Understanding Usability

It was sad news that Steve Jobs lost his fight with Pancreatic Cancer last week. We wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the things that Jobs (and Apple) brought to usability and customer experience.

It is widely agreed that Steve Jobs designed “insanely great products”, many of which have revolutionised the way in which we interact with technology and create and consume digital content today. Many of these products could be described as ‘disruptive technologies’ i.e. technologies that were game changers disrupting existing markets. For example, the popularisation of the ipod and iTunes changing how we consume music, the Apple LaserWriter printer combined with true type fonts and PageMaker software (made by Aldus, now Adobe) started desktop publishing, making the mobile web accessible and sticky through it’s applications for the masses through the iphone etc. Apple products may not have always been the first of their kind but they were usually the first of their kind that were both easy to use and widely purchased. Whilst there were many engineers involved in the creation and design of Apple products, there can be no debate that Steve Jobs was an influential force in Apple's successes.

In 1984 Jobs unveiled the Macintosh computer to a very excited audience which fast became the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface and a mouse.

Steve Jobs introduces the Mac 1984

The Macintosh computer through its use of a graphical user interface and a mouse provided people with a mental model to understand how to use it through it’s metaphor of a desktop, folders and icons etc. It should be acknowledged that this new interface within the early Apple products revolutionised the usability of computers exponentially. Whilst many other engineers were solely focused on the technology, Jobs understood the value of considering the people you are designing technology for.This sentiment can be seen by the promotional material for The Lisa, the predecessor of the Macintosh, as “the personal computer that works the way you do”. From the iPad, to the iPhone, to the iPod, Jobs and Apple continuously delivered products that were easy to use and easy to love.

Jobs also understood the value of creating exceptional customer experiences. He infused Apple with a culture that valued design and cared about the details. According to Jobs: Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

This consideration of how things worked went beyond the design of products. Not only did Apple focus on the design of exceptional products, they also considered every part of the purchasing process, both before and after you open the beautifully designed box. Apple's retail service has been meticulously considered and designed across the entire customer life-cycle. Got a problem with your Apple device? Make an appointment with the Genius bar where an Apple Genius will assist you. Need some help with how to use your new Macs’ inbuilt movie making software? Book in for some training. (NB The inclusion of software with computers too was an early Apple innovation). If you ring technical support and give them your serial number they will know your name and when your warranty expires. The personal service you get when you go to an Apple store and talk to a customer representative about your needs gives you confidence that you are investing in the right solution for you. It’s this understanding on the entire customer experience, the focus on ‘details’ and ‘how things work’ that make customers feel valued and create customer advocacy. Apple makes buying their easy to use products easy.

This holistic approach can also be seen by Apples’ investment and evolution of iTunes and it’s associated services and sister products. Through iTunes, Apple was able to develop a content and product eco-system (a Product-Service-System) combining their products with services, creating a lucrative business model which others are trying to emulate. Through a tightly coupled integration between multiple hardware devices, media storage, indexing, acquisition and consumption, Apple has all bases covered. With iTunes and it’s associated devices one can discover, purchase, download and then consume content in minutes, on one device without leaving your armchair. The fact that you can even purchase and consume media through iTunes on your PC is testimony to the fact that they think beyond just their products.

This meticulous attention to detail, a focus on how thing work, the requirement for well designed products, and the intentional design of customer interactions across multiple touch-points all contribute to superior customer experiences and unprecedented customer advocacy for Apple. Further, we can all thank Steve Jobs for popularising the idea amongst his business contemporaries that better design makes both sense and cents (well more like dollars)!

Steve Jobs was a true innovator, a brilliant designer who really understood what people need and a remarkable entrepreneur. Thank you Steve, you will be missed.

Jax Wechsler, October, 2011.

By Esse Spadavecchia on 3 August 2011

Recently at Objective Digital we have had a plethora of financial clients asking for usability testing with our eye-tracking facilities as well as larger focus-groups to ascertain people’s views on finances and their attitudes towards banking online.

This is a good thing. Actually it’s a great thing. For one, as a banking customer of a couple of our client’ banks, I’m overjoyed that they’re interested in hearing what their end-users have to say... and what’s more they’re really listening. Secondly, it’s good for business. And we do love that really. But how did this all come about?

How did we instil the need for usability testing?

