Module:4 Project design lifecycle

Redesign project through the design lifecycle – Discovery - Define –

Design - Implement (Design Prototype) - Usability Testing
Introduction
• Imagine you have been asked to design an application to enable people to share
their photos, movies, music, chats, documents, and so on in an efficient, safe, and
enjoyable way. What would you do? How would you start? Would you begin by
sketching out how the interface might look, work out how the system
architecture should be structured, or start coding? Or, would you start by asking
users about their current experiences of sharing files and look at existing tools
• why and how you were going to design the application?
• Traditionally, interaction designers begin by doing user research and then
sketching their ideas
• It is not something that can be done overnight by following a checklist, but
requires practice in learning to identify, understand, and examine the issues
Issues in the existing sytem
Finding out what is problematic with existing
forms of navigating while driving, e.g. trying to
read maps while moving the steering wheel or
looking at a small GPS display mounted on the
dashboard when approaching a roundabout,
and how to ensure that drivers can continue to
drive safely without being distracted.
identifying usability and user experience goals is
a prerequisite to understanding the problem
space
Issues in existing system
• A large software company has decided it • The user experience researchers on the
needs to develop an upgrade of its web design team conduct an initial user study
browser for smartphones because its investigating how people use the company's
marketing team has discovered that many of web browser on a variety of smartphones.
the company's customers have switched over • They also look at other mobile web browsers
to using another mobile browser. on the market and compare their
• The marketing people assume something is functionality and usability.
wrong with their browser and that their rivals
• They observe and talk to many different
have a better product.
users. They discover several things about the
• But they don't know what the problem is with usability of their web browser, some of which
theirs. they were not expecting.
• The design team put in charge of this project
assume they need to improve the usability of
a number of the browser's functions
The following framework is intended to provide a set of core
questions to aid design teams in this process:
• Are there problems with an existing product or user experience?
• If so, what are they?
• Why do you think there are problems?
• How do you think your proposed design ideas might overcome these?
• If you have not identified any problems and instead are designing for a new user
experience, how do you think your proposed design ideas support, change, or
extend current ways of doing things?
Phases of Project Management life cycle
Initiation Phase
Implementation phase
Execution and closing phase
Redesigning
• Redesigning a usable site is not complicated, but the process is
lengthy and detailed.
• Process chart is used to keep track of it.
• A website redesign is the process involved in recreating a website,
either from scratch or through the use of pre configured templates.
• The decision to redesign a website should result in an enhanced user
experience through updated information, improved site navigation,
and more visually appealing design.
Redesign project through the design lifecycle

Phase 1: Understand Project

Phase 2: Analyze Process

Phase 3: Redesign Process

Phase 4: Implement Redesigned Process

Phase 5: Roll Out Redesigned Process

1. Understand Project- First, define and agree upon the library web site’s goals
2. Analyse-collect all the information we have or need to learn about patrons, their objectives and goals,
and how they typically perform their work, we need to clearly decide who we are serving. The people
who come to the library may be a homogeneous group or extremely diverse group. All of these groups
can be categorized and classified for analysis.
3&4 Redesign and Implement. To redesign, we take all the pieces that we’ve collected and reassemble
them into in our library web site so that it provides exactly what our newly defined patron groups expect
from a visit to the library
We are incorporating the implementation phase into our redesign phase because nowadays user-
centered redesign combines redesigning and programming in what are called iterations.
we redesign something and then test it immediately with users to determine how well our redesign is
user centered
During the redesign phase, try to incorporate as many tests with patrons as you can to determine the
accuracy of your redesign
5. Evaluation Phase The final phase in redesign is evaluation, or testing. usability best practices say that
you should try as often as possible to have real patrons perform typical, real tasks, preferably for the first
time, on the site and then determine how well the site allows them to do these tasks successfully
The aim of the redesign is to bring in positive
changes to the website or an app.
• To bring reformation in business.
• Improve user experience.
• Put more emphasis on content.
• Design optimization for the reading experience
• Optimization for search engines.
• Increase conversion rate.
• Surge speed.
• Add to the core accessibility features.
• Augment product engagement.
• Built sustainable engineering developments.
• Add the features of accessibility.
• Introduce new services.
• Empower the core community.
Why is it important to know who our patrons are?
• To prepare for redesign, we will need to target certain groups of
patrons. Then we will need to decide redesign objectives for each
group so we meet their specific needs.(Refer Redesign Process chart-
Patrons)
Who are your patrons?
• The steps are:
(1) broadly define all possible patron groups;
(2) write patron profiles, or personas;
(3) decide which keywords characterize each patron group; and
(4) use these keywords to determine the accuracy of the patron group
definitions
Patron
• someone who has a specific goal and personal characteristics that can be
categorized in some way.
• Patrons are characterized by personal attributes and by their own
behaviors, not by the tasks that they perform
Broadly define all potential patron groups

• Children
• Young adults (grades 7–12)
• Frequent library users
• Donors to the library
• Library volunteers
• College students
• Lifelong learners
• Staff
• Net surfers
• Community characters
• The underserved—migrants, nonnatives or people who speak English as a second language, the
homeless Foreign students using the Internet to stay in touch with home Meeting room users
from the community Board members
Example of academic library patron groups
• Faculty Graduate,
• doctoral students (academic researchers)
• Staff
• Undergraduate students—first two years
• Undergraduate students—last two years
• Adult undergraduates
• University and college administrators (who are also funders)
• Applied researchers
• Adjunct faculty
• Teachers
• Visiting scholars
• Human resource information seekers
• Members of governing boards
• Adult community members
• Special-interest groups
List of tasks by patrons
• Find reviews/reports
• Use Internet
• Check out videos or DVDs
• Do school projects
• Do research projects
• Get books
• Check out books
• Renew books
• Pay fines
• Read magazines
• Read newspapers
• Study
• Hang out with friends
• Participate in summer reading program
• Use community rooms
Receiving Patron feedback leads to fix up the problem

