I am an experienced UX professional with many years experience under my belt working both client and agency side.

My main areas of UX expertise fall into the following categories:

Strategy

• Requirements gathering (stakeholder/ user)
• Workshops
• Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Card sorting

 

Analysis

• Competitor analysis
• Persona development
• Heuristic (expert) evaluation
• Stats analysis

 

Specification

• Functional specification

 

Design

• Site map and site structure design
• Low, medium and high level prototyping and wireframe design

 

Evaluation

• Usability testing

 

I have worked on numerous projects over the years but below are a selection of projects which I hope help illustrate my experience:

 

Project 1  - Support For Groups – Investigate to see if the website meets the needs of its users

Project description – Support for groups is a website which is intended to support the work that charities do. I was contracted to gather further information on user needs and to assess effectiveness of the existing support website.

After meeting with the project stakeholders we decided on a course of action that fitted with their needs as well as the budget they had available. They had already started work on a small survey of users so I started by using the findings from that to base the screener we used to recruit the participants for the usability testing and the focus groups.

 

Methods used:

Focus groups – Due to the budget constraints and the broad make up of the audience we decided that two focus groups of twenty participants would be a good way to gauge the needs of the audience and see where (if at all) their information gathering needs were being met.

Working with another facilitator we first split the groups then conducted two exercises. The first was an individual exercise whereby the participants wrote down all of the typical types of information they regularly searched for. We then asked the participants to group the types by affinity then arrange the list by priority of importance to their organisation.

The next exercise we conducted was to see where they currently go to get information and to what extent their existing sources meet their needs. We got them to do this by listing the need, the source(s) and then a score out of five to how satisfied they were.

We used the information we gathered from the focus groups in a report which showed the information needs of the charities by importance, where they currently go to get the information and the satisfaction levels with the information they got back.

The client was then able to use this report to asses the current content on the existing website and to develop an ongoing content strategy for the site going forward.

Usability Testing - The next part of the project was to assess the existing site with its users. I recruited 6 users from a broad range of charities and conducted the sessions in their place of work. The participants were asked to conduct a series of information gathering tasks based on the prioritized list from the focus groups. These tasks were randomized from user to user.

The outputs of the testing was presented back to the client along with a list of recommendations to improve the user journeys within the site.

 

Project 2 Financial credit risk analysis web app for the banking industry – IA and interaction design

Project description – I was subcontracted to work on the IA for a new web app which took international credit risk information from banks and presented it online, with a view to building upon (and eventually replacing) the clients existing off line product.

Method used:

IA and interaction design – The client had already come along way in terms of identifying the requirements and prioritizing them. I worked in house with the client for a number of weeks iteratively developing the IA and interactions in this complicated web app interpreting the clients requirements and working closely with subject matter experts. I also assisted them in conducting usability testing with the end users.

The finished product launched fully in August 2011 and closely matched the wireframes I had developed during my time on the project.

Project 3 Groupthing – Website refresh

Project description – Groupthing is a social networking website aimed at teenagers and its purpose is to encourage them to read and talk about reading books and comics. The site had been in existence for a couple of years but had failed to attract repeat visitors or encourage many teenagers to sign up.

Methods Used:

Stats Analysis, Expert Evaluation, Competitor analysis – Initially I had wanted to conduct user research before commencing with the wireframing but due to budget and time constraints this was not possible. What I did instead was to look closely at the visitor stats for the site, noting the entry and exit points and the areas of the site which were most frequently visited. I then conducted a evaluation study and looked at the websites competitors to see what the site could do to improve. I presented my findings and recommendations to the client before agreeing a direction and a set of outcomes for the new site.

IA and Wireframe – The approach took to redeveloping the site was two fold. Firstly I set about simplifying the site, there was an unnecessary amount of clutter on the pages which over complicated things and made the site hard to navigate. I then introduced more social aspects to the site, building upon the services which sites like Facebook provide. The reason for this was partly due to technical constraints given the budget and timescale available and also to capitalize on the popularity of sites like Facebook with young people.

Project 4 – BFI Content Audit, Stats Analysis and Card Sort

Project description – I spent a year at the BFI working full time on the website redevelopment project. One of the first things we had to do was take stock of the existing website  and the multitude of micro sites which had grown organically over the sites 10 year existence.

Methods used:

Content audit – Before we could look at developing a new IA for the site we had to look at what was already there. This was a huge task that was shared between myself and one other person. As well as listing all of the 800+ pages we also noted:

• URL for page
• Page impressions
• Last time the page was updated
• Owner

What this revealed was that as well as some pages being buried 7 or 8 levels deep in the site a large portion of the content was rarely visited by anyone due to the complexity of the navigation. Also there was a large amount of out dated content which we could flag for archiving in consultation with stakeholders.

Card sort – The next stage was to check the users understanding of the content, the labeling that had been used and where users thought the content should live on the new site.

The first step in the process was to recruit participants for the card sorting exercise. I developed an online screener which we circulated around the BFI’s existing social media and other communication channels as well as using other, more general, film related social media outlets. The screener was designed to filter the respondents into categories which matched our personas. We then selected a broad range of respondents to participate in the card sorting exercise.

I opted for an online card sorting solution. The reasons for this were because firstly it was relatively cheap, secondly because the respondents were located all of the country it was easier logistically and finally we we’re looking at quite a large card sort (around 70 cards) so it was quicker and easier for the 30 participants to do the card sort online and for the software to do the collation of the results.

The labels for the cards were chosen based on the outputs from the content audit and new content we knew would be appearing in the future.

Once the card sort had been completed we used the software to aggregate the results which showed up some strong themes. Working with another UX consultant I developed the site map for the new site using the output of the card sort for reference.

Project 5 BFI/BBC Reel History – Website design

Project description – Reel History was a BFI/BBC co production which was aired on BBC2 in September 2011. The premise was a series of themed programs from around the country in which members of the public recounted their experiences of the past along with archive footage which was provided by the BFI and regional film archives. There was a requirement to have a website which ran alongside the program in which viewers of the program could go online and find out more about the films shown and also watch them in their entirety.

Methods used:

Requirements gathering workshop, IA – The program was seen by the BFI as a good way to showcase some of the work that they do to the general public and as such there was a lot of interest from stakeholders within the organization.  All of this enthusiasm and ideas needed capturing in such a way in that everyone had a fair chance to offer their opinion into the site.

The best way to do this was for me to facilitate a workshop with both the key stakeholders and also members of the team. I began by splitting the workshop into two halves in the first there was an exercise to make sure that everyone was clear on the objectives and the audience for the project. I asked everyone to write down the key objectives as they saw them and the goals. I then collated the outputs and we discussed them as a group.

The next stage was a group sketching exercise. We used the ‘6 Up’ technique for his. Each person sketched a rough outline for 6 treatments of what they thought the new site would look like in a 10 minute period. As expected the results were varied but as we discussed them a number of key themes emerged. I then asked the stakeholders to refine one of their sketches over a 10 minute period. They then presented their final sketches back to the group for a final discussion followed by a ranking exercise where I asked everyone to vote using a sticker on their preferred approach to the task. This left me with about 3 clear  design routes from the workshop.

Over the coming days I used these sketches to build a final set of wireframes. I followed an iterative process of design, present, and refine until we had reached an agreement.

Other activities

Outside of my freelance work I’m also an active member of the London and Brighton UX community. I’m a regular attendee of UX Brighton, Skillswap, Agile UX and Research Thing.

 

I’ve also spoken at UX Brighton on the topic of Agile UX:

 

And I’ll be speaking at the forthcoming UX Camp Brighton (Slides to follow!)