There was a long period of time when the words Usability Testing and User Centred Design were just hot jargon being played with in the industry… I don’t think our clients really knew how they would make improvements following usability testing sessions or include the outcomes in the process.

So what changed?

Well for one, the User Experience (UX) industry started evolving to a point where their deliverables weren’t just a 98-page Word document with detailed findings that no one would ever read…

Yep, we started wizening up to the fact that nobody likes to read lengthy documents, whether they are online or printed and bound. Even if you did put your super snazzy company logo in the top left corner with scented spray.

Now there was GOLD in those documents. Literally thousands of magic pointers that, if followed to the nose, would make your site grow a cape and take off faster than Superman... but who has time to read? Let alone work out a strategy for what gets done first and who should be responsible for it all.

And then what?

Deliverables became PowerPoint presentations and findings became bullet points of highlights. Graphs and tables with summaries became the norm. Edited short video clips of usability testing and eye-tracking accompanied every document.

Suddenly our clients were taking notice. One of our clients went on to say that our report was the ‘Best report I’ve ever read, tells the story in a way that makes absolute sense. We can’t wait to do this for all our products’.

 This was the hot tamale they’ been looking for. This was actionable. This they could deal with and still get home in time to watch Master Chef. Winner.

As an example we delivered a 28-page preso to one of our clients recently, most of which consisted of links to snippets of users talking about what they liked and what they didn’t like. The chief programme guy got it immediately. He stood up, shook our hand and said “Guys, I know what we need to do. It’s so obvious”. I know we keep saying it, but yes, the users’ voice speaks a million words… Even more so that an image, even if it’s of Paris Hilton.

So we started fashioning all our final presentations as such.

• Short overviews, executive summaries.
• Stats on what people liked, where they failed, what they wanted.
•  All accompanied by video and eye-tacking data, as well as heatmaps and gazeplots.
• Then end it off with an actionable list of what needs to be done, and prioritise it by user-need vs. business-need vs. technical complexity and you have a winner.
• With a cherry on top.

So now our clients keep coming back to us. Not only because we’re lovely and generally very good-looking, but also because we actually deliver something they can act on. The guy at the top gets it because he can fashion a business case from it. The manager of the programme gets it because he can work it into his project timeline and of course the designer and propeller-heads get it because it’s actionable and they can action it. Simple.

So now our clients know usability testing is good. Not only because they are hearing the voice of their customers, but also because now they know what to do about it. Brilliant.

At the end of the day it’s the deliverables that are evolving… we forget in the UX industry that our clients have other stuff to read too (no! really?). And we are very, very clever, but it means nothing if people can’t do something with it.

It’s like getting a stunning villa in France vacuum packed and bubble wrapped with limited instructions (in French) as to how to get it up and install the plumbing… it’s bound to be abandoned.

And you probably won’t buy a villa from the same people again.

So go forth grasshopper, and create shorter presentations and deliverables with real impact!

Being a Sydney-based UX company we do heaps of work in finance, particularly with online forms. Typically an online form, usually comprising multiple screens, will present some design challenges:

- collect all the required data, while being as short as possible

- collect accurate (formal) data, while using everyday (informal) language

- give the user a sense of control, while demanding intricate details (in a linear order).

Modern form design is a creative art to ensure that people (a) complete the process without deciding to give up and (b) feel emotionally positive after completing the process; if the customer feels the process was demanding and tiring, and even, well, *degrading* because of the personal disclosure to an inhuman interlocutor, then chances are your customer relationship is spoiled from the start. 

Recently we were designing a form in a workshop with a client and we discovered a design issue that demonstrated some of these competing demands, and we ended up with perhaps an unusual solution. The form, like many others, required some disclosure of the financial position of the customer. Part of this was their employment details. The form we had sketched had fields for 'employer' and 'job title'. Our client explained that actually they need the 'job type' and not the 'job title'. Job types are selected from a (long) list and are things like:

Whereas job titles are free text entry and are things like:

You can see that 'job titles' often carry a sense of identity and can infer status (there's more Senior and Principal UX professionals than Standard ones ;-) whereas 'job types' are averaging. Chances are that declaring a job title leads to a little flush of pride whilst declaring a job type leads to a little bit of reflection. With the form in question, and indeed with any form design, we want to keep the user feeling just chipper whilst they fill it in (there's always some checkboxes that the client wants them to tick, right?). We felt that swapping 'job title' for 'job type' would take too much shine off the emotional wellbeing of our customer during this particular engagement. We decided to leave in 'job title' so people could tell us something special about their work, and then collect 'job type' straight after**.

