Presented October 27, 2009, at a meeting of the Atlanta chapter of the Society for Technical Communication

Referenced resources

• What is user-centered design? from Usability Professionals Association
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
• Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation by Anne Gentle
• STC Atlanta’s Usability Workshop, which will occur on November 14, 2009 for only $25 (includes lunch)
• STC Content Strategy SIG, organized by Rahel Bailie

RefreshAugusta: User Centered Design from Chris Harrison on Vimeo.

This presentation was delivered at RefreshAugusta on July 22, 2009.

Here’s the write-up from the RefreshAugusta site:

Nobody ever set out to build a Web site that’s difficult to use. Even so, many sites prove to be frustrating for the very people they’re built to serve. When we design without a clear and proven understanding of the site’s audience–or with our own preferences and biases unchecked–we put the overall usability and effectiveness of the site at jeopardy.

In this presentation, Will Sansbury overviews user-centered design, a process that infuses concern for the audience into every step of creating a site or software product. He shares practical tools for learning about your audience initially, checking your decisions against your understanding of the audience throughout the design process, and gauging the effectiveness of your final design using qualitative usability testing.

As an information architect on the WhatsUp Gold team at Ipswitch, Will has experimented with integrating user experience design into the Scrum software development process. Because he’s a practitioner first, he has a pragmatic, from-the-trenches view that makes user experience and user-centered design approachable to designers and developers of all skill levels.

Note: In the video, I talk about the cost of running usability testing at SPSU. The numbers I tossed out were completely speculative; I don’t have any idea what it costs to run tests in their lab. But if you’re looking for a safe way to explore usability testing for your projects, the Usability Center at SPSU is a fantastic resource.