“Usability dagene 05″ day 2 roundup part 2
Knife, mushrooms, voodo doll, beer mats, two crushed bisquits and a 1997 FLSchmidt brochure: Eric Reiss was the major highlight of day two (Thomas already blogged about it).
I learned a lot from Rolf Molich. On his slides he had a quote that was new to me:
Cowboy programmers don’t need no stinkin’ usability
Fantastic! Other points he made: Expert reviews have better value for money than usability testing. Work on the copy can make wonders. Five users are not enough to catch 85% of the usability problems.
I asked him to elaborate on the latter, as Jakob Nielsen originally posted the article back in 2000 (why you only need to test with five users). Rolf Molich is states that you need to test with more than 50 users to catch all major usability problems. I asked how he could say that a usability problem was major if only one of 50 had a problem?
His point is that a test with five users never gets around all the corners of a website. Five users is not enough to find usability problems in rare error messages, rarely used functionality, etc.
I totally agree: We can never be sure of catching everything unless we test rigorously. My final comment is that this emphasizes the value of expert reviews. Expert reviews gain value because of people like Jakob Nielsen, Rolf Molich, Jared Spool, etc.: Because they publish usability findings!
Also Benjamin Gundgaard, CustomerSense gave a fantastic presentation about e-commerce and usability on a commercial website. He had good examples in his presentation with a few well-documented numbers.
In e-commerce, up to 98% of the people that get to your site, drop out before the purchase. Only two percent buys something. Thats what is called conversion rate. Amazon which is best-in-class has a conversion rate on 8-12%.
(Illustration from CustomerSense website)
Scandlines did usability work on the checkout process (where typically 60-80% drop out before a purchase). The amount of online payments climbed 91% in five months after the redesign.
He had lots of details on a Danish travel site (I’m not sure I can mention the name here). One of the points: The icons were hard to understand. Use text labels with icons — a point we made earlier in this blog: The importance of labels: Usability work at microsoft.
Other points: Make all costs visible upfront. Tell why you want their email and phone number. Pictures are extremely important. Online purchase of travel is like a dream in the head of a customer.
Benjamin’s presentation reminded me that DR has an inteviewed Amazon’s chief scientist Andreas Weigend. The interview is public available and is in English. (One advice: DR’s player works best with Internet Explorer/windows).
Jon Lund of FDIM has a roundup in Danish “Smil til brugerne” (thanks for linking to this blog ;-)).
Technorati tags: usability conference event ericreiss rolfmolich jakobnielsen usabilitydagene
December 19th, 2005 at 20:31 (GMT-1)
Dear Jesper & Thomas.
Thanks for your positive remarks on my presentation about e-commerce, usability and online buying experiences :-)
Best, Benjamin
October 3rd, 2006 at 13:23 (GMT-1)
[…] It’s a hard dilemma to choose between tracks, especially at this conference. For example, I chose Luke Wroblewski over Jeff Patton’s “Bringing User-Centered Design Practices into Agile Development Projects” . Also, Rolf Molich’s sessions were already filled up, so my options were narrowed down. I saw Rolf last year at “Usability Dagene” (my notes), and he is always interesting and insightful. […]
February 16th, 2007 at 15:31 (GMT-1)
[…] Well, oddly enough, I remember that Rolf put it differently at the Danish usability conference a year ago. At that time his conclusion was to test with 50 users. This is what I wrote after his presentation: Five users are not enough to catch 85% of the usability problems. […]