Asking for data that you don't need - the fake field - is of course artifice, and maybe could be considered a patronising lie that breaches the spirit of trust that should exist between user and provider… but seen in a different way it is quite usual to gather extra, incidental information. In a conversation, with a real person, without a computer screen and an un-emotional form in the way, people get a sense of dialog and emotional engagement from the interaction. A lot of extra information is transferred in the process of managing the interpersonal interaction. When designing a form, we acknowledge the compromises compared to that proper human engagement, and we look for ways in which we can take tiny steps back towards where we prefer to be. In this case, the 'job title' field is not data that gets kept, but it's still important to ask someone; could you imagine asking someone what sort of job they had but not asking what they actually do? Even though it compromised our key goal of a short, fast form, sometimes satisfaction is more important than plain old efficiency.

Can you think of other examples where a fake field might help the experience?

* not really

** (we'd love to test this out and see if a form with 'job title' has higher satisfaction ratings than one with just 'job type' - maybe one day we will - for now we're just measuring the form against performance goals)

Jon Duhig is a Grand Wizard at Objective Digital

It's official, the Next Generation for Qantas has no people.

I am presently sitting on a flight from Sydney to Melbourne with Qantas. I have just had the most uncertain airport check in experience of my life. 

From the moment I entered the departure hall, until I boarded the aircraft, every step left me with unanswered questions.

Qantas are redefining the future of flying. In a world where airlines are too expensive to run and companies spend money coping with legal action and bad press, the hunger for profit has finally meant that we customers are left to deal directly with poorly designed technology, instead of having a lovely person as a buffer between sanity and IT.

It all started when I couldn't find the check in desk!

As I entered the airport, I saw a strange looking wooden structure in the centre of the room. On which, all the signs pointed to the right and there was no indication of what I was supposed to do.

As I am 6' 6'' I need extra legroom and therefore I have to see someone at a desk so they can ask me if I am happy to be the first one out of the exit when the engine falls off.

So, the first question presented itself "What's going on here?" 

When I finally found the check in kiosks, they were all standing in a diagonal row. Prompting the next question, "Where do I line up?" 

When a kiosk was free I presented myself and chose to enter my name, the only information I had about my flight, as Kylie had booked it for me. It found my booking!

I was fairly impressed. It looked quite usable.

So, I continued with the kiosk's process that was clearly indicated with steps on a timeline at the top of the screen.

That's where usability ended and stress took hold.

It started talking about Q Bag Tags. I was thinking 'what is a Q Bag Tag and how many extra bag tags do I need?' I thought they must have one at the counter for me, so I ordered 2. But I had three bags... then, to my surprise, it started printing bag tags... ah, it prints bag tags, I realised... Thanks for telling me! I had no idea what a bloody Q Bag Tag was, nor was I aware that there were no counters anymore.

Then another question arose, "Where do I go to put it on my bag? Do I just go and stand over there and do it?" I actually saw one guy put his tags on in front of the kiosk... this met with disapproval from passengers in the queue!

Then, after an uncertain wait, a few bag receipts were printed and my boarding pass was printed out, indicating the end of the process at the kiosk. I walked off with 2 bag tags and 3 bags. I then asked one of the 3 staff I found on the floor of the busy departures hall, 'where do I get another bag tag?' She said, 'didn't you get three? Go back and use your boarding pass to get another tag.' 

I murmered to myself.. why didn't it confirm that when I was at the kiosk the first time?  I went back over to the kiosk and looked for the boarding pass option to get started. Nothing in the list... I entered my name again.

Then I went through the whole process again and got another bag tag.

Now, what do I do about oversized baggage?

I thought, I can't go over to the bag drop because no one is there to help me.

Blood pressure rising, I found another person, and after waiting for a few minutes, they took me to a little terminal in the middle of the room, took a sticker off the oversized baggage tag and entered it into the system. She said, I need to know how heavy the bag is, and I told her it was 20 kg.. She trusted me ;)

Then she said, "Are you going to put this [roll up display poster] in as over sized baggage?" "I don't know", I said. "Do I need to?"

