To date, usability testing has been largely confined to usability labs. This ensures a controlled environment where users can interact with products or designs and researchers can field questions. The downside of this is not being able to get the context of use of what you are testing. But a recent project for a life science organization cemented the idea that taking user research out of the usability lab yields the best results.
Continue reading Taking Research out of the LabCategory: Process and Methods
Focus on Usage Maturity: Part II
by: Alesha Arp | Posted onMeet Users Where They Are, Draw Them Deeper In
If we want users to remain our users, we ought to entice them deeper into our design ecosystem.
Attempts to extend or expand users’ usage, frequently results in designs complicated by added features, and functions. My user experience research has informed digital and physical designs often with an emphasis on correcting the usability of such complexities. Users interact with the things we design at varying levels of usage maturity. Usage maturity is a measure of users’ comfort and familiarity with, and degree of use of a product, process, or place.
How to Improve the User Journey on Your Website
by: Lexie Lu | Posted onFrom the moment a user lands on your website until they either leave or convert into a customer, a series of steps lead them from one point to another. Buyer personas represent your typical customer and help address pain points your customers have as well as predicting actions specific audiences might take. About 63 percent of marketers use buyer personas when creating content.
From my experience, here are some steps to help improve your user’s journey once you develop your target audience’s unique buyer persona. Continue reading How to Improve the User Journey on Your Website
How to Use Gamification in Mobile Apps: A Case Study
by: Elizabeth Ballou | Posted onGamification, or the addition of game-like elements to anything that isn’t a game, pops up all over the design world.
In my last post for Boxes and Arrows, I focused specifically on gamification in mobile app onboarding. The moment when users first open your app is critical to the app’s success, and you can use gamification as a tool to get a new user through the learning curve.
But gamification doesn’t just fit with onboarding. It’s possible to apply gamification to any part of app design, or even design an entire app—that is not a mobile gaming application—around it.
I’ll examine Forest, a productivity app, as a case study of gamification embedded so deeply into an app’s framework that gamification becomes the entire reason to use the app in the first place.
Continue reading How to Use Gamification in Mobile Apps: A Case Study
How to Use Gamification in Mobile App Onboarding
Game design isn't just relevant to video games by: Elizabeth Ballou | Posted onPlaying games is a human impulse. People get a kick out of competing, collecting things, and finishing tasks. You can apply game design elements to anything, which is called gamification.
Mobile app onboarding is a useful place for a touch of competition or goal-setting. Whether as small as a progress bar or as major as a tutorial for a mobile game, these elements help users finish onboarding and come back to the app again.
As a content developer at Clutch, I got the chance to delve into a research survey on the mobile onboarding process. The results support gamification as a resource UX designers can and should turn to. According to the survey, 44% of app users download an app “for fun,” which is more than any other reason. Designers should play to that desire and make onboarding itself fun.
In addition, 72% of respondents said that completing onboarding in less than a minute is important in their decision to keep using the app. Users aren’t willing to spend much time on onboarding, so designers should add elements that convince these users to stay.
This article explores the origin and definition of gamification and provides three specific UX elements you might include as you’re designing a mobile onboarding experience. Continue reading How to Use Gamification in Mobile App Onboarding
