White papers

Kath Straub, PhD, CUA
Chief Scientist, HFI
Biography

Spencer Gerrol, MS, CUA
Executive Director, HFI
Biography

Designing the e-government experience through citizen-centered usability

Putting government online is one thing—creating websites that are easy to use is quite another. Kath and Spencer share principles and approaches from citizen-centered design to fulfill the potential of e-government. You'll learn about how to:

• Provide self-service
• Make it usable & meet citizen expectations
• Run your website like a business
• Apply "continuous" usability

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Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA
Chief of Technical Staff
Human Factors International
Biography

Kath Straub, PhD, CUA
Chief Scientist, HFI
Biography

5 Critical User Experience Design Trends for 2008

In this white paper, Susan Weinschenk and Kath Straub explore our top 5 trends in user experience design for 2008:

• Emotional design and persuasive architecture
• Designing for different generations
• User experience and human factors in healthcare
• Creating a joyful, effortless e-commerce experience
• Self service in e-government

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Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA
Chief of Technical Staff
Human Factors International
Biography

What have we learned? Looking back at 2007 – Highlights and takeaways from recent Human-Computer Interaction research

In this white paper, Susan Weinschenk examines 6 of our favorite studies and their practical impact on user experience design. Taken from HFI's Putting Research into Practice course, this includes research on:

• Trust factors in health Web sites
• Data-gathering methods for children
• Usable error messages on the Web
• Aesthetic perceptions of Web pages
• Eye gaze patterns for searching vs. browsing

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Phil Goddard, PhD, CUA
Executive Director
Human Factors International
Biography

The Business of UX Metrics: How to measure and manage the user experience

Businesses depend on metrics to make informed design decisions. Phil Goddard explains how HFI's evolving set of user experience metrics can help you:

• quantify best practices in design at a site, sub-site or page level
• prioritize your usability resources across a range of projects
• get valuable feedback quickly, in "design time"
• track and benchmark user experience over time
• learn how you score against your competitors
• synthesize your various user data streams into an integrated UX dashboard

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Apala Lahiri Chavan, MA, MSc, CUA
VP Asia
Human Factors International
Biography

Around the World with 14 Methods: Innovation and Culture

Is your company expanding into new markets or cultures? Contextual Innovation is HFI's systematic process to help you understand target markets and successfully introduce your products and services.

Apala shares many innovative consumer data-gathering techniques from the front-end of this new methodology. These techniques are particularly suited for international work in emerging markets, since getting people to speak their mind can be challenging in high-context, non-Western cultures.

You'll learn 14 data-gathering methods, including:

• Bollywood technique – a "dramatic" approach to usability testing
• Emotion tickets – a creative cultural probe
• Bizarre-bazaar – an informative performance method
• Funky facilitator – a new data collection approach

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Jeff Horvath, PhD, CUA
Executive Director
Human Factors International
Biography

Jerome Nadel, MS, CUA, CPE
Chief Experience Officer
Human Factors International
Biography

User experience in a Web 2.0 world...and what it means for your business

Web 2.0 refers to the new tools, applications, designs, and patterns of use that are turning the Web into a social user experience. But what does Web 2.0 mean for business strategy?

Jerome and Jeff explain how your company can benefit from Web 2.0 by designing a useful, relevant, compelling user experience for both customers and employees. Learn how:

• Businesses can use social collaboration technologies internally to improve communication, content creation, and distribution
• You can create a sense of community on your public-facing sites to draw customers in
• Principles of good design will change when creating social-based, collaborative interfaces (e.g. navigation, search, etc.)

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Dean Barker, MS, CUA
Executive Director
Human Factors International
Biography

User interface patterns: reusable solutions for design

User interface (UI) patterns are reusable templates for interaction design. HFI's Dean Barker explains how UI patterns ensure consistent designs that follow best practices, letting you focus on content and user needs. Patterns are the foundation of a user interface design standard and address greater detail than styleguides. UI patterns offer many benefits:

• Capture best practices
• Designers have a reusable foundation to create interface designs
• Solve routine design problems
• Encourage rapid design exploration and prototyping
• Retain a valuable enterprise knowledge base

Learn how to:

• create a user interface pattern library
• demonstrate the business case for a pattern-based approach to UI design

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Mona Patel, MS, CUA
Executive Director
Human Factors International
Biography

Designing for conversion: Evaluating decision-making through HFI's usability PETscan

Mona intoduces a new methodology called "PETscan." She explores, through the lens of persuasion, emotion and trust, how consumers make decisions that lead to conversion.