So next I went over to the bag drop off area and pressed a few buttons and weighed the only bag I had. Thats when the system told me I was 13 kg over weight and it was going to cost me $130. A kick in the guts after all this mucking around.

My non-oversized bag shushed off down the conveyor.  I was wondering "will I see it again?"

So I looked at the bag drop interface.... where do I pay the $130 oversized back fee please? Nothing…

I asked another staff again...And do you know what she said?!

"At the [f***ing] kiosk!"

Back to the kiosk I went. And as I approached the kiosk for the third time, an old guy who approached from the other direction accused me of taking his spot! Line the kiosks up on the wall please Qantas!

Then the same staff member I had spoken to twice already came over and said "You're back again!'. I laughed... and thought "idiot".

This time I worked out how to scan my silly boarding pass instead of typing in my name. Yes, it took me three visits to work this out!

I paid my money.

Then, I had to take my big bags over to the overly busy oversized baggage counter. Of course it was busy, no one was checking the bags carefully. I left my very expensive eye tracker equipment on the floor with a pile of other oversized bags, all sitting there together, hoping they make it to Melbourne.

How did I feel now?

I left the check in area anxious and shaking. I was wondering whether I would get my flight on time and I had arrived at the airport 75 minutes early!

Plus after all that, I had forgotten to get more leg room! And what's more when I got on the plane the exit rows were basically empty!

When I got to the other end waiting at the conveyor belt to pick up my baggage, I felt certain it wasn't going to arrive. Fortunately it did. 

 So why did all this go wrong?

1) Keep people informed 

With processes like this, that have only a few staff managing hundreds of transactions. One hundred percent of passenger types should be catered for by one hundred percent of the system. If this isn't possible then the passengers need to be clearly informed about what to do at every step of the way on both the interface they are using and in the physical environment around them.

2) Test everything

My guess is that Qantas made sure that the interfaces on the machines, that require interaction, work really well, but they didn't link the machines together at an overall process level.

3) Time in motion 

Qantas also didn't consider the physical movement of people and put the wrong transactions on the wrong machines.  Why should I have to go back and line up at a busy kiosk to pay for excess baggage when I have already dropped my bag off!!

4) Help!

Qantas took all the staff away before the glitches in the system were ironed out.

It is obvious to me that different people where responsible for each of my interactions with Qantas and its technology interfaces during check in. I am sure that the program manager on the Next Gen project was too busy to consider all the parts of the puzzle at a high level and I guess that they didn't have a team that was responsible for the overall customer experience.

I am sure the checkin kiosk and website were usability tested in isolation and the rest was left to engineers and builders.

So long... 

I am looking forward to my Virgin Blue flight home and I will not be flying Qantas again.

All these things could have been avoided with some pre planning, testing with passengers, clear signage and more staffing.

This form of customer abuse is simply irresponsible.

If you have had a similar experience, then vote with your feet.

James Breeze is the Chief Experience Officer of Objective Digital, a Sydney based user expience consultancy. www.ObjectiveDigital.com

Keep it simple.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33347893/Usability-Test-Kickoff-Meeting-Questions

"They're Too complicated!"

That’s the most common mistake we see in tasks for a usability test. You want the test participant to focus on the website, not the tasks. Too complicated and the participant will be interacting with you, not with the website. Plus, when they'll keep forgetting the task if it is too long.http://img.skitch.com

 

These are our 10 guidelines for developing simple, effective and uncomplicated tasks for a usability test:

1 Relate each task to test objective

You don’t have many opportunities – generally only 1 hour with the participant, so keep the task focused on the purpose of the test. If the purpose is to test whether users can complete an order, get them to do just that. You should be able to tick off each of the test objectives against a task.

2 Select scenarios that rate high on frequency and/or importance

You may have only 6-8 tasks in a test, so focus on the important tasks. Find something and check out.

For a new site, you generally want to test the primary purpose of the site – find a product and check out, sign up for something, find the answer to something.

3 Don’t make them too complicated

We've said it before, but its important. Keep it simple, preferably to one or two sentences:

Example: You want to book a holiday for your family. Find a holiday that suits you.

