eChunks 2

“In the ideal process, you'd first conduct competitive testing to get deep insights into user needs and behaviors with the class of functionality you're designing. Next, you'd proceed to parallel design to explore a wide range of solutions to this design problem. Finally, you'd go through many rounds of iterative design to polish your chosen solution to a high level of user experience quality. And, at each step, you should be sure to judge the designs based on empirical observations of real user behavior instead of your own preferences. (Repeat after me: "I am not the Audience.")”----Jakob Nielsen

        In this article, Nielsen illustrates a new way to increase usability: “Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability”.  Before reading this article, I seldom think of conducting competitive testing to get to know the users’ needs. Or say, I have little knowledge about competitive testing. Questionnaire, observation, and user testing are the methodology we often use to gain feedbacks. But these are the testing for a design prototype. Competitive testing is conducted before we actually design the product. I can see the advantage by using this method to get deep insights into user needs. That is, by analyzing existing software/products, you pick up useful information among them, no need to spend resources by creating a new one only to find out the users actually do not need that.  And this method is essential because it may save large amounts of human and capital resources to develop initial models in the first place. When design a new product or apps for customers, every step in design should be considered and supported by strong research evidence. Never take things as granted. Every decision should be supported by research.

        After competitive testing, conduct parallel design to expand the ideas. In a parallel design process, either a person or a team can quickly scratch a few version of the initial interface. Nielsen mentions that the interface in this process needs not to be detailed. It can be a rough prototype. The idea for this design method is to explore many possible interfaces for the software. Notice that Nielsen also mentions 5 is probably the maximum.  After testing these different interfaces, merge the good features into one instead of identifying a winner.

        Finally, proceed with iterative design to polish the merged design.

        With Nielsen’s methodology for increasing usability, we can avoid being trapped in a “best” idea.