UX Exam (modules 3-6)

Question 1

What are some research artefacts that can be created?

Answer 1

• Personas
• Empathy maps
• Customer journey maps
• User stories

Question 2

What are the stages of data becoming insights?

Answer 2

Data > findings > themes (affinity diagramming) > insights

Question 3

Structured data analysis techniques include:

Answer 3

o Scales
o Graphs
o Absolute values, e.g. 5 of 7 participants.

Question 4

Unstructured data analysis techniques include:

Answer 4

o Affinity diagramming (see below).
o ‘Coding’ (assigning categories to findings).
o Semantic analysis.

Question 5

What is a method of collecting and coding data?

Answer 5

AEIOU:
* Activities
* Environments
* Interactions
* Objects
* Users

Question 6

Give an overview of a persona

Answer 6

• They embody the results of the user research.
• Try to make as representative of different user groups possible.
• Help design for a specific somebody, rather than a generic everybody.
• They express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups.
• They give a clear picture of the user’s expectations and how they’re likely to use the site.
• They aid in uncovering universal features and functionality.
• Primary and secondary personas.

Question 7

What are the benefits of using personas?

Answer 7

• Personas present the results of user research in a usable format that designers/developers can easily relate to.
• They aid designers to create different designs for different kinds of people.

Question 8

What are some elements that can be included in a persona?

Answer 8

Name/type, photo/illustrations, description/demographic, sources, influencers, channels/devices, quote, goals, functional/informational needs, emotive/social needs, motivations, pain points/issues, delighters/gains, routines/behaviours, familiarity, role, constraints

Question 9

How to make a successful persona?

Answer 9

• Base them on research.
• Form a shared idea of what personas are and how you will use them.
• Use additional artefacts if needed.
• Be the scientist and the storyteller.
• Get people in the organisation involved.
• Use them in hands-on sessions.

Question 10

What are user needs or requirements?

Answer 10

• User needs are opportunities to reduce or remove pain points
• Use words that users would use themselves
• Be based on user research – not assumptions
• High level user needs or user requirements should focus on the user’s problem not the solution

Question 11

What are not user needs?

Answer 11

• Design specifications e.g. should be easy to navigate.
• Functional specifications e.g. site should be responsive.

Question 12

What is a way to identify and prioritise user needs?

Answer 12

Put on a scale of frequency vs proportion of users impacted. Also consider business impact and inclusive design.

Question 13

What are key elements of a user story?

Answer 13

• User (role)
• Need or goal
• Value statement or reason

Question 14

What is validated learning?

Answer 14

A form of iterative design where the design team test design hypotheses with users.
* Identify the unknowns and assumptions
* Research and test them straight away
* Tackle the riskiest ones first
Validated learning is a unit of progress process and describes learnings generated by trying out an initial idea and then measuring it against potential customers to validate the effect. Each test of an idea is a single iteration in a larger process of many iterations whereby something is learnt and then applied to succeeding tests. The term was coined in the lean startup scene, but it can be applied universally.
Validated learning is especially popular on the web, where analytics software can track visitor behaviour and give accurate statistics and insight on how website features work in reality. Validated learning can, however, be applied to anything; one just needs to be innovative on what to use as metrics.

Question 15

How do you structure a product hypothesis?

Answer 15

I believe [target market] will [do this repeatable action/use this solution], which will [result in expected measurable outcome] for [this reason].

Question 16

How do you structure a test or solution hypothesis?

Answer 16

“If we provide tool <T> with functionality <f> user <u> will be able to achieve goal <g> in environment <e> in time <t> or with satisfaction <s>”.</s></t></e></g></u></f></T>

Question 17

What are the merits of different kinds of prototypes?

Answer 17

Paper sketches / design concepts - A design concept or solution not intended for testing with users. Good for generating ideas.
Paper or electronic prototype / wireframes or mock-ups -
* Good for testing different design hypotheses early on and validated learning.
* Answer design questions early in the process.
* Get more feedback from users as they can see you are early in the process.
Higher fidelity electronic prototypes - Good for refining later iterations of the design and micro-interactions.

Question 18

Horizontal vs vertical prototypes?

Answer 18

Horizontal Prototypes - “Horizontal prototypes are most often used during the early stages of analysis. They give a broad view of the application including sample screens, menus, buttons, pop-ups and sample reports that reflect the current requirements…. Horizontal prototypes reflect the breadth of the system without drilling down into too much detail…. They are useful for presenting ideas to stakeholders, facilitating requirements discussions, and gaining buy-in on requirements and design decisions.”
Vertical prototypes – “Vertical prototypes are used in the later stages of analysis and design to drill down and elaborate on specific features or functions. Vertical prototypes are more technical in nature…Vertical prototypes do not attempt to detail out the entire breath of the application, but focus on implementing a specific feature or feature set in a more complete manner. They demonstrate to the stakeholders that the application works although it might not be fully tuned.”

Question 19

Dimensions of prototyping?

Answer 19

Horizontal vs vertical, high fidelity vs low fidelity

Question 20

What are benefits of early prototyping?

Answer 20

• Supports validated learning*
• Quick to build / refine by non-developers
• Encourage the design team to explore alternative designs*
• Can be tested early with users and refined quickly*
• Excellent for testing the conceptual model and interaction flow
• Communication between developers, designers and users is promoted

Question 21

What are different organisational schema for classifying information?

Answer 21

• Topic based schema: Organise by specific subject matter
• Task based schema: Organise by considering the users’ needs, actions, questions, or processes.
• Time or phase based schema
• Audience based schema (Only good if ~ 80% of content is unique to each audience!)