4 Be as realistic as possible

Try to make the task suit the participant’s real life circumstances. That’s why you have recruited them against certain criteria. For example, don’t have people look for a holiday for an imaginary family – get them to use their own family or friends.

If you have very different user groups, say, Customer and Advisers on a banking site, you need two sets of tasks. One for each group.

5 Move from general to specific

You don’t want to lead the participant around the website by the sequence of tasks. It’s better to have an open exploratory task first to see how the participant interacts with the website.  Then, move to the more specific tasks, based on the objectives and the new functionality.

6 Avoid using the words on the website

Using words on the website leads people. Try to write the task in everyday language.

Example: You want to take out your superannuation NOT You want to consolidate your super.

7 Use concrete language

As much as possible, use active verbs to describe the task - Book a hotel in Rome; Buy a Xmas present for your partner; Find out the weather forecast for today.

8 Follow a logical flow through the website

Try to make the test follow a natural customer journey from start to finish. For example, on an e-commerce site, the customer may explore, compare, purchase, create an account, and check out. Your test should follow this sequence.

9 For information tasks, instruct the participant on how to end

Don't leave the participant floundering when they have reached the end of the task. Have the participant tell the facilitator when they have found the answer.

Example: Find a cruise which interests you. Tell the facilitator when you have found it.

10 Utilise other communications

Showing the participant other product material such as brochures, leaflets or ads can be useful if you don’t want to explain too much in a task. Then it is up to the participant to work it out from the website, and the extra material.

Example: You saw this ad on a bus stop. Find out if this product would suit you.

Of course, we will write the tasks with you!

Feel free to read more usability FAQs on our website.

Usability Testing can usually be done anywhere you have a desk and a PC.  However, for formal usability testing with clients we run it at EyeTrackLab in conjunction with City Group Rooms. Here's our locations for usability testing

• Sydney CDB
• North Sydney
• Parramatta
• Hurstville

At the usability testing lab we set up the eye tracker in one room and in an adjoining room you can see the test live.  During a usability test you will:

• See the participant through a one-way mirror
• Hear the participant and facilitator's voices over a speaker
• See a video of the participant's face
• See the screen and their mouse movements
• And most importantly, see their eye movements live on the screen they are using.

Being able to see participants' 'gaze paths' on the screen in real time during a usability test greatly improves the usability test viewing experience, as it offers observers a way to gain rich insights into what the person is doing, while they are doing it.  We often have clients getting so excited about this that they are calling their developers during the test to have improvements made to the site immediately!

If you are unable to attend the usability testing, we can also facilitate it in our office at a lower cost. We record all the data listed above and you can watch it streamed live to your office over the Web. We also produce a DVD of video highlights for you to watch later.

You can book our usability testing lab by emailing jbreeze@objectivedigital.com.

Feel free to check out our other Usability FAQs on the Objective Digital website!

Many new clients ask me, "How many people should we do a usability test with?" I usually reply, "It depends on the type of testing you are doing."

Types of usability tests

For Objective Digital there are three different types of usability test. The first two can be undertaken with or without eye tracking. However, the third really only works with eye tracking.

1. Improving usability and design

The most common test we perform is to improve usability and design. Participants are asked to complete a set of 6 (approx) tasks on a given software or website.  The objective is to identify:

• Where people are having issues
• Why they are having these issues, and
• What to do to fix them.

How many people to test?

People who have similar levels of knowledge tend to make similar mistakes when using an application. When trying to complete a task, someone's behaviour is constrained by the interface they are using.

In usability this means that after only a few participants tested, we have seen most of the errors that people are going to make. In this type of qualitative test, a rule of thumb for us is, 6 people per project.  We generally find we can get through 6 participants in a day of testing.

We often perform this type of testing iteratively for a new website development. This involves testing clickable JPEGS and HTML prototypes with limited functionality to uncover issues before the full development of the site.  Over the development phase we may test two or three times, with 6 (different) participants.

We  would do 12 people if the application has varied functionality that requires a different set of knowledge and skills to be able to complete tasks. For example, with Internet Banking a business customer should be able to easily complete the tasks once they log into business banking.  During the test we could also get them to log into the Personal Banking section and have them do tasks there too.

In comparison, a person who doesn't work in business would have all sorts of trouble completing the Business Banking tasks and none at all with the personal tasks. 

In a case like this I would recommend 12 people be tested. Six business banking and 6 personal.

