Usability: End Users
From Clinicaltools.com
Contents |
Thinking About Your Users
- What is their relationship to the product? Is it related to work or something they would do in their personal time? Are they familiar with the topic and/or delivery mode from other experiences?
- Is the product something they would use on a regular basis or only occasionally? Do they want to invest time in learning about the topic or learning how to use the delivery mode?
- What and how much do they know about the subject matter? Are they already experts? How much information do they want?
- What experience do they have using similar products?
- What is their motivation for using this product? What is the goal they are trying to accomplish?
- What value do they place on learning the subject matter?
- How well do they read? What is their preferred learning style for this kind of information? (For more information, check out Juicy Studio's Readability Test.)
- Is there a specific vocabulary involved with the subject matter? If so, how familiar is the audience with that vocabulary?
- How will they learn to use the product? Will they play around with it, or will they want specific, step-by-step instructions?
The way people use products is self-determined. All users bring their likes, dislikes, habits, skills, education, and training whenever they work with a product. This "prior knowledge and experience" shapes how they use the product.
Sometimes this prior knowledge and experience can be helpful: if users are familiar with similar items, they may find it easier to learn a new one. For example, once users know how to operate one cell phone model, they find it easier to learn different models. Once they learn how to use Microsoft Word 2003, they should be able to learn how to use Microsoft Word 2007 with relative ease.
Yet, this prior knowledge and experience can make it more difficult to use a new product. This most often happens when a user expects a product to look or function in certain ways, and it doesn't. For example, once people know how to use Microsoft Word to create documents, they should be able to learn how to use new word processors quickly. However, experienced Word users may have trouble migrating to the OpenOffice.org Writer. OpenOffice possesses much of the same functionality as Word, but menus and menu options are labelled and organized differently. A user who was able to change page margins in Word by using the menu structure File > Page Layout now must learn to use Format > Page > Page.
If you understand the prior knowledge and experience that your users bring with them when they interact with your product, then you can design your product to take advantage of that knowledge and experience.
Who Are the Real End Users of Your Product?
There are often several "layers" of users: decision makers, who make the decision to buy the product; managers/supervisors, who install the product and require its use; and end users, who actually interact with the product to accomplish tasks.
Often, decision makers and managers/supervisors are former users. However, their distance (in time and space) from current users makes them less reliable spokespersons. Many things may have changed: business practices, goals, roles, and environments. For this reason, you must stay focused on the people who actually interact with the product. These are primary users, those who perform tasks to achieve goals — whether personal or work-related.
Secondary users are those affected by the tasks and goals of the primary user. It's important to understand the interactions and relationships between the two.
User communities are all those that use a product in a particular environment to accomplish a particular task/goal.
Identifying Potential End Users
- Organize a group of colleagues who regularly interact with users (include colleagues who work in marketing, customer service, and training).
- Brainstorm a list of current and potential users.
- Create a user-task matrix (see example below); be as specific as possible.
- Discuss the characteristics that you assume are typical of these user communities.
- Decide how to test these assumptions
Example: Users of a Web-based Grant-Submission Service
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