• Patrons, higher-ups, or other important people tell you that it looks

out of date.
• Patrons complain that they can’t easily find things.
• Patrons leave the site quickly without even trying
• Are they the patron groups you’ve targeted? If so, then you need to
focus on those patrons and tasks. If they are not targeted patrons,
then what are the implications about their perceptions?
Redesign decision checklist
List in order where your design strayed (easy to difficult ) :
Patrons: Are patron groups clearly defined? Are you focusing on patron
groups that are not targeted? Have new patron groups become important to
the library but their tasks and goals have not yet been accommodated within
the design?
Vision or conceptual model: Does the site have conceptual models? Do you
need to rearrange or edit existing conceptual models?
Library objects: Are patrons getting lost navigating the site? Can they find
library objects and views of library objects?
Tasks: If patron groups are correctly defined, are you clear on all the tasks by
patron groups? The most severe problem arises when the tasks cannot be
accomplished easily using the current interface. Are the tasks correct but you
need to reorganize by object or patch up the object views?
some easy fixes with pros and cons noted
• Graphical changes: Sometimes a site gets a “redesign” so that the
graphics are more modern or up-to-date.
• Language changes: Review and clarify the site’s use of terminology to
make sure patrons know what you’re talking about.
• Library object rearranging: Reassemble your library objects as much
as you can, make as many major library objects as you can visible
from everywhere
• Help documentation: Add some object-oriented help, FAQs, or a site
map. The authors are divided on the subject of site maps; Remember,
lots of patrons don’t use help, FAQs, or site maps
Detect your usability bottlenecks:

• Does your page have a clear visual hierarchy?

• Do all your website pages display correctly across different browsers?
Use Browsershots to check how your pages are displayed on different
versions of browsers
• Is your navigation easy to use? How structured is your navigation? Do you
use breadcrumbs to let users find their way around your site?
• Are your graphics optimized and do they load fast on the page?
• Is your website accessible for all users?
• Is your text-to-background contrast ratio suitable for visually impaired?
• Do you provide captions to your audio and video content? Use automatic
online tools like Web Accessibility and consult with our broad guide
on accessible and inclusive design here.
Detect your SEO bottlenecks:

• Do you know the most popular and relevant keywords for your
business? Do you use them across the pages?
• Are your titles and meta descriptions of suitable size?
• Is your website protected by HTTPS? Google ranks secure
communication higher in its search results.
• Are your URLs easily discoverable by Google’s spiders?
Use RankSider or similar tools to check.
Content

• If your audience doesn’t get the information it comes to your website for, you
need to create a content strategy.
• Content should be concise, comfortable to read and relevant to user request.
• Beyond the typos and grammatical errors, answer these questions for your
content.
Examples of tasks that will improve your content:
• Create at least four blog posts a month
• Hire experienced writers
• Develop a platform for user-generated content
• Raise your Flesch-Kincaid readability score to 60 points
Detect your content bottlenecks:

• Is your content relevant? Should the stated information be updated?

• Is your content written in a language understandable to your users?
• Does your content have a distinct voice? Is this voice consistent throughout
the whole website?
• Is your content easy to scan and read? Is it divided into paragraphs,
including bullet points, headlines, and blank spaces?
Solution:
• Building information architecture (IA) implies organizing your website in
the most user-friendly and intuitive way.
• Heatmaps, Google Analytics data, scroll depth tracking – all these will
smooth the progress of composing an IA that balances customer
satisfaction and business needs.
Sitemap
• A sitemap is a navigation of your new website, a list of its pages, their
relationships to each other.
• Not only does a sitemap organizes your site, it also helps search engine crawlers
find pages not accessible through links on other web pages
• Since all sitemap items should be organized in a hierarchical way, only linking
them to the right content can provide enough information about their
relationships.
 Create Revised Wireframes and Test with them
• After creating a sitemap, designers start building wireframes.
• Wireframes are simple blueprints of how content will be organized on each page.
• They are a step further from a sitemap and finally allow us to incorporate usability principles to
ensure that content is arranged to help company a achieve its goals.
• Since wireframes only exist to display and test your information architecture, they don’t usually
use any color, typography, or other distinctive visual elements. They should be minimalistic, easily
moldable
Usability evaluation and Testing
• Usability means evaluating users’ needs and requirements to create a product
that will be easy and comfortable to operate.
• According to Jakob Nielsen – the man often called “the king of usability” – the
main components of usability are: learnability, efficiency, memorability, handling
errors, and satisfaction.
• You should consider how your product will be perceived by a customer in the
early stages of product development (don’t confuse it with user acceptance
testing which is performed at the final stage of development before release).
Usability Testing
Develop a plan. Specify which section of a product the test will cover, indicate a specific purpose
and a series of questions to be answered, prepare the metrics (both qualitative and quantitative) to
measure the satisfaction levels and time spent to complete a task.
Recruit participants. There are two main conditions your test subjects should meet: They can’t be
involved in either the design or development of this product and they should represent your target
audience. You can use paid services to find eligible participants or engage people in real life – the
popular method called guerilla testing
Choose a moderating technique.
There are many techniques you can try, among which are thinking aloud testing and probing questions during
or after a test. thinking aloud testing means simply verbalizing their thoughts as they move through the user
interface.
Run a pilot test.
To make sure that the equipment and your note-taking method suit the job and that you are sure how well
participants will understand your scenarios, conduct a pilot test a couple of days before your first test session.
Review Question
• For any given scenario, Discuss in detail the five phases involved in
the redesigning of the project.