up development time and feedback.
• Iterate until one section is perfected and move on.
• Goal to deliver pieces of large project and give valuables as soon as possible.
• Iteration is especially helpful when the end goal is not clear.
• Iteration breaks a large project down into small bits and makes a large project easier to comprehend/test.

Workiva Edward Cupps Presentation Notes

Week 5 Video Notes and Reflection

Workiva Edward Cupps

Notes by: Desarae Veit



Workiva Edward Cupps

Presentation: Workiva Edward Cupps

Overview Week 5 HCI Presentation - Thursday, February 4th

Questions

Questions Answered in Class

Workiva Discussion

Questions for discussion

Reviewing Workiva's Website

Other Topics for Discussion

References

Presentation: Workiva Edward Cupps

Overview Week 5 HCI Presentation - Thursday, February 4th

Edward Cupps will give a walk-thru of how Workiva approaches user discovery and UX design as a discipline focusing on Empathy, Ideation, and Experimentation. The topic of his talk is "The Interaction of Research & Design in the Workiva Discovery Process: An exploration of the application of HCI approaches for empathy-focused lean UX."

After watching the video of seminar with guest speakers from February 4th, write a short reflection (75 - 100 words). You reflection should answer one or more questions below.

• According to the speaker what are some challenges/opportunities involved with UX in the professional world?
• What new information did you learn from the speaker?

What is an iteration?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

What is an iteration?

Iteration is repeating process of feedback with continuous stages and customer feedback/evaluation. Feedback allows customers to understand the project better, improve the project early, and get feedback ongoing.

If someone is starting their first UX study, what would you recommend to them?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

If someone is starting their first UX study, what would you recommend to them? Know what you want to get out of it and be very specific. Know about methods and books. Jacob Neison’s book and research book method (this would be good if the instructor could add these specific books somewhere).

A Review of John Boykin's article, Stop Helping Me Google Calendar AutoSuggest #WTFUX

In John Boykin's article, Stop Helping Me Google Calendar AutoSuggest #WTFUX, published by UXMag.com, he states unequivocally that Google Autosuggest is a ridiculous tool to include in Google Calendar. His assessment appears to be an opinion piece based on personal preference and emotion. Luckily for the rest of us, Boykin does not work for Google and is only one very prolific stakeholder with an extensive online following. I disagree with Boykin's statements, but his article makes an excellent example of informal evaluation in the summative phase of assessment. The language used in this artifact is written for a broad audience, likely meant to provoke emotion and drama so that readers will comment and would not be considered an academic or facts-based article.

Evaluating a Product Based on Kirkpatrick's Training Evaluation Model

From http://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/OurPhilosophy/TheKirkpatrickModel 

The Kirkpatrick Model

Level 1: Reaction

To what degree participants react favorably to the training

Reporting Evaluation Results in a Useful Way

I would like to pose the question, not whether all stakeholders are important (because they have their own values in different ways) but whether or not there are ways to sway stakeholder interest with persuasion, facts, and presentation so that managerial stakeholders and stakeholders with money do not abuse evaluation results or ignore the interests of stakeholders who will actually be benefiting from future implementation or changes based on the evaluation results. How have you addressed this in the past or what is your experience with this?

Original question revised:  How can evaluators present results in a presentation or documentation so that key stakeholders like management, project management, and clients do not abuse evaluation results or ignore them. How can they presented to encourage implementation or change? 

Example 1:

Dealing with Controversy in an Appropriate and Respectful Way

This document is one I would recommend the entire online community become familiar with.

http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/frame_found_sr2/tns/tn-34.pdf

What Skills do an Expert Evaluator Require?

The evaluator certainly benefits from having a broad academic and employment background, as any skill/job would benefit from knowledge. In most cases, the evaluator probably also has some form of expert knowledge. Malcolm Gladwell describes a rule and extensive case study of what it takes to be considered an expert in any field as the 10,000 hour rule. In Outliers, he writes about a foundation and multiple examples of people who might be considered his personas for defining the 10,000 hour rule. Basically he says it takes 10,000 hours of practice in a field to become world class or expert in that field.