Sometimes Government departments and large corporates have many different users who use significantly different functionality. This requires testing with more people.

2. Measuring and benchmarking usability

Larger corporates with many and varied content managers and site owners like to track their site to monitor its performance on a frequent basis. Say twice a year. 

How many people to test?

In this type of test, where metrics such as time to task completion, number of clicks, error rates and other experiential measures are captured we recommend testing with at least 12 - 18 people. 

With this number, you uncover between 98 and 99 per cent of common errors, which are defined as those errors likely to be made by over two thirds of users. For details of these figures,  see this Human Factors blog post.

For measures such as task completion, or time to complete  task, there is a smaller margin of error with the increased number of people tested.  These measures make it easy to compare performance over time.

3. Call to action testing or design comparison

We are finding that many media companies, or organisations with lots of advertising, are keen to test the effectiveness of advertising, or other calls to action, on their websites. Other companies want to know how to make the pages on their sites work harder, to get that extra percentage of conversions. 

In this type of testing we are looking at how people digest the page before they have even started interaction.  What immediately stands out for them, where is their attention drawn? Clients like to capture measurements like:

• How many people looked at an ad or call to action?
• How long before they looked at an ad?
• How long did they look at the ad?

This can only be done accurately using eye tracking, which is described on our website.

 How many people to test?

For this type of test you need at least 30 people to identify the common behaviours between people. This slideshow tells it all:

http://www.slideshare.net/jamesbreeze/why-you-need-50-people-in-eye-tracking-...

You can find a list of other FAQs on usability on our website. 

In April, Online Banking Review featured our article on Direct Deposit Banking. Please read the full report below.

Once a potential customer has clicked on a banking website, the landing page must keep things clear and captivating.

In a competitive banking environment encouraging customers to sign up for your products can be a challenging task. It is however, an essential one required to build your business. After working so hard to get customers to your site, it’s an injustice to let them slip away. On the surface it might seem that all online forms were created equal. However, the reality is they’re not and you can do plenty to ease the burden that customers often feel in establishing a relationship with you.   

But what factors are most likely to encourage customers to quietly slip away?  We set out to answer this question with a two-pronged attack.

Firstly, we conducted an expert review of the process of searching and applying for an online high interest savings account. Secondly we conducted usability tests (with the assistance of Tobii Eyetracking hardware and software) with 10 individuals. These individuals include six males and four females, ranging in age from 25 to 55 years, who have online banking experience. All participants were city-based professionals. During the test all participants worked through from a product aggregator page (infochoice.com.au) to the account offer landing page then to product sign up. Four online savings accounts were reviewed – UBANK Usaver, INGDIRECT Savings Maximiser, RaboPlus Premium Saver and Bankwest Telenet saver.       

Before we dive into the online form process, lets take a quick look at what happened when participants arrived at the landing page. For the INGDIRECT Savings Maximiser account participants were taken directly to the product page within the main site. While this is advantageous for orientation to the site, the page visually overloaded the participants.  The following heatmap created by Tobii Eye-tracking software illustrate where participants were looking in the first four seconds.

The INGDIRECT Savings Maximiser webpage is incredibly busy and many elements are vying for attention. In the following heatmap for the total time spent on the site, attention is evenly scattered across the whole page. The call to action link – the point of it all somewhat – is hidden in the body of the text requiring more effort and longer time for users to proceed to the next step. Even the main login button in the top right hand corner drew attention away from the intended spot.   

Once a customer has arrived on the landing page, they should be able to decide to apply without being overloaded and there should be a clear call to action. Ubank USaver was successful at achieving this with their landing page. In the following image attention is more focused and facilitated a faster track to begin applying.       

In the image below, attention is more focused and facilitated a faster track to begin applying.

The Bankwest page was also simpler. The following heapmaps show where participants looked in the first four seconds. Their gaze clearly progressed down the page to the relevant information in an orderly fashion.

Having oriented themselves to the page after 10 seconds (as shown in the heatmap below) participants also found the key bullet points valuable. Interestingly the interest rate figure within the body of the page was more popular than the rate in the top banner. Banner blindness is somewhat encouraged as the call to action button is further down the page (in contrast to the position of interest rate and button on the UBank USaver page). 