Question 22

Explain a model for organising information

Answer 22

LATCH (Richard S Wurman):
o L – Location; organizing information based on space or place, such as a subway map
o A – Alphabetical; a good way of organizing information if there’s no other prevailing strong organizational structure
o T – Time, as in timelines, directions, or other sequential information
o C – Category, as in types of information (perhaps an infographic about students might sort data first by grade, then by gender, etc.).
o H – Hierarchy, as in tallest to shortest, most expensive to least, youngest to oldest.

Question 23

Explain the merits of the “Three Click Rule”

Answer 23

The Three Click Rule states that no important piece of information should ever be more than three clicks away from anywhere else on your Web site. User satisfaction, user abandonment and task completion time do not appear to be related to the number of clicks

Question 24

Explain Miller’s Law

Answer 24

o Millers Law suggests that people can keep no more than 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their short-term memory
o Miller’s law should NOT be applied to IA design! Users do not have to memorise your menu structure.

Question 25

Explain Hick’s Law

Answer 25

• More choices = longer decision time: Hick’s law describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has: increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically.
  Avoid use of very long linear menus:
  o they take longer to scan
  o make it more difficult for users to derive a conceptual model of the site hierarchy (aim for 8-10 items)
  Way to remember it Hicks – Lots of picks - lots of ticks
• If you do need to use long menus to avoid a very deep site, break up into meaningful chunks or groupings

Question 26

Benefits of open card sort

Answer 26

o Good for understanding users’ mental models.
o Good when designing a new menu structure or taxonomy.

Question 27

Benefits of closed card sort

Answer 27

o Good when adding content to an existing menu structure.
o Good for understanding users’ expectations as to where they would expect to find features or information in a predefined taxonomy.

Question 28

Card writing tips (for card sort)

Answer 28

o Keep tasks short
o Avoid multiple topics on one card
o Don’t repeat keywords
o Try to use different schema on your cards: topic, audience, task
o Aim for 50 max
o Print with barcodes and scan in later

Question 29

What is pareto principle?

Answer 29

• Pareto principle – 80% of users will use 20% of features.

Question 30

Relationship between amount of functionality and usability?

Answer 30

As functionality increases, usability decreases.

Question 31

Carousel definition?

Answer 31

A carousel optimises screen space by displaying only a subset of images from a collection of images in a cyclic view.

Question 32

When to use a carousel?

Answer 32

When you have a large set of items to show, but want to let the user concentrate his or her attention only on a select few items at a time (or to tease that there are more items available)

Question 33

Issues with carousels?

Answer 33

Don’t use when items are non-visual (links, files), don’t use if you want users to see the content (users usually ignore anything on hidden slides)

Question 34

How should you use cancel/reset buttons?

Answer 34

Don’t place it where users expect a Submit button, consider greying out button or using a link

Question 35

Buttons vs links?

Answer 35

Buttons used for user actions/commands, links used for navigation

Question 36

What is Fitt’s law?

Answer 36

The smaller and further a target, the longer it will take for the user to move to a resting position over the target, and higher the error rate

Question 37

What size should mobile button targets be?

Answer 37

At least 9mm by 9mm

Question 38

Explain wizard design pattern?

Answer 38

The Wizard pattern is about parting dependable sub-tasks needed to perform a complex goal into separate steps.

Question 39

When to use wizard design pattern?

Answer 39

When the user needs to perform a task or a goal that dictates more than one step or needs guidance to achieve a goal.

Question 40

What is pagination control?

Answer 40

Break a complete dataset into smaller sequential parts and provide separate links to each

Question 41

What are design patterns for lots of content?

Answer 41

Pagination, infinite scroll, load more

Question 42

Why should you avoid launching new windows and tabs?

Answer 42

Breaches W3C web content accessibility guidelines, are often broken by pop-up blockers, still cause confusion for less experienced users.

Question 43

When does it make sense to launch new windows or tabs?

Answer 43

Help pages, terms and conditions, PDFs, secure online applications (e.g. transactions), online surveys

Question 44

How to use radio buttons?

Answer 44

Should be circular, only one option can be selected at a time, use for 2-3 options, one option must be selected, should be vertically aligned, use when values are too long to display on iOS device

Question 45

How to use checkboxes?

Answer 45

Should be square, allows users to select multiple options, can be used as a conditional field

Question 46

When to use dropdowns/listboxes?

Answer 46

Used for displaying a large number of values (over 5) in a small space, good when number of options is unknown/variable, should offer meaningful default or ‘Select’

Question 47

Dropdown usability issues?

Answer 47

Users can’t see all options available, difficult to use for some novice users and people with poor fine motor skills, long values truncate on iOS

Question 48

What is a textbox or combobox?

Answer 48

Where users type into a textbox but also has dropdown suggesting results.

Question 49

Issues with textbox/combobox?

Answer 49

Little control over what users input

Question 50

How should you use a textbox/combobox?

Answer 50

Can include suggestive search, should validate for common mistakes and use placeholder text

Question 51

What are some ways to simplify data and reduce choice overload?

Answer 51

Allow users to sort results using a dropdown, allow users to compare results (highlight differences in a table), allow users to filter results

Question 52

What are the different kinds of models in design?

Answer 52

Conceptual model: represents the system structure and logical architecture envisaged by the designer
Implementation model: view of the system from the developers’ point of view
Mental model: the internal, mental representation that a user has about how an interactive system works

Question 53

Why use user flows?

Answer 53

Helps create intuitive interfaces that aligns with users’ mental models and how they do the task in the real world, a good visual tool to communicate how you intend users will move through the site/app

Question 54

How to create user flows?

Answer 54

1 - Define users and goals
2 - Map out and analyse potential issues with the current user flow
3 - Map out desired user flows and pathways
4 - Map the wireflow (higher resolution version of user flow)
5 - Test flows