| Date | 6th October 2011 (9:30am – 5:00pm) |
|---|---|
| Venue | Radisson Blu Hotel, Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
| Trainer | Chris Rourke |
| Duration | 1 day |
| Cost | $680.00 |
About the course
Overview
Providing a user-friendly website is essential for success online. A great user experience on a website dramatically increases the likelihood of your site visitors staying on your site, learning about your offering and engaging with your brand. This applies to all types of websites, including government services, publishing, B2B, financial services, telecoms or retail e-commerce where conversion rates and revenues are directly impacted by a site’s usability. As more day to day services and shopping become available through the web, people will naturally migrate to easier to use sites.
At each stage of the user journey the interface and interaction design must persuasively meet customer expectations, and this course will demonstrate the best practice principles for online usability and user experience. This course provides a comprehensive overview of the user-centred design process, together with the principles which can be applied to examine and improve your current site content, functionality and visual design. You'll examine all areas where user experience is critical, including navigation, page layout, forms and error messages, as well as the impact on checkouts and conversion for commercial sites. We include dozens of powerful examples from websites in the Middle East, Europe and North America to demonstrate the most successful and persuasive interface and interaction designs based on user experience principles.
Programme
We will help you understand the commercial and brand benefits of usability, the relevant standards (e.g. ISO 13407) and how to overcome common barriers to implementing a user centred design for the your website. We will look in detail at user experience best practice principles for the design of navigation (including card sorting techniques), homepages, page layout, forms and error messages, and how usability is involved in merchandising, checkout and persuasion architecture.
Working through the usability lifecycle, you'll learn about practical methods including persona and scenario creation, rapid prototyping, creating usability metrics, and usability testing. The course is highly interactive, with hands-on exercises including card sorting for the development of navigation, and applying informal usability assessment methods to example sites.
Who should attend?
This does not require a technical background and is appropriate for all sectors, including e-commerce, travel, government, publishing, utilities and professional services. Anyone involved in building, managing or commissioning websites who wants to gain a better understanding of user experience principles will benefit, including:
- Digital marketing managers
- Customer experience managers
- Ecommerce managers
- Web designers
- Usability specialists
- Heads of IT teams
How will I benefit?
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Articulate the business benefits of user-centred design throughout the development process
- Understand the user experience principles for both secure and non-secure areas of websites, and the different usability methods that can be applied during the design lifecycle
- Use profitable tips for merchandising and selling online, from the home page to the checkout
- Perform card sorting for information architecture analysis and apply the results
What will I learn?
What is usability?
Attendees will learn best-practice user experience design principles applied by today's most successful organisations online. Drawing on examples from websites in the Middle East, Europe and North America we will cover all stages in the user journey.
The course covers:
- E-commerce: Survival of the Easiest
- Usability Principles and Examples
- Homepage
- Information Architecture
- Navigation
- Site Search Engines
- Content
- Merchandising & Promotions
- Rich Internet Applications
- Forms
- Usability Activities that can be applied during development
- Setting user experience metrics
- User profiling & persona development
- Prototyping and iterative design
- Usability assessments
- Usability testing
- Measuring the effect of improved user experience
Trainer
Chris Rourke
Managing Director, User Vision
Chris is the Founder and Managing Director for User Vision one of the UK’s leading user experience and user-centred design (UCD) consultancies in the UK. He has conducted projects throughout the UK and Europe, working with many blue chip commercial companies and leading public sector organisations to provide usability and accessibility support and advice.
Chris has worked in the area of usability, accessibility, human