Show Me the Data: Usability-driven Web Design

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Jason Alley
Instructional Technologist, Lafayette College

@jasonalley

Kenneth Newquist
Web Applications Specialist, Lafayette College

@knewquist

October 6, 2009

Problem:

Time to redesign site

Everyone has opinons about what works, but they don’t have data

Replace opinion with fact

http://its.lafayette.edu/

Use software called ScreenFlow

Tests aren’t about the user it is about the website.

Survey:

10 usabilty questions

2 volunteer questions

Setup: Opinio web survey tool and $10 gift card

Asked why they go to the site

5 common tasks

5 faculty tasks

5 students tasks

camera

screenflow

procter/recorder

What was learned:

people don’t search – they have to use the right term

dense pages are hard to scan

category pages are difficult to browse

getting to a page was half the battle

Used a open card sort: let user sort them. Proves other people think differently then the designer. Helps identify trends.

Great idea but…

  1. We don’t have time
  2. We don’t have money
  3. We don’t have the space
  4. We haven’t don’t this before

But then…

  1. Testing takes some time.
  2. Analysis takes longer
  3. Much much longer.

Augmented Reality – Merging the Virtual World into Ours

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Daniel Frommelt
@Frommelt
University Web Coordinator, University of Wisconsin – Platteville

October 6

Presentation at www.uwplatt.edu/web/presentations

Augmented Reality asymmetric image.

Augmented Reality asymmetric marker.

AR is adding, modifying reality.

They exist now.

It’s not a hologram.

It starts with a marker that is asymmetric.

More complex = smaller margin of error.

Use Blender: flash base AR.

It triggers a Flash with ActionScript when shown to a web cam.

Needs audio in/out and video in/out.

You can make virtual popup books.

He had lots of examples.

So where do we go from here?

Bunch of resources.

An Argument for Semantics – Why Developers Should Give a Hoot about OWL

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Brian Panulla
Director, Extreme Events Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University

October 6

Presentation http://2009.highedweb.org/presentations/TPR9.pdf

or local copy An Argument For Semantics

The quest for a smarter web

What is semantic web and why would I want one.

The “O” word – ontology

Using SW technology today

New w3c

RDF, RDF Schema, OWL

Each build on one another, but all are fundamentally RDF

Implied Meaning

What we have now needs a human to process it.

We want to markup for machines

meaning of symbols

  • words usage, connotation

  • images symbolism

become real useful when shared

  • between individuals

  • within a community or culture

Is this more catherderal thinking?

  • Top-down ivory tower approach has led to out current network of walled gardens of data

  • Could some of out data be more open?

Why can’t we pull non-sensitive data from an open, central source?

How many Web applications have local copies of:

States, countries, campuses, majors, courses?

Why are we maintaining them?

Separation of concerns

  • smarter data is driving new levels of separation of concerns

  • content, presentation, behavior, and rules

Is HTML dead? No

The SW infrastructure

a parallel information architecture design pattern for smarter applications

web content, pages and sites do not

roadmap to smart data

  • entities as resources

  • specifying relationships

  • drawing inferences

Entities as Resources

Locally “IST” refers to at least 6 entities (for Penn State)

how do we identify entities

differentiating between conceptual entities creates the need for an identifier

indefinite article A college of IST

Convention allows us to simplify integration of data across systems

Convention is implicit symantics

In the absence of a good candidate key, each organization usually make an ad hoc identifiers.

We have a handy tool to globally identify – it’s URI

Normally they are unique, but that can be overwritten

RDF

RDF is the language that gives us resources, specifies properties

RDF can be used to specify is-a, is-a-member-of,

It stores as triples: subject, predicate, object

RDF schemas

dont give meaning

Ontology gives meaning

a formal ontology is a representation of a true ontology in some sor of communicable format

“its the next level up from schema”

OWL features

classes, properties, individuals

Data can be inferred or derived with owl/rdf with symantics.

Ex: if a is near b and c is near b then a is near c.

twitter: bpanulla

Actionable Web Analytics for Higher Education

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Joshua Ellis
E-Marketing Manager, Penn State Outreach

Shelby Thayer
Online Marketing Associate – Web Strategy, Penn State World Campus

October 6

What is analytics:

competitive intelligence

voice of customer

web site behavior onsite analytics

10/90 Rule

10 % tool

90% analysis

why measure

optimize marketing efforts

optimize user experience

Is your site effective? Forget about the site for a second. What are you business objectives? Once you have business then you can look at website objectives. Give it a time frame and make it measureable.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Measures to use to see if your web site is meeting the objectives. Ask so what? If you can ask so what 3 times and get an actionable item each time then it is a KPI.

Segmentation is critical

look at trends before the campaign gets rolling.

If the trend is there it is a good objective.

Ex: you want to increase iPhone visits

Trends

100k visit today…or we increase 50% over yesterday or last month (time measurement)

Then they need context: Huge bounce rate got several click throughs or low bounce got a couple

But then go back and check: what causes the good and bad numbers.

Going through the numbers translates in to saving cost and time.

Fallout

link to form > form > thankyou

check numbers where people stop in the stream.

User testing

How do you know if it works? Measure before and after. Use your KPI for goals with time frame.

Free usability test

  • Referring keywords

  • Internal site search keywords

  • Knowledgebase keyword phrasing

Segmentation

Possible segments: internal/external, in-state/out-of-state, search terms, frequent flyers

Referring Keywords

Internal site search

Site overlay (heat map)

It’s good but not perfect. Not good with javascript.

