Tài liệu User Experience Re-Mastered Your Guide to Getting the Right Design- P2 pdf

36 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design

Our Web Site

The following questions are about your experiences of our Web site at

www.examplewebsite.com.

How many times have you visited our Web site?________________________________

List any other sites you have used that are similar

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

Please rate our site on the following dimensions

Easy to use 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hard to use

Attractive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Unattractive

Useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Waste of time

Effi cient 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tedious

Well organized 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Haphazard

Entertaining 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Boring

Valuable information 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 No information

Responsive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Slow

What do you consider the most valuable aspect of the Web site?

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

What is the biggest problem with the site?

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

Which features would you like us to add to this site?

❑ Ability to purchase products online

❑ Online discussion boards

❑ An announcements mailing list

❑ Additional online help

❑ Ability to place classifi ed ads on our site

❑ A jobs board

About You

Your job title ____________________________________________________________________

Your age under 18 18 –29 30–39 40–49 50 or over

Gender female male

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User Needs Analysis CHAPTER 2 37

INTERPRETING RESPONSES

When analyzing responses to your survey, you’ll generally look for the average

or most common response. You can count the total number of responses to a

checked item. Low response to an individual question may indicate that the

question is unclear and the responses should be interpreted cautiously. Surveys

can provide extremely useful data, but remember to document the limitations

to the data, such as a low-response rate, sampling problems, or biases, discussed

later.

Exceptional responses should not be ignored. You’re not simply looking for an

average response. While it’s useful to know how an “average” person responds,

it’s also very useful to understand the spectrum of responses. How much do

people vary in their responses? You may want to create a design that serves two

or more divergent audiences. Also, some outlier populations may be extremely

important to your site design. For instance, two percent of your users may be

millionaires, but they may buy your most expensive products and account for

more than a two percent portion of your profi ts. And some small populations

may require extra attention to serve more challenging needs, such as providing

an accessible design for people with disabilities.

Sampling

How many survey responses do you need to collect? Even a small number of

responses can be useful. Designing from any information is better than design￾ing with none, so long as you’re careful not to be overconfi dent in a limited sam￾ple. If you’re trying to achieve statistical signifi cance, the degree of signifi cance

will depend on both your sample size and the range of responses you get to each

question. You’ll need to consult with a statistician to work out a good number

for your case. A helpful rule of thumb is that fewer than 10 returned surveys is

not likely to be useful, and 50 returned surveys is a good target. Solid scientifi c

research may, in some cases, require more surveys, but 50 should be more than

adequate for most practical design situations.

Highest level of education

high school some college bechelor’s degree graduate work

Do you have any other comments about our Web site you would like to offer?

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for participating in our survey.

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38 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design

RETURN RATE

To get 50 surveys back, you’ll need to send out quite a few more than that.

Online surveys can expect as few as one to two percent of site visitors actually

to respond. E-mail and snail mail surveys typically are returned at a rate of

fi ve to 10 percent, meaning that you need to send out as many as 1,000 to

get 50 returned. People who are highly motivated to be involved in the design

will return the surveys at a much higher rate. It’s not unusual to get 100 percent

return rate when surveying within a small organization that will be using your

Web site in its daily work.

You can improve the rate of return of mail surveys in several ways:

■ Offer a small gift or prize drawing for those who return your survey.

■ Include a small gift with the survey, whether or not they return it.

■ Make sure that the survey does not look like junk mail: address enve￾lopes by hand, lick stamps rather than using a machine, sign cover letters

by hand (or even write the cover letters by hand), personally address the

cover letter to the recipient. For e-mail surveys, make sure each e-mail is

personally addressed rather than sent to a list.

■ Use unusual paper and envelopes to make the survey stand out in the mail.

■ Include a referral letter in cases where you are contacting members of a

specifi c organization. For instance, surveys going out to employees of a

company should include a letter from a relevant manager.

■ Keep the survey short and say how long it is likely to take to fi ll out the

questionnaire.

■ Include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

■ Emphasize that the responses will be kept confi dential.

■ Emphasize the benefi ts to users of having a Web site design refl ecting

their needs and interests.

■ Specify a date by which you’d like the survey to be returned. Otherwise,

respondents may procrastinate.

■ Follow up the initial survey with a written or online query to those who

haven’t responded, encouraging them to participate.

EDITOR’S NOTE: OFFERING PRIZE DRAWINGS

HAS LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

If you are considering a prize drawing (“fi ll out our survey for a chance at winning one of

50 iPods®”), consult your organization’s attorney. In the United States, each state has

different rules about how sweepstakes must be run. Even prize drawings within a single

company with offi ces in different states might present legal problems. If you are offering

something on the Internet, you have to consider international laws on prize drawings or

restrict your drawing to specifi ed countries. There are companies that specialize in running

lotteries and sweepstakes. If you are planning a major survey with signifi cant prizes or

monetary awards, consult a reputable company that will help you avoid any legal problems.