When planning a landing page, consider what are the key information requirements that are essential to make a decision to apply. Everything else undermines the clarity of that information. Novelty items like projection calculators fall under that category. Here is an indication as to how important it is, see below.

Across our review and usability tests the resounding theme is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). It’s a time honoured principle but one that’s more relevant than ever when it comes to usability.

Ease with speed

All participants commented that they preferred sites which they felt they were able complete quickly. The perception of speed rather than absolute time taken is key to satisfaction.  So what effects speed?

LABEL ALIGNMENT ING, Ubank and Bankwest right-justified horizontal labels performed well. There is a clear association between the field and the label, the completion was smooth and manageable.

In terms of labelling best practice, labelling a field top aligned as shown in the next image, will streamline the process even further. The small sacrifice in increased vertical space of the form is well worth it.

SUCCINCT QUESTIONS  Whenever appropriate participants preferred questions that required a yes or no answer. Compare the two instances below for the postal address section. Two extremely different treatments, participants loved the option on the right.

UNNECESSARY QUESTIONS  If your questions don’t have a direct bearing on the form applications, it is best to avoid them. Participants in the following stances were tempted, and some did provide made up answers to get through the process. Clogging up the process with additional request increases the risk of customers dropping out, never to return.

OR ILLOGICAL QUESTIONS  Some questions didn’t always make perfect sense to participants. In the following example, the request to verify an address was initially ignored by most then greet with puzzlement.  If your reason for a question is a legitimate one but not entirely obvious to customers, briefly explain it’s purpose. Frustration will give way to greater appreciation for the information you are seeking.  

Show me the way

PROGESS OR FEELING OF PROGRESS  Participants wanted to keep going non-stop once they started filling out the forms. It was important to feel like the process was not going to be overwhelming. The progress bar helped them see where they were at all times. Naturally the few steps they saw, the more positive they were in attempting the task. In addition, the feeling of achieving a milestone quickly was appreciated. 

SMART FIELDS  Participants loved when fields populated ahead of them. It lightened the workload and made them feel more positive towards the site provider. Participants enjoyed selecting their title and it populated the gender field. In some but not all sites when the BSB number was entered the bank title appeared. Simple features such as this combine to create a positive experience. In and of itself a single field may not seem much but collectively it’s another brick in the wall to climb over. If it can be done, do it.

With the inputting of numeral digits for example phone numbers, participants had a natural tendency to include space in the input field. It was a case in point that common and natural behaviours were not taken into account when the form was designed.

Technology should be utilised to accommodate human data entry rather than show an error message.

Tell me how it is!

GOOD COMMUNCATION During the application process the customer is doing most of the ‘talking’. Minor information is feedback to the customer as to how they are going and more often than not in the process you’ll only ‘hear’ from the bank when you’re made an error.  One participant spoke about the desire to have each field ticked once it is filled correctly. The constant level of positive reinforcement would mean they’d not worry about going over old ground and would always be moving forward.

Inline validation is the next best thing and many participants loved it. Instant error message was unanimously agreed as the ideal style of messaging. Attending to the issue then and there meant the process was streamlined. UBank stood out in this regard.

HELP IS HERE BUT HIDDEN  Customers crave the ability to contact bank even though they might not need it. We have already mentioned the need for a Contact Us function and help is regarded in the same way.  Ready, easy access to help (as close to the relevant field as possible) is has major appeal.  It is also best practice.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO NEXT? At the completion of a form step, participants were given a range of options to choose from.  A lack of consistency across the banking sites means customers cannot benefit from conventions.  Each time the participants arrived at the action buttons – submit, continue etc - they were required to think about the step, rather than it be an automatic reaction.

It is useful to know that the visual presentation of actions should match their importance. Reset, Cancel, Go Back [secondary action] are not as important as Save, Continue, Submit [primary action].  Therefore there should be a clear visual difference between the options presented. It is also important to align the primary action with the input field for a clear path to completion. The extra clarity of this action will avoid mistakes and speed up the application process.

This brief review of some of the elements of form application serves to highlight where customers can become snagged on certain parts of the process. It goes without saying that your goal is to get customers from start to finish, but to allow them to do so in the shortest amount of time requires some thought and consideration. Your information needs may not always be transparent to the customer, for very valid reasons, however their needs require your attention to. Balancing both sets of needs will result a win-win.