The PETscan methodology provides a concrete means of understanding the various elements of the consumer experience.

• What motivates users to keep clicking through a transaction?
• What graphics elements inspire the "right" emotion?
• Are you following best practice principles around credibility and trust?

Web site conversion can be increased by designing for these underlying needs, whether the site is e-commerce, informational, or transactional.

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Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA
Chief of Technical Staff
Human Factors International
Biography

Trends in user-centered design: What you need to know in 2007 that can help your business

Susan Weinscheink of HFI explores the top 5 trends in user-centered design for 2007:

• Web 2.0: New social collaboration technology signals a radical shift for best practices of user experience design
• PETscan: Usability gets personal: how to increase conversion by designing for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust
• Contextual Innovation: A new methodology to guide product & service development for new markets – the next leap for usability
• User interface patterns: Don't miss this opportunity for cost savings and improved usability
• Usability scorecards and metrics: This is key to continuously improving the usability of your site or product

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Drew Falk, MS, CUA
Project Director
Human Factors International
Biography

Getting the Right Participants for a Usability Test

Drew Falk, Project Director at HFI, discusses effective, real-world methods to identify and acquire participants for a usability test, administered either in-person or remotely. Learn how you can effectively:

• Define who are (or will be) the users of your application or Web site.
• Determine how many test participants will be needed.
• Determine appropriate compensation.
• Establish criteria for selecting test participants and create a screener.
• Recruit participants effectively.

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Jerome Nadel, MS, CUA, CPE
Chief Experience Officer
Human Factors International
Biography

Giovanni Piazza
Global Director
KnowledgeWeb Program
Ernst & Young LLP
Center for Business Knowledge
Biography

Managing the knowledge behind business decisions through user-centered design – a case study

Jerome Nadel, HFI's Chief of Global Technical Process, and Giovanni Piazza, Ernst & Young's Global Director, Knowledge Web Program, explain why efficient access to knowledge is essential for global business operations. Giovanni discusses how his company realized its systems needed improvement – and why user-centered design proved to be the appropriate solution. This empirical approach to interface design/architecture enables effective business decisions.

The white paper looks at:

• The challenge of knowledge management at Ernst & Young
• Redesigning Ernst & Young's intranet based on a user-centered methodology
• Data-driven business decisions through user-centered design

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Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA
Chief of Technical Staff
Human Factors International
Biography

How to Find Your Executive Usability Champion

Making usability a mature discipline within your organization is a daunting task—you’re asking people to change. If you don’t have an executive champion, your efforts will be frustrating and slow at best, and at worst, fail entirely—no matter how compelling your argument or how many colleagues are behind you.

In this white paper Susan presents:

• The need for an executive champion
• Prerequisites for getting an executive champion
• What characteristics to look for in an executive champion
• How to get an executive champion and support him/her

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Apala Lahiri Chavan, MA, MSc, CUA
VP Asia
Human Factors International
Biography

Another Culture, Another Method

The paper explores the area of methods used in the design process and the need to adapt them for use in different cultures. Users will continue to be influenced by their unique cultures and thus user behavior will continue to vary cross-culturally. In particular, Ms. Chavan discusses the "Bollywood Method" of evaluating the usability of products and designs in India.

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Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA
Chief of Technical Staff
Human Factors International
Biography

Usability: A Business Case

In this paper, Susan Weinschenk, HFI's Chief of Technical Staff, makes the business case for usability, aligning usability efforts with the goals and needs of the organization, and finally implementing usability in a cost-effective way. She shares ideas, research, examples, and case studies, including:

• How do you make the case for usability in hard dollars?
• How can you convince others that your usability efforts are aligned with the needs of the organization?
• How do you engage in usability in a cost-effective way?

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Pat Malecek, AVP, CUA
User Experience Manager
A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.
Biography

From Inspiration to Action at A.G. Edwards

Pat Malecek, User Experience Manager, discusses how his team of Certified Usability Analysts (CUAs) were instrumental towards making usability a routine practice at A.G. Edwards.