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User Needs Analysis CHAPTER 2 39

SELECTING SURVEY RECIPIENTS

When dealing with a small number of customers or a small number of users, as

with an intranet, you can send the survey to everyone; your only limiting factor

is the cost of distributing the survey and analyzing the responses. If the survey

can be created online, the cost of distributing the survey and collecting the data

is minimized, and development time is your only signifi cant cost.

It is trickier when you’re targeting a mass market, an ill-defi ned group, or pro￾spective customers. You may not have an appropriate mailing list to start out

with. Here are some ideas for getting started. Advertise the survey on your cur￾rent site or on another Web site in the industry. If there are appropriate mailing

lists or newsgroups, send your survey to them. Make sure this is within the usage

policy of the list; identify yourself and your purposes clearly at the beginning

of the message; keep the message short; and post only once. Go where your

users congregate. If it’s a local site, hand out surveys on a street corner. If it’s an

industry site, visit an industry convention. Use the snowball sampling technique:

ask each respondent to suggest another appropriate recipient (gathering respon￾dents like a snowball accumulates snow rolling down a hill).

For e-mail surveys, ask respondents to forward surveys to their friends and col￾leagues. In your e-mail, be sure to specify by what date the survey needs to be

returned, or you may end up getting surveys coming to you for years as they

circulate around the Internet. While you should avoid creating a survey that looks

like junk mail, you also need to avoid the perception that your survey is junk

mail. Be careful not to abuse mailing lists that were clearly not intended for the

purpose of your survey. Ask permission of organization leaders before sending

EDITOR’S NOTE: INCREASING THE RATE OF RETURN

OF E-MAIL AND ONLINE SURVEYS

If you want to increase the rate of return of e-mail and online surveys you should:

■ Personalize e-mail and Internet requests so people don’t think that they are part

of a mass mailing. Include a real contact person’s name, affi liation, and e-mail.

Including this type of personal information will help respondents trust the survey.

■ For Web surveys, create an introduction page that will motivate respondents to fi ll

out the survey and assure them that it will be easy to answer. The introduction page

should have a personal contact for any questions about the survey.

■ Start with an easy fi rst question.

■ Provide specifi c instructions for each question.

■ Test your survey on a range of browsers and resolutions. Design your questions so

they will be readable on systems with different resolutions.

■ Conduct a small pilot test of your online survey with actual respondents before you

release it broadly. Verify that there are no technical or usability problems.

■ Provide some form of progress on Web surveys so the respondents know where

they are in the survey.

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40 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design

it to the members of their group. Make sure that your company has decided that

it’s okay to send surveys to customers before the surveys go out, and include

appropriate cover letters from the account representatives.

EDITOR’S NOTE: EXAMPLES OF OTHER SAMPLING

TECHNIQUES

In addition to snowball sampling, there are other approaches to sampling for surveys as

well as other data collection methods. Here are some other sampling approaches:

■ Quota sampling where you try to obtain respondents in relative proportion to their

presence in the population.

■ Dimensional sampling where you try to include respondents who fi t the critical

dimensions of your study (e.g., time spent on the Internet, age, shops online for

gifts).

■ Convenience sampling where you choose the easiest and most accessible people

who meet the basic screening criteria.

■ Purposive sampling where you choose respondents by interest or typicality.

Samples that meet the specifi c goals of the study are sought out, for example, if

you are trying to understand how experts in a particular fi eld make decisions, you

might seek out the “best of the best” and use them for your interviews.

■ Extreme samples where you want people who have some exceptional knowledge,

background, or experience that will provide a special perspective.

■ Heterogeneous samples in which you choose the widest variety of people pos￾sible on the dimensions of greatest interest (e.g., you might choose people from

many industries and experience ranges).

SELF SELECTION

You usually can’t control who responds to your survey, so the people who take

the time to fi ll out the questionnaire are the people who choose to do so. These

motivated people may be exactly the people who are suffi ciently interested in

your Web site that they’ll be your regular users, but there are many reasons for

not returning a survey. For instance, people who have been dissatisfi ed with your

Web site may not want to waste their time providing you with information, but

you especially want to know what problems caused their dissatisfaction. People

who are motivated to provide feedback may have signifi cantly different usage

behavior than other users.

Self selection should be a concern, and you want to minimize it, but don’t view

it as a reason not to conduct a survey. Any user study will have some limita￾tions, and sampling problems are a common one. Carefully document which

target groups did and did not receive the survey, and write down the reasons you

think people may not have responded. Include this information in your survey

results, and factor these limitations into your design recommendations based

on the survey. You will often fi nd that you can have fairly high confi dence in

your results despite self-selection problems.

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