Our new blog is called TigerTalk and you can hunt it down here: http://tigersense.com/tigertalk/

TigerSense launch dedicated usability improvement service: Userhappy.com

We’re really pleased to announce the latest addition to the TigerSense family, Userhappy.com - Putting a smile on your interface.

So what is it?

Userhappy provides a quick and affordable way to improve the user experience of interactive products such as websites, web apps and intranets.  We do it by carrying out an expert usability review, which identifies problems using design principles rather than users in a lab.

Which design principles?

We use relevant parts of ISO 9241 Ergonomics of human-system interaction to identify potential usability problems. As an international standard, ISO 9241 is an authoritative and trusted source that gives our reviews the credibility they need to be taken seriously.

Why expert usability reviews?

Things move quickly in the agile world of software development and, as a result, people need quick and affordable ways of getting things done.  Even though full blown usability testing is arguably the most thorough means of discovering problems, very often there isn’t the time or budget available to run one - especially if you’re a small business.

In these cases, an expert usability review is a great alternative because it’s:

• much quicker than a usability test;
• much cheaper than a usability test;
• likely to identify the same major problems as a usability test (if done by an expert!).

What’s more is that it can be used to deliver a manageable set of recommendations that don’t overwhelm the development team.  What could be worse than receiving 30 pages of problems to fix after you’ve worked your socks off to develop a product you’re proud of!  Those sorts of reports often get filed away never to surface again.

A Userhappy expert review delivers a manageable set of improvement recommendations developed by one of our experts, supported by ISO standards, crafted with care, and delivered with happiness.

Sounds good, how do I order one?

Place an order right here…

Start me up!

After submitting our business plan to a panel of judges, we were awarded an Innovation Central Bursary by UCL to help get off the ground.  The money will really go a long way towards covering some of those essential things most tech startups need such as web hosting, marketing, client visits and data backup!

It’ll also help us roll out our flagship web app: TigerTask.  TigerTask is a simple and easy to use social project management app that helps you stay on top of things.  We’ll be using it to manage our own projects so maybe it’s useful for you too!

During this economic low, we’re also very much focused on helping you reduce costs and maximise the chances of people doing whatever it is you want them to do on your website e.g. buying things. 

A great way to do that is by ordering one of our ISO compliant usability assessments.  For a very affordable price (around £1500-£2500), we’ll evaluate your product using ISO standards and our very own USER framework. Then we’ll tell you exactly how to improve the user experience in a lovely TigerSense report.  Get in touch and order one today…info@tigersense.com

What’s the difference between goals, needs and tasks in HCI?  Why are they useful for designing or evaluating interactive systems?

I decided to focus my MSc dissertation on answering these questions.  Being slightly obsessed with the subject now, I’ve put together this article based on my research.

My research in a nutshell

Please note: The following points stem from past work in the HCI field.  However, I’ve left out references in this article because there’s simply too many!  If you’re interested in tracing the roots of this work, please download my entire dissertation using the link at the end - cheers.

Goals

A goal is an “aim or desired result”, and represents the motivation for doing things in the world.

We all have goals, like having a great day at the beach or getting to work on time.

A goal is defined by measurable success criteria, like whether you actually get to work on time or not and how early/late you are.

Needs

To achieve goals, we have needs e.g. I need to wake up at 7:30am and I need to travel to work

Tasks

To fulfil needs, we perform tasks e.g. set my alarm clock for 7:30am and then catch the 8:30 train

The difference

Goals and needs can be described as abstract - they don’t involve any real world interactions e.g. Get to work on time.  Being abstract, they are also technology independent.  This means they are likely to sustain their validity over time as technology changes.

Tasks, on the other hand, do involve real world interactions e.g. setting my alarm clock or buying a train ticket from the machine. As a result, they are more susceptible to change as technology progresses.  Think about how communication has changed over the years: from letters, telegrams, and telephones to texts and tweets.  Who knows, one day your ‘smart’ home might know when you need to get to work and wake you up in time, meaning you don’t need to do anything!

The other main thing goals have that tasks don’t is measurable success criteria.  Where a task is simply measured by whether you complete it or not, a goal has additional criteria that give it the ‘desirability’ factor. 

The getting to work goal, for example, is measured not just by whether you get to work, but also by whether you get there on time.  By comparing the time you aim to get there to the time you actually get there, you can work out the extent to which you achieved that goal.

The relationship

While goals, needs and tasks are fundamentally different, they are related to each other through hierarchies.  Most HCI practitioners will be familiar with Task Analysis, which is concerned more with what people do than why they do it.  Goals and needs can easily be added to a hierarchical task analysis though by taking a broader view of a particular context.  Consider the getting to work on time example:

Here we can see the three levels of human behaviour starting with the goal.  Of course, we could take an even broader view and ask Why does someone want to get to work on time?  It might be because they want to keep a job they enjoy, or because they want to appear punctual and professional.

Implications for user experience

For usability and interaction design, goals tell us what users want to achieve in a particular context, and what makes a positive user experience

From a usability perspective, they tell us which high-level metrics are important to the user e.g. To help get to work on time, I need to buy my train ticket quickly and easily.  Here, speed and ease of use can be broken down into low-level usability metrics such as time on task and number of errors.  By setting target values for these metrics e.g. 2 errors max per task, we can measure how well an interactive product fulfils the goals of its users i.e. its usability score

From an interaction design perspective on the other hand, goals tell us what users want to achieve in a given context regardless of the current technologies or methodologies available.  This helps designers think outside the limitations of specific technologies and fulfil user goals in new and innovative ways.

Conclusion

Goals motivate people to interact with products in the real world. Understanding them, and how they differ from needs and tasks helps you  improve the user experience and design better ways of doing things with technology.

- Ashton King

The whole dissertation can be found here:

http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/distinction-projects/2009-King.pdf

We can help you discover and better fulfil your users’ goals:

Visit tigersense.com for more information