Intranet Journal
The online resource for intranet professionals
Excerpt From Chapter 10 of :
eSupport : How Cisco Systems' Saves Millions While Improving Customer Support
ISBN : 158720-052-X
www.ciscopress.com
In this interview, Blyth Strachman talks about various aspects of planning, designing, and testing user interfaces, specifically the Cisco Product, Technology and Networking Solutions support pages. Blyth works for an IT group within Cisco called Advanced Customer Systems, which is responsible for building online technical support applications. Blyth is responsible for user interface design, testing, and production.
Why do you do usability studies?
Usability studies are crucial for validating user experience. Web designers learn as much as
they can about what is needed in an interface to serve the target user's needs. Once they
have gathered the information, they attempt to serve those needs through their designs. The
only way to verify that the needs have been fulfilled is to test it with real users.
Have you done usability studies on the support pages before now?
Yes, we have done approximately three to four studies on prior phases. Those studies
focused mostly on formatting and navigation at the product or technology page level. The
studies we are doing now take into account navigation to that level, in addition.
How did this usability study differ from others you performed on tool type interfaces?
Many of the usability studies we do deal with the flow of an application. Do users know
where to start and what to do next? Do they complete the flow and come away with the
answer to their question?
This study was unique because the support pages application is unique. It is not a tool with a clear starting point and ending point. It is a repository of information that users can explore freely. There is still the same concept of testing the navigation, but we also had to concentrate on a factor unique to this application-consistency.
We focused on consistency because we want users to be able to find the same thing in the same place on every support page. We spent a lot of time up front determining what categories within the product or technology were going to work across the entire product line. To accomplish this, we studied the user's mental model of the information. We conducted card-sorting tasks in which we put concepts on index cards and had participants apply them to the appropriate categories. At the early stage, the categories were undefined and users had to create their own. Based on the aggregated data from this test, we were able to define categories to fit the predominant mental model. The next step was to verify these categories by conducting another card-sorting task with the categories defined in the prior study.
How do you get users to participate in the study?
We are fortunate that our users are eager to participate in studies and focus groups. They
are willing to spend time telling us how we can help them get their job done more effectively.
We use a research firm, Research for Action, to recruit participants. We provide them with
a list of our registered users and specific criteria for each recruit. Research for Action then
begins calling the potential recruits until all places are filled, plus one alternate.
Did you use a vendor to conduct the study or did you do it in-house?
The usability studies we did on the product support pages were conducted by a vendor,
Breakthrough Usability.
Why did you use a vendor to conduct the usability studies?
There are a couple of reasons we outsource the studies. First of all, we are too involved with
the designs to be objective. It is a common rule that the designer should not develop or
conduct the usability study. The designer may be biased and may not be able to see
something an outsider can see.
The other reason I would rather have someone else conduct the studies is that I have found it more efficient to have an expert conduct the studies. The member of Breakthrough Usability that we work with is the founder and CEO, Dan Abelow. He has conducted over 50 studies at Cisco in the past three to four years and knows our customers, our site, and our style. He has an efficient process in place and manages the entire study from recruiting to reporting the findings.
How did you decide to use Breakthrough Usability?
We worked with this company on some infrastructure studies commissioned by another
group at Cisco. We were pleased with the quality and completeness of the study, so asked
Mr. Abelow to work with our group. We have worked with other companies, as well, but
always come back to Breakthrough Usability because of the quality of their process and
results.
I would recommend varying the vendors sometimes to bring in new ideas and processes. New eyes may see something that has been overlooked by those too close to the content. Having said that, it is great to have a standard vendor that you are comfortable using for the bulk of your studies because you can build on prior studies and you can be more efficient in your processes.
How do you start a usability study?
The first step when planning a study is to define the type of user to recruit. We wanted to
get user feedback from a broad range of users since the support pages are widely used, as
opposed to a tool like Cisco's Bug Toolkit, which tends to attract primarily a more sophisticated
user. The users ranged from novice to expert in terms of supporting Cisco equipment.
The participants had a range of certification levels and represented various lines of business,
such as large enterprise organizations, service provider and small resellers.