Following many of the principles outlined in Dr. Eric Schaffer's new book Institutionalization of Usability: A Step-By-Step Guide, A.G. Edwards' CUAs provided design guidance, usability testing, standards development and training for both Web and Intranet applications.

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Hitesh Agrawal, MS, CUA
Project Manager, HFI
Biography

Abhijit Thosar, CUA
Project Director, HFI
Biography

Institutionalization of Usability at Anthem

Hitesh Agrawal and Abhijit Thosar of HFI discuss how Anthem, Inc. attained the training, standards, and resources they needed to create a sustained usability effort.

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Eric Schaffer, PhD, CUA, CPE
Founder and CEO, HFI
Biography

Kath Straub, PhD, CUA
Chief Scientist, HFI
Biography

Meeting the Demand for Usability Expertise: An Offshore Model

Eric Schaffer, CEO of HFI, and Kath Straub, Chief Scientist at HFI, discuss how you can create and utilize a "Center of Excellence" dedicated to realizing your company's development and design projects. Learn how you can staff a sustained usability effort.

The paper includes a 12-point checklist of critical success factors for the development of an offshore usability team.

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Dick Rubinstein, PhD, CUA
Managing Director
Human Factors International
Biography

A Successful Approach to Implementing a Corporate Web Design Standard

Dick Rubinstein, Managing Director at HFI, talks about the practices and processes that facilitate the organizational development needed to create a successful Web design standard.

The paper includes ten organizational secrets for implementing a successful Web standard.

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Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA
Chief of Technical Staff
Human Factors International
Biography

Mentoring for Mainstream Usability

In this paper, Susan Weinschenk, HFI's Chief of Technical Staff, talks about mentoring, the process by which an expert teacher/ practitioner quickly and significantly works with team leaders and members to take the group, organization or individual to the next level of strategy, knowledge or performance. The paper discusses:

• What mentoring is, and how it is different from consulting, training, or educating
• Examples of how mentoring can be used to move projects, people, and the organization forward to a new level
• Characteristics of successful mentors, mentored staff and programs
• How and why to start your own internal or external mentoring program
• Mentoring for usability strategies

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Jeff Lees, MS, CUA
Project Director
Human Factors International
Biography

RBC Royal Bank’s Online Banking Initiatives

HFI's Project Director, Jeff Lees, discusses RBC Royal Bank’s project for online banking initiatives. He details the high-level goals for the project and the steps that were taken to achieve these goals. The white paper walks through the process that was followed by HFI in support of the project and concludes with what steps are being taken at RBC Royal Bank to institutionalize usability.

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Wendy Yee, PhD, CUA
Project Director
Human Factors International Biography

The Value of an Expert Review

HFI's Project Director, Wendy Yee, discusses the rationale for Expert Reviews, basic criteria for their use, and best practice circumstances for employing the Expert Review as a diagnostic tool. Included in the white paper is a 5-Step Expert Review Checklist to help you determine if your site or application would benefit from an Expert Review.

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Colin Hynes
Director of Usability
Staples, Inc.
Biography

Keeping Users Stuck to Your Site

Colin Hynes discusses the effect of drop-off and how usability initiatives reduced drop-off at Staples.com by 73%.

This discussion begins with a definition of drop-off and moves into an explanation of the value of drop-off data. Then we delve into the correlation between drop-off and return on investment. Finally, we highlight two examples of Staples.com initiatives that were focused on reducing drop-off by using a systematic process of customer research and redesign.

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Phil Goddard, PhD, CUA
Director of Training, HFI
Biography

HFI Certification—Fulfilling Your Needs as a Practitioner

Usability is more and more critical to online success...

• but most developers have no formal training in it
• and most companies have no formal program for it.

HFI's Certified Usability Analyst program is aimed at developers who want up-to-date training for practical work in user-centered design, and acknowledgement for their years of hands-on experience. These are the certified paramedics of the field.

This program also allows employers to find and promote qualified individuals with authenticated skills in usability.

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Eric Schaffer, PhD, CUA, CPE
Founder and CEO, HFI
Biography

The Institutionalization of Usability

Executives who are interested in catching the next wave of the information age should hear this message. You will learn about the key differentiator for online success in the coming decade.

Dr. Schaffer discusses practical usability, The Third Wave of the Information Age, the institutionalization of usability, developing a holistic strategy, measuring success, and getting started.

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