Events

Funnels

Get Your Easy Button: Web and Marketing Working Together

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Kevin Lavelle
Coordinator of Web Services, Xavier University

Maggie Ridder
Director of e-Marketing, Xavier University

October 5

Project “Road to Xavier” is a recruitment campaign.

Cost, time, fixed content were the constraints.

Decided to move away from big budget because it wouldn’t have the best impact – timing and audience wasn’t ready.

Their real plan:

  • 3 print pieces

  • landing pages

  • events

  • addition elements

Division of labor:

  • Admissions

  • Marketing

  • Web services – tracking data fed back to Admissions

They had 8 key target programs and after brainstorming they came up with “I Am…” (role, service, )

Print pieces told a story. And they told what is the input component and what is the result.

Landing pages complemented the print page brand/content and were listed on the print pieces. This enabled easy stats of hits and emails.

Follow up emails of print.

Phoning: faculty calling students, student calling students

alums calling students

they each had guides

website with contact reports

weekly email bulletin

The result was 70% of students that attended an event enrolled. That was 20% of admitted enrolled at Xavier. Goal was 940 they got 1174.

Lessons:

  • focus on growth potential and capacity

  • collaboration and working together

  • clear responsibilities, communication and regular meetings

  • involving faculty and alumni

  • keep the team small, working with limited dollar resources

Now what:

  • strategic review of programs to highlight

  • reuse existing profiles and media

  • strong, focused events

The success of last year lead to more input from their team.

Road to Xavier is a portal like howdy.tamu.edu

They do a lot of their business there: housing, accounts, profile/directory information.

The New Academics of Social Media Networking

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David Hart
IT/IS Project Manager, Stanford University

October 5

They used a vendor’s solutions for the majority of development.

social community = academic community = share!

If you build it, they will come?

Their project was named Community Services Platform

The project processed well for about a year and then they reviewed business rules with each of 3 departments: they could not force unity among all three departments. This caused delays and scope creep.

“film, works of art are never completed, they are only abandoned” Leonardo de Vinci and Steven Spielberg.

twitter:

Web Project Management

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Jesse Rodgers
Associate Director, VeloCity, University of Waterloo

October 5

Presentation: http://2009.highedweb.org/presentations/MMP4.pdf

  • First committee meeting make a memo of understanding

  • follow process, deliver product

  • constraints: scope, time, cost

  • manage resources

  • identify risks

  • breakdown action items on a timeline

  • agile process: ‘sprint’, ‘scrum’

  • get involved:

    • basecamp, excel, word

    • breakdown

    • time estimates

    • followup on times

    • share info

  • Use version control

    • github

    • subversion

    • cvs

    • team foundation

  • Track issues

    • document milestones

    • track conversations, changes in rationale

    • generate reports if needed

  • Track issue software

    • bugzilla

    • trac

    • team foundation

Jesse Rodgers

twitter: jrodgers

www.whoyoucallingajesse.com

General Session (Lunch Keynote)

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Keynote by Jared Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering, the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. Learn more about the speaker.
October 5, 2009
lunchsession1005heweb09

On a scale there are varying degrees of …

  • Tricks
  • Techniques
  • Process
  • Methodology
  • Dogma

Successful teams use Tricks and Techniques.

Three Questions:

  1. Vision – Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design five years from now?
  2. Feedback – In the last six weeks, have you spent more than two hours watching someone use either your design or competitor’s?
  3. Culture – In the last six weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?

Five-Second Page Test – take real or mockup to a small group and ask a question. http://fivesecondtest.com/
There are 14 different types of questions people ask on inuksuk sites irregardless of the industry.
[This is like HDC top 12]
Inukshuk means a place where people have been before – like a blog where people comment.
www.uie.com/briansparks

Implementing Reason CMS with Small Teams and Small Budgets

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Nathan White
Web Application Developer, Carleton College

Charles Fulton
Computer Support Specialist, Kalamazoo College

Steve Smith
Reason Programmer/Analyst and System Support, Luther College

Melissa Dix
Assistant Director for Web Services, Beloit College

October 5

Presentation style is round robin each college sharing some details of their implementation.

Uses WYSIWYG editor also developed by Reason.

Allows ‘type’ creation: like ‘page’ or ‘form’ or ‘WhatEverIWantToNameIt’

Uses Google Docs Form tool (e.g. Form Builder)

http://apps.carleton.edu/opensource/reason/

Nurturing Communities with Social Networking

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Kristofer Layon
Director of Web Design & Online Collaboration, University of Minnesota

October 5

Social media can create community:

  • Group of people having a religion, race, profession or other particular characteristic in common

  • Feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes interests

  • Group of interdependent organisms of different species growing or living together in a specified habitat

Are you bringing people together that are similar or different?

Principles of good social media personae:

  • be factual most of the time

  • be sincere and polite all of the time

  • carefully weigh entering into politics…or otherwise straying off-topic (80/20 rule)

  • be consistent (singular voice)

  • be human

Examples:

  • blogging, social networking:ning, photo sharing: youtube, micro-blog: twitter

  • integrated social media: minnewebcon

What was ROI for minnewebcon09:

  • twitter: 1400%

  • facebook: 285%

  • banner ad: -54%

Social media feels immediate, but you need to plan for the long term. It takes time. Use the plan. It may change some, but it guides you and should be used.

Advice:

  • plan

  • humility

  • persistence

twitter: klayon