- The document introduces AJ Siegel as a UX consultant and discusses various frameworks for prioritizing and addressing usability issues.
- It presents severity rating scales from several usability experts and proposes a Severity-Complexity Matrix for prioritizing issues based on their severity and estimated complexity to resolve.
- The key recommendation is to prioritize the most critical and easiest issues to address first while partnering with technical teams to assess complexity, and leverage available resources most effectively.
5. These don’t work…for me
So we find an issue…
5
“I saw 3 of the 5 sessions, and this one guy
got really mad when he couldn’t find the
Submit button, this issue is totally a High
“After facilitating all 5 sessions, I really only
recall 1 person expressing frustration, lets
call this a medium”
6. My Muses
• Jakob Nielsen
• 0 - I don’t agree that this is a usability problem at all
• 4 - Usability catastrophe: imperative to fix this
before product can be released
• Jeff Rubin
• 4 - Unusable: The user is not able to or will not want
to use a particular part of the product because of the
way that the product has been designed and
implemented.
• 1 - Irritant: The problem occurs only intermittently,
can be circumvented easily, or is dependent on a
standard that is outside the product's boundaries.
Could also be a cosmetic problem.
• Joe Dumas & Ginny Redish
• 1 - Prevents Task Completion
• 4 - Subtle and possible enhancements/suggestions
6
• Chauncey Wilson
• 1 - Catastrophic error causing irrevocable
loss of data or damage…
• 5 - Minimal error. The problem is rare and
causes no data loss…
• Molich & Jeffries
• 1 - Minor: delays user briefly.
• 3 - Catastrophic: prevents user from
completing their task.
• Jeff Sauro
• 1 - Minor: Causes some hesitation or slight
irritation.
• 3 - Critical: Leads to task failure. Causes
user extreme irritation.
http://www.measuringu.com/blog/rating-severity.php
7. Can we make it less arbitrary?
Let’s talk about London’s buses
How do we use this concept for UX?
• Identify most important tasks
• Track issue frequency
• Observe difficulty to overcome
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/redroutes.html
9. So I start with the Critical ones first, right?
• Not quite, you still have to best leverage your
resources
• Prioritize the most critical and “easiest”
• Partner with tech to gauge Complexity
9
11. How do I manage this?
• Offline: Excel Template - http://j.mp/uxissues
• Web Service: http://www.uxissu.es (Coming Soon!)
• This Presentation: http://j.mp/UXIssues2
11
Rating high severity issues as 1 or 0 is confusing.
The human brain thinks that higher numbers deserve more attention.
This is a legacy of the Engineering teams these models were build for
Notice the way the Wilson scale focuses on data loss not actual user impact
We deal with the User, not the system
The Molich system focuses heavily on time on task, not frustration
Sauro’s model covers user impact and time, but does not focus on the business impact of the issue. Is the task important?
These are key road arteries in London where parking, stopping, or standing is not allowed AT ANY TIME.
This system improved bus journeys to be 10% faster and 27% more reliable
6% reduction in accidents
This same concept applies to web sites/applications in terms of identifying critical actions and high frequency actions
Paying a bill on your site - frequent and critical
Key business objectives
Key customer objectives
Complete activities that may involve several interactions, pages, etc
Concrete definition of “success”
Does the issue occur on a “red route”?
These are critical user and/or business tasks in the interface
This is where your business partners get to “be a part of the process” in helping identify the red routes, and if the task occurred here
Was the task difficult to overcome?
Did the study participant ask for help?
Did they say they would give up at this point?
Did they exhibit visual signs of frustration?
Was the problem persistent?
Did this occur multiple times to a single participant?
Did this occur for at least 50% of your participants?
Critical - The highest urgency level of issues where users are unable to complete red route tasks or give up
High - The issue causes a significant slow down in a user’s task completion time
Medium - The issues causes moderate levels of frustration but the user was able to complete the task
Low - These issues often are aesthetic in nature and don’t cause frustration or block task completion. They are a poor reflection of the product or brand