I'm sure everyone in our class has 'expert' knowledge in one field or another, but really this pertains to work and what you might give recommendations to or get paid for advice on. So, I may give expert advice on UI/UX, while another one of our classmates may give legal advice. 

Where do you find your users?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

1. Where do you find your users? Classes we are invited to and email lists. They are currently trying to build a database for this.

My response: It might be better to expand to places with more professionals in a field, there are free online tools or turk. You should also use analytics and actual users who are stakeholders. They could also build in feedback forms.

Working in an IT environment what are your top tools as a UX designer?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

1. Working in an IT environment what are your top tools as a UX designer? We use Axure for prototyping. They use illustrator or PDF for comments. How do you communicate their website design, comment, and make changes quickly? That is the tool you should used based on speed.

My response: Axure can be a waste of time, if you know how to code this is an easy step to skip from wireframes to prototyping. It’s also expensive.

How would you measure UX? What metrics do you use? What kinds of methods and techniques do you use or recommend?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

How would you measure UX? What metrics do you use? What kinds of methods and techniques do you use or recommend? Depends on what goals you are trying to address. One of my examples was tracking clicks. We also tracked time and accessed the usability scale, we group tasks, card sorting - how do analyze that? We don’t always use metrics, sometimes we do stuff just to get something done. Sometimes just talking to people is way overlooked. You can learn a lot from this, in a way that assumptions can not replace. When you develop something you develop too much background knowledge to be objective. So, you need fresh eyes.  

From being a student to know, what is one thing from your experience in UX, that you wish you were exposed to as a student before joining the job market?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

From being a student to know, what is one thing from your experience in UX, that you wish you were exposed to as a student before joining the job market? Working in a business environment or as teams. Assistantships are a good way to get started. Class projects let you do what you want, but if in the real world someone says no you can’t whine and say you still want to use your way. You have to answer to other colleagues and clients.

Have you seen a change in the culture since UX has come into ISU IT?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka
Have you seen a change in the culture since UX has come into ISU IT? Initially they were considered a resource that is only used sometimes, but they had to have management say that they are team members that are required at every step. It’s not an overnight change. This is a question for two years from now, in the staff’s opinion.

Looking at UX do you see it being more of a trend or necessity in the market?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

Looking at UX do you see it being more of a trend or necessity in the market? It’s something that requires training, but is a necessity. If the designer doesn’t have training, then that is where misconceptions about what UX staff do come into play. Jack doesn’t think in the real world based on his experience that UX has been considered a necessity like QA/ UX. (I disagree with this and have extensive experience in multiple companies) They said in Des Moines UX is behind, but again I disagree with this as well.

Ideas for Research Proposal in Review

HCI 591 is doing a project research proposal. These are two ideas I have for that project, thought I would get your feedback. Might be nice to tie this project in with my future research and thesis?

Evaluate a development teams key roles and identify high level processes for UI/UX implementation and testing. Create a paper, pattern library, and/or wiki to identify various methods, key elements, and techniques based on known criteria from clients and past proposals. Identify items missing from proposals and business case/use case for why the newly recommended elements should be implemented.

Since you have used Agile and Scrum, do you think it is as sophisticated for big projects software development life cycle? Do you think it’s as good as the software development life cycle?

Presentation: Norene Kelly and Jack Polifka

1. Since you have used Agile and Scrum, do you think it is as sophisticated for big projects software development life cycle? Do you think it’s as good as the software development life cycle? They don’t keep up with buzz words. Said it’s to make sure things don’t be removed from the road map.

My response: I don’t think the presenters answered this question very well and it’s a little disconcerting that they don’t seem to know the difference in pretty basic and well know project management methodologies. Here is a link to the term software development life cycle (it’s not a new term) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle or - They are both fairly ‘sophisticated’ but the intention of using Agile/Scrum vs. say waterfall may be different. I’ve worked on multiple extremely large projects that have used one, both, or a mixture of these methodologies. If the student who asked this question would like to learn more, I recommend checking out books online 24x7 as a free resource or doing some PMP/Agile training. Many designers are often overlooked for lead roles because of lack of training in risk management and program management. If, we as designers would like to advocate more for our roles, taking the lead in the project or program management fronts is a great way to do this. It adds credibility to the role and means the a UX designer will have to be in all IT meetings for a project.