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Two Sides of the Same Coin Making Heads or Tails of the UX/QA Partnership Presented to ESD QA Keith Miller & Mike McCoy

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Two Sides of the Same Coin Making Heads or Tails of the UX/QA Partnership Presented to ESD QA Keith Miller & Mike McCoy

Who we are § Our History § Team Structure § Our Backgrounds § Our Charter to ESD

Our Observations § UX & QA share a common goal . . . just different approaches § What may feel like overlap is actually opportunity § Great UX results from harmony amongst the project team

disciplines

Usability, Visual Design & User Experience (UX) Design § Overview § Our Process § Our Guides: principles, rules & testing § A case study § How we innovate § Our partnership

What is Usability? § A quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces

are to use § Defined by 5 quality components:

§  Learnability §  Efficiency § Memorability §  Errors §  Satisfaction §  Effectiveness

What is Visual Design § Visual design is problem solving on many levels using

imagery, color, typography, symbols, and many other design elements to form a unified message so that people can understand them in an effective way.

§ Good Visual Design is simple and almost invisible as it visually communicates these messages.

… and then there’s UX § A much broader concept that encompasses all aspects of

end-user's interaction with a company, its services, and its products.

§ Hierarchy of needs: §  Functional, Usable, Pleasurable § Can do, Will do, Want to do

§ An extension of ‘Satisfaction’ quality attribute: explores how positive emotions evoked in User Delightful, meaningful, beautiful, playful, seductive, immersive, thoughtful

§ A lot harder to measure quantitatively

Our ‘Typical’ Process UX Visd Design Sessions Create Mocks Design / Prototype Solution Team /Owner Review and signoff Prototype Audit Design Story Audit Update Prototype Visde Specifications User Reviews Visde WebDev UX Audit

What Guides Our Design Work § Principles § Rules or ‘Heuristics’ § Testing

Usability Principles §  Visibility

The more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know what to do next

§  Feedback Providing information about what action has been done and what has been accomplished, allowing the person to continue with the activity.

§  Constraints Restricting the kind of user interaction that can take place at a given moment

§  Mapping Clear relationship between controls and their effects in the world.

§  Consistency Interfaces have similar operations, use similar elements for achieving similar tasks

§  Affordance An attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it

Design Principles §  Balance

Distribution of heavy and light elements on the page.

§  Contrast Difference between two objects

§  Emphasis Attention towards something

§  Unity/proximity Keeping like elements together and diverse elements further apart

Testing § Traditional: Facilitated Observation of User, Tool & Context § Remote Moderated: Augmented with technology to

widen reach § Strategies

§ Formative – Find and Fix § Summative – Assess Using Metrics § Usability Inspection vs Usability Testing

§ Scope: Formal Testing ßà ‘Discount’ Testing

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Summary: Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford (Nielsen & Landauer).

What We Measure: § Quantitative / Objective:

§  Time on Task §  Effort (clicks, presses, switches, cogload) §  Errors (Mistakes, Slips) §  Success/Failure Rates

§ Qualitative / Subjective: §  ‘Think-Aloud’ Protocol § How a User ‘Experiences’ the Tool §  Satisfaction, Confusion or Frustration

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Innovating Processes § Auditing with Notable as a precursor to ALM § Agile Story Golf § Remote Unmoderated testing for better sprint integration § Working with QA’s Automation Group to raise awareness of

the impact of design change on testing

Create the UX Audit task in the Appropriate story. These are stories where UX was needed.

When the story moves to “In Test” start the UX Audit. QA has a slight lead time based on UX bandwidth and to find the big functional defects.

By the time the story is accepted all issues must be fixed or placed in the backlog with a severity and priority.

Details

•  With the UX spike concept the team agrees to add 1-2 design only stories.

•  These stories should require UX design and are usually complex in nature.

•  These design stories are a portion of the estimated effort to final implementation.

UX ‘tees-up’ the design and the rest of the team knocks it down (implements).

The Evolving UX / QA Partnership § Primary Touch points: Initial Design, Testing § Common Questions

§  How do we account for overlaps (synergies) §  Which role tests for which type of issue? (defects vs UX ‘issues’) §  Who is accountable for recommending a solution? §  What's the difference? UX = QA= UX

§ Synergies §  We each reinforce the others’ messages about quality. §  We have methodologies, tools, artifacts and expertise to share. §  UX can benefit from the rigor and maturity of QA. §  UX can help bake QA sooner into the SDLC.

§ Opportunities for Future Partnership & Synergies

What to Read?

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Steve Krug Russ Unger Jakob Nielsen

Your Story . . . §  Ideas § Proposals