<p>Published on <a href="http://ift.tt/2oLnjTy">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Audrey Mothu <img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2oXH71U"></p>
<p>At some point in your product lifecycle, you might have the feeling to reach a deadlock. You end-up wondering why users would want to quit our product? Why features that we build are not enough? And most of all, how can we improve it?</p>
<p>Well, let’s say that nothing is better than to test your product with real users but if you don’t have the time (yet) and you want few leads to improve your product, there is methods that you can apply at any point in your product’s development.</p>
<h4>Cheap and quick ways to evaluate your product</h4>
<p>Usability evaluation focus on examining :</p>
<ul>
<li>Users can reach his goal</li>
<li>They can learn and use easily a product</li>
<li>Their level of satisfaction with the product.</li>
<li>Error frequency and severity</li>
</ul>
<h3><strong>You’re building a new functionality</strong></h3>
<p><img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2pj1A3U"></p>
<h4><strong>The heuristic evaluation</strong></h4>
<p>Even in the early stage of designing a product, you can test your prototype to validate it. Heuristic Evaluation is a method established by Nielsen in 1990. It is used to detect usability issues and judges your interface’s compliance to a set of recognized usability principles (=heuristics).</p>
<h3><strong>You’re dealing with information architecture problem</strong></h3>
<h4><strong>Five hat Racks</strong></h4>
<p>The way in which content is organized can be critical in your user’s journey. However, running a content audit can be tricky. You’ll gather ton of content, and it might seem there are a million ways to reorganize it. <br />In fact, there is only five ways to organize information, regardless of a specific application. Information designer R. Saul Wurman called it the “LATCH” method.</p>
<p>L for <strong>Location</strong>. Items are grouped by geographic place or topography.</p>
<p>A for <strong>Alphabet</strong>. Organizing content alphabetically works well hen people know what they are looking for.</p>
<p>T for <strong>Time</strong>. This ranking can be set to classify events, a narrative story …</p>
<p>C for <strong>Category</strong>. By using known categories, users will find quickly what they’re looking for. Items are grouped by similar importance.</p>
<p>H for <strong>Hierarchy</strong>. Hierarchy is used when content is organized by magnitude (least expensive — most expensive, small to large)</p>
<h3>You product is already shipped</h3>
<h4><strong>The System Usability Scale : a quick quantitative feedback</strong></h4>
<p>SUS method is a 10 questions survey focused on evaluating a digital product whether it’s an app, a website or a software. This method was designed by J. Brooke in 1986. You can submit the survey via your service or an emailing campaign. By submitting this campaign to your existing users, results will indicates accurately users’ satisfaction level and feelings towards the product.</p>
<h4><strong>Formalizing the design debt</strong></h4>
<p>Over the sprints, inconsistencies and mismatch tend to accumulate in an app design. As you improve your product, small details add up to the interface. New design items might not be totally consistent with the old designs. If you don’t pay attention, your app might look like a patchwork quickly.<br />To break the circle, you’ll need to be aware of the full picture: gather in a document every UI item in the system. This will help you to eliminate the debt. Then consolidate your design patterns and restore your design consistency.</p>
<p>To engage your users, you need to create a sense of ownership and reduce pain points. Users develop a mental model of interfaces that help them to understand and quickly recall items. That’s why a design should prevent mismatches between user’s expectation and the interface to encourage your user to move forward with your product.</p>
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<p><a href="http://ift.tt/2piVLn3">What’s the problem with your product ?</a> was originally published in <a href="http://ift.tt/2cAqCpx">Prototyping: From UX to Front End</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>


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