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Reverb Usability. Blink UX Study and Reverb User Experience. Jeff Siarto UI/UX Design, NASA Earth Data Team. Overall Performance. DAAC Sites and Reverb. Information Architecture & Nomenclature Navigation Framework Branding & Visual Style Content Layout & Web Writing
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Reverb Usability Blink UX Study and Reverb User Experience Jeff Siarto UI/UX Design, NASA Earth Data Team
Overall Performance DAAC Sites and Reverb • Information Architecture & Nomenclature • Navigation Framework • Branding & Visual Style • Content Layout & Web Writing • Lists, Details & Comparisons • Buttons & Links • Forms & Data Entry • Feedback & Error Handling, Guidance & Help • Home Page • Site Search • Data Search & Acquisition (scenarios) Reverb Usability
Usability Improvements • Information architecture & nomenclature • Use consistent, unambiguous, low-acronym nomenclature • Facilitate easy comparison in lists of data sets and tools • Simplify download & ordering process • Communicate scope of site search and any (data) alternatives
Usability Improvements • Include section overview pages in navigation menus • Show clear NASA branding and reduce confusion around the presence of related organizations’ branding and navigation elements • Streamline hand-offs to Reverb (from other Earth Data sites)
Usability Improvements • Give pages a strong visual hierarchy, and emphasize the primary call-to-action • Write concise, structured, front-loaded and user-centered text • Use progressive disclosure to communicate the key message first, and further information one-click-away
Usability Improvements • Make help focused & contextual, concise, easily-accessed and minimally disruptive • Employ a contextual glossary covering acronyms and more
How Did Reverb Fare? • Could have been better… • Focusing on our poorest scores • 45 on Data Search & Acquisition? Oh no! How did that happen? • Let’s look at some specifics
Who are these guys? • Seattle-based UX Research and Design • Heuristics, Usability Testing and Eye Tracking • Impressive Clients • Boeing • Adobe • Starbucks • Amazon
What is Usability? • Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use • Utility is an attribute that assesses if an interface does what users need • Utility + Usability = Useful
Why We Care About Usability • If a website is difficult to use, people leave • If a user gets lost on a website, they leave • If a website can’t answer a user’s question, they leave
Why We Care About Usability • Investing 10% of a project’s budget on usability will (on average) double a website’s desired quality metrics • This means… • Cutting training budgets in half • Doubling employee transactions per hour • Doubling sales or the number of registered users • Double the amount of happy earth scientists
Who is Reverb’s audience? • Do we want to cater to allusers? • Processing level is a interesting discriminator
Key Findings • Improve help text and tooltips • Re-work order process • Too many steps and inconsistencies • “Billing contact” and “Cart” confused with pay services • More on this later… • Improve map selection
Low-Hanging Fruit This is one way we are taking an high severity problem and converting it to an actionable NCR within Reverb
Our Plan • Start with low-hanging fruit • What can we fix easily? • Translate critiques into NCRs • Prioritize and schedule in upcoming sprint • Incorporate Feedback into Operational Concepts • As we propose larger scale changes to Reverb, lets keep this in mind • Data Access and Ordering Workflow Re-work • Think about long-term fixes • If collections are hard to find, let’s redesign from the ground up. • Let’s call in for support
Our Activities So Far • Low-hanging Fruit • 10 NCRs generated directly from Blink feedback • Tagged in our tracking tool, Test Track Pro • Scheduling work for an upcoming sprint • Order Workflow Operations Concept • Back to the drawing board • Small, but impactful changes
In Summary • We appreciated the feedback • We want to be accessible to a wide variety of users with different levels of prior knowledge • We are making short term and longer term plans to incorporate the evaluation’s findings • We are planning to spend more time on usability and design moving forward
Usability Ombudsman • I’m here to help with design, UX and usability issues and questions • Will be working with DAACs, Earth Data& ECHO/Reverb Teams • jeff@element84.com