Fluid UX Walkthrough protocol - reorganized, looking for feedback.

Fri Feb 27 21:07:29 UTC 2009

Hello Allison,
    I like your ideas about how to structure the information, and your 
point about the coinage of "UX Walkthrough" is something I wasn't aware 
of, but it's something important to keep in mind as we frame this 
stuff.   I thought I understood the details of your proposed structure 
when I first read your message, but on a re-reading I'm not quite sure 
what "references the 2 pages below means". 

You're right about duplication of content -- I did some merging and 
purging on my first pass through this stuff, but there's more to do yet.

Paul

Allison Bloodworth wrote:
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> Thanks much for your work on this! I would lean toward Paul's 
> suggestion of giving specific descriptions of all three methods 
> (probably on their own pages): the cognitive walk-through, the 
> heuristic evaluation, and the combined method used in the Fluid UX 
> Walkthroughs.  If we can pull out the content for the cognitive 
> walkthroughs and heuristic evaluations into their own pages, then we 
> can also refer to them without putting all that content inline in the 
> same page (e.g. on 
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/User+Experience+Walkthroughs).  
> As the Fluid UX Walkthroughs also include an HTML code review (for 
> accessibility), we could consider making that its own page as well. 
> There may be versions of these pages as children under: 
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UX+Walkthrough+Protocols+and+Checklists, 
> but I think they would need some updating--it appears they may just be 
> the parts of the parent page.
>
> One important point: a UX Walkthrough was something we invented for 
> Fluid--at least I'd never heard that term before and if you google it 
> all the hits are Fluid Pages. So I think the UX Walkthrough page 
> really *should* describe Fluid UX Walkthroughs and perhaps their 
> component parts (e.g. heuristic eval, cognitive walkthrough, code 
> review). With that in mind, here's the structure for the pages that 
> I'd recommend:
>
> User Experience
> - Fluid User Experience Walkthroughs (How we do and did them in Fluid 
> - this is a different page from the one Jonathan created called "Fluid 
> UX Walkthroughs": 
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Fluid+User+Experience+Walkthroughs) 
>
>
> Design Handbook
> - User Experience Walkthroughs (placed in the "Evaluation and 
> Assessment" section) - this actually describes the Fluid approach and 
> references the 2 pages below
>   - Fluid UX Walkthroughs (I'd suggest renaming this "UX Walkthrough 
> Protocols and Checklists")
>     - UX Walkthrough Preparation and Execution
>     - Tips to help evaluate usability
>     - UX Walkthrough Report Template
> - Cognitive Walkthough (placed in the "Evaluation and Assessment" 
> section)
> - Heuristic Evaluation (placed in the "Evaluation and Assessment" 
> section)
>
> Perhaps this was Jonathan's eventual intention, but I don't think the 
> "Fluid UX Walkthroughs" page 
> (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Fluid+UX+Walkthrough) 
> *and* the original UX Walkthrough Protocols and Checklists page 
> (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UX+Walkthrough+Protocols+and+Checklists) 
> should both exist--I reviewed the content on both pages to ensure it's 
> all been captured, and I'd suggest deleting or archiving the original. 
> Additionally, the name of the final page should probably not be "Fluid 
> UX Walkthroughs" as that could be confused with the "Fluid User 
> Experience Walkthroughs" page (which gives info on the walkthroughs we 
> did in Fluid) in the "User Experience" section. I'd suggest keeping 
> the name of the combined page "UX Walkthrough Protocols and 
> Checklists." However, one thing I wasn't able to resolve was the fact 
> that there are somewhat different instructions on these pages: 
> Jonathan's new page seems to infer that you must do a heuristic 
> evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, and assess accessibility, and the 
> other says, "It is not necessary for you to use all three methods to 
> contribute to the Fluid UX walkthrough endeavour. Nor must you address 
> both accessibility and usability." So we'll have to figure out what we 
> really want to recommend.
>
> I also made some edits to the User Experience Walkthroughs, Fluid UX 
> Walkthroughs & UX Walkthrough Preparation & Execution pages to clarify 
> a few things we'd talked about in our emails re: the approach. For 
> instance, in Jonathan's email below he mentions a heuristic 
> walkthrough and a cognitive evaluation, and I noticed the term 
> "cognitive evaluation" used in a couple places on the web pages. To 
> ensure that people know what we are talking about, I think we want to 
> consistently use the terms "heuristic evaluation" and "cognitive 
> walkthrough" so I made that change in any wiki page where I saw an 
> alternative term used. I also tried to specify "UX walkthrough" when 
> we are talking about the "Fluid UX Walkthrough" instead of just 
> "walkthrough" so it's not confused with a "cognitive walkthrough."
>
> Another change I made involved making sure it was clear that personas 
> weren't *required* to do a cognitive walkthrough and describing a bit 
> about what to do if you didn't have them. Finally, there were 
> references to usability relating to the heuristics and accessibility 
> relating to "cognitive concerns," but I don't think that's quite right 
> as the cognitive walkthrough is a usability inspection method which 
> can also be used to assess accessibility so I changed that a bit.
>
> I've also noticed quite a bit of repeated content among these pages, 
> so I think it would be great if someone with fresh eyes could a 
> holistic look at all of them and an effort remove duplicated content. 
> For instance, there is overlap between "UX Walkthrough Preparation & 
> Execution" and "UX Walkthrough Protocols & Checklists"/"Fluid UX 
> Walkthroughs" (/'d because they are essentially the same page).
>
> Cheers,
> Allison
>
> On Feb 20, 2009, at 7:58 AM, Jonathan Hung wrote:
>
>> I wonder if it will be confusing if we provide those individual
>> checklists in addition to our Fluid UX walkthrough? Perhaps we can
>> make those individual checklists as PDF attachments. We would then
>> communicate in the Fluid UX Walkthrough that they can optionally
>> perform the evaluations separately and link to the individual PDF
>> files.
>>
>> I added the procedure for selecting a Persona to the Preparation and
>> Execution page. I think that page will be very helpful when combined
>> with the Fluid UX Walkthrough document.
>>
>> Does anyone else have an opinion as to how we should present the Fluid
>> UX Walkthough, Heuristic Walkthrough, and the Cognitive Evaluation?
>>
>> - Jonathan.
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Paul Zablosky <Paul.Zablosky at ubc.ca> 
>> wrote:
>>> Hi Jonathan,
>>>    Your "Fluid UX Walkthrough" page looks good.  I agree that 
>>> there's a lot
>>> of material, and it's a bit dense, but the idea was to capture the 
>>> Fluid
>>> approach all in one page, and I think you have done it.   The question
>>> remains: are we going to provide pages on the individual techniques 
>>> as well
>>> as the bundled description?
>>>
>>> With our current page hierarchy, which looks something like this:
>>>
>>> User Experience Walkthroughs
>>>
>>> Fluid UX Walkthrough
>>> UX Walkthrough Preparation and Execution
>>> UX Walkthrough Protocols and Checklists
>>>
>>> Additional Questions for all reviewers
>>> UX Walkthrough - Heuristic Evaluation
>>> UX Walkthrough - Cognitive Walkthrough
>>> ... other current children
>>>
>>> we could enhance the top level page to give the user a choice -- 
>>> they can
>>> either follow the Fluid way (with your new page), or they can just 
>>> select
>>> one or more of the techniques.  I'm not committed to one way or the 
>>> other --
>>> I'd like to hear what others think about this.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>> Jonathan Hung wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> As part of the effort to reorganize the UX Walkthrough protocol, I
>>> have made a draft revision of the UX Walkthrough Protocol and
>>> Checklist.
>>>
>>> Old version: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/VAEa
>>> New version: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/8QZa
>>>
>>> The new version attempts to deliver the following:
>>> 1. Convey the parallel nature of the Heuristic and Cognitive 
>>> evaluations.
>>> 2. Incorporate accessibility heuristic and cognitive evaluations.
>>> 3. Lay out the walkthrough in a more check-list manner.
>>>
>>> All the content from the old version is present in the new version,
>>> but with some modifications where necessary.
>>>
>>> My concern is that the new document is a bit dense, but I hope that,
>>> in context of being a checklist / reference for executing a UX
>>> evaluation, the content density would be okay.
>>>
>>> Do you think the new version of the walkthrough is more beneficial to
>>> a would-be implementer compared to the old version? Are there areas
>>> for improvement? Any concerns?
>>>
>>> - Jonathan.
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Jonathan Hung / jhung.utoronto at gmail.com
>>> Fluid Project - ATRC at University of Toronto
>>> Tel: (416) 946-3002
>>>
>>>
>
> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Interaction Designer
> Educational Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> (415) 377-8243
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu
>
>
>
>
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