Talking to Users: Moving Toward A Better User Experience

In the realm of user experience, content plays an important part of the overall process. The content of a product or web site can be top quality, but if users can’t find it or interact with content properly, it’s rendered null. Usability is a component of the larger sphere of user experience (UX), certainly, and though usability design and engineering have been around much longer than UX, many organizations nowadays are concerned with the broader scope of UX. Users can access information when an interface is usable, but the overall reaction to a web site, device or interface, can complete an experience, and thus create a user experience.

The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), depending on the institution, leans heavily on research to help content managers and user experience designers make better interfaces.  Research can take place without users, such as in a heuristic review or cognitive walkthrough. But if we are to move into the areas of user-centered design for web sites, medical devices, mobile applications and even form factors of technology such as e-readers, it’s essential to get quality data from users. Testing can generate lots of quantitative data, and a usability expert can really improve an interface with formal testing, statistical analysis, and of course, his/her resulting design recommendations. However, qualitative responses may help complete the picture when we talk about UX.

As content manager for himss.org, I work to extend limits of our own content management system to bring larger toolkits, like the brand new Quality 101 to the web site.  I work with other team members to analyze traffic to our pages to see how they perform. However, page views don’t tell the whole story of an experience, do they?

Today, I’d like to ask you: What parts of the himss.org Web site are the most enjoyable for you to use? What pages or sections frustrate you? Have you ever experienced errors or dialog screens that have made you turn away and move on to another web site or task on your computer. Let us know in the comments.