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I had the honor of presenting once again at the UPA Boston User Experience Conference. My slides are embedded below, but I encourage you to view the slides on SlideShare, as the transcript of the talk is included in the ‘Notes’ tab below the slides.

Designing for People Who Struggle with Reading and Attention

Imagine you’re almost done with your taxes—but you’re ravenous and the smell of Indian food is wafting through your window, your electricity is randomly turning off for 30-second blips, and the neighbor’s infant is incessantly scream-crying. How successful will you be finishing your taxes? This session included simulations so you can get a sense of reading as a low-decoder, and of completing web-based tasks when you lack the ability to filter out distractions and/or struggle with short-term memory. We observed usability test session video clips of some of the obstacles introduced by interface design choices. You can’t design effectively for low literacy and attention disorders if you don’t understand how these issues affect people as they try to work online. We looked at good and poor design implementations of forms, touch and ajax interactions, search interfaces, and layout choices. I hope the talk helps people improve design for as much as 15% of audiences.

References in Presentation

Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Handbook of self-regulation: research, theory, and applications. New York: Guilford Press.

CDC Data & Statistics | Feature: Developmental Disabilities Increasing in US. (n.d.). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved May 6, 2012, from http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsDev_Disabilities/

H.L. Chace, 1956. Anguish Languish. by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.

Resources in Presentation

Captcha Alternatives

http://www.evengrounds.com/developers/alternatives-to-captcha
http://webaim.org/blog/spam_free_accessible_forms/
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2011/03/25/fk-captcha/

Writing and Plain Language

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/
http://www.centerforplainlanguage.org/
http://www.centerforplainlanguage.org/aboutpl/guidelines.html
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/wordsuggestions/simplewords.cfm
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/539/1/

The slides and links below are from a presentation at UPA Boston Mini-Conf 2011.

Tools mentioned in the presentation

Clickstream Data

• Google Analytics (robust clickstream data)
• Adobe Omniture (robust clickstream data)
• IBM CoreMetrics (robust clickstream data)
• CrazyEgg (heat maps)
• ABTests.com (A/B testing)
• Google Website Optimizer (A/B and multivariate testing)
• Facebook Insights
• Social Bakers Facebook Statistics

Competitive Data

• Google Insights for Search (search term trends)
• Compete.com (competitor search term data)
• Google Keywords Finder Tool

Surveys

• 4Q (customer satisfaction survey)

Resources mentioned in the presentation

• Google Analtyics Event Tracking Guide (tracking non-html events such as PDF downloads and Flash movie plays)
• Search Patterns: Design for Discovery (book by Peter Morville and Jeffrey Callender)

People mentioned in the presentation

Dana Chisnell
@danachis
Co-author: Handbook of Usability Testing
www.usabilityworks.net

Richard Dalton
@mauvyrusset
Presentation: A Practical Guide to Measuring the User Experience

Avinash Kaushik
@avinash
Blog Post: Rethink Web Analytics: Introducing Web Analytics 2.0

Lynne Polischuik
@lynneux
AnalyticsForUX.com

Erin Richey
@erinjo
Presentation: Qualitative / Quantitative – Learn More About Your Users With Web Analytics

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Two Banks

I needed to pay some bills. I went to check one account but couldn’t remember the password my husband said he’d changed it to. I clicked the forgot password link and was asked for my email address. I received an email with a link, which took me to a page where I could reset my password. I changed it and got into the account, but unfortunately, did not have enough in that bank account to pay the last bill, due the next day. Read the entire post: UX Stories: User Control

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Read the entire post: Looking for Affordances in TweetDeck

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