[WebPub] [abcd-www] Notes from Mary Kennedy UX talk

[Tremonte, Donna]

Hello MIT WebPub,

Sorry for the delay, had some technical issues with the pdf but all should be OK now.

You can view the presentation on Slideshare<http://www.slideshare.net/harvardwww/demystifying-ux-a-toolkit-approach-to-better-cheaper-faster-experience-design>, all of the resources are linked from the pdf, but we also have the excel toolkit file <http://w3.abcd.harvard.edu/past-events/> up on our website.

Also, Mary provided the information below to followup on a couple of questions from the talk:

1. UX Team makeup:
It varies widely by organizational / project needs and the type of work performed.

Couple of good references:
http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=7e093c5cf4&id=cfe9dbcac8<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u%3D7e093c5cf4%26id%3Dcfe9dbcac8&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=7oCzYYmTSK9fOBhn7aMPDBRMJ4pSpA1lajbqmGbrQl8%3D%0A&m=9sVBp%2Fy5cVKJCkVA5VgtsVNaefiP5RlPSvQ2%2F0uc2cU%3D%0A&s=e96daaeb447d20f56154b12f66409538435af3df3f9cc1c12de810d76845ef04>
http://www.ixda.org/sites/default/files/UX_Kit_Aug09.pdf<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.ixda.org/sites/default/files/UX_Kit_Aug09.pdf&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=7oCzYYmTSK9fOBhn7aMPDBRMJ4pSpA1lajbqmGbrQl8%3D%0A&m=9sVBp%2Fy5cVKJCkVA5VgtsVNaefiP5RlPSvQ2%2F0uc2cU%3D%0A&s=4ffd326a6e1d59da2afb2acbdaa645123186648765d81c2994b01e572020bf28>

My interpretation of top / common roles:

UX Director - Collaborates across sales, marketing, research, analytics and development teams to deliver solutions for the user landscape, and maintain business and brand goals while overseeing delivery of user experiences in web, products, apps, social and marketing channels

UX Analyst / Specialist /strategist - Gathers business, user and functional needs and documents through personas, site architectures, sitemaps, workflows, Wireframes, and functional requirements.  He/she provides direction and influences final design through creative and development stages to ensure user needs and overall goals are met and design is usable, intuitive and highly functional.

Usability Analyst / Researcher – researches best practices, academic, psychological and behavioral and human/ computer interaction studies to advise on projects.  May arrange, schedule, perform and report on usability tests and make recommendations out of those tests for usability improvements.

Content Strategist / Content Architect – For larger sites / experiences involving multiples sites / landing pages, etc.  this individual understands the goals of content, tone, brand message and perhaps even desired differences through personalization.  He/She will also know how to best represent the information and keep it evergreen, owning a content scheduling and management process.

Visual Designer(s) – Create the look and feel.  With an artistic eye visual designers interpret requirements into final assets for images, graphics, logos, sometimes font selections other visual components to match the overall brand. Often relied upon by developers to create “Pixel perfect” renderings for responsive design where page space and image sizing are vital for predictable final design.

Creative Developers – Sometimes referred to as front-end developers, creative developers handle all HTML, CSS, JavaScript and - as needed - JQuery development to bring about the final visual design and ensure its functionality.

Within some organizations / teams the visual designers and creative developers are one in the same (not recommended) in other teams, there are a number of both and the developers are in a separate development department.

Party planner - someone's got to...



2. What to consider when combining several sites into one:
Content will be one of the most important facets of the project and combining, establishing new terms for what may have similar labels on different sites.

There may be a great redundancy of pages that needs to be managed.

Understand what is different among the sites:  calls to action, terms or structure in order to explain or highlight the differences in help material.

Promote the new site early on the different older sites if navigation terms and how and where to find the same information will change drastically.  This can be a quick 30 second demo showing the new nav and options to come.  (Camtasia software is nice for this if available).  The video is also a good time to provide a small preview of the new brand and look if appropriate.  If only showing the new site in the demo, place it on the new site when it launches as well for 1-2 months as prioritized content (a location on the home page would be appropriate).

You likely want a redirect strategy to point users as appropriate to new URLs vs. page not found errors once old sites are disabled.

If anything involves transactions:

  *   Be sure to promote early how and where to perform the new transactions.
  *   Make help content a priority.
  *   Ensure security (log in/ sign in) converts well / easily and explain if it is different for the new site.
  *   Send emails to secure users informing them of changes to come.
  *
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