A presentation on how to use contextual inquiry with usability testing. Full recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdS6FsdrEuA

1. Usable Stories: Discovering
Contextual Insights
Guiseppe Getto
East Carolina University
gettog@ecu.edu

2. What I’ll Cover
• What are personas?
• Where do personas come from?
• How do personas improve usability?
• The story/test/story method

3. What are personas?
“A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about
people who have been observed or researched in some way. A persona is
depicted as a specific person but is not a real individual; rather, it is
synthesized from observations of many people. Each persona represents a
significant portion of people in the real world and enables the designer to
focus on a manageable and memorable cast of characters, instead of
focusing on thousands of individuals.”
– Shlomo Goltzhttp://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/06/a-closer-look-
at-personas-part-1/

4. Example persona

5. Where do personas come from?
• DATA
– Interviews with users
– Usability tests
– Analytics
– Surveys

6. How do personas improve usability?
• Helps design team SEE users as real people
– What are their pain points?
– What are the messy, qualitative traits that make
them THAT TYPE of user?
– What do they find most engaging?
– What do they hate?

7. The story/test/story method
“To design the best UX, pay attention to what users do, not
what they say.”
-Jakob Nielsen
“I barely have time to test with three users, not to mention
interviewing them!”
-Every Non-famous UX Designer
“I don’t do separate storytelling expeditions.”
- Whitney Quesenbery

8. The story/test/story method
• Before the test: Who are you? Why did you agree to test
out this application? What unmet needs do you have?
What apps do you currently use?
• Test with key tasks
• After the test: What was the most difficult? What did you
find most engaging? What does the app do best? If you
could change one thing, what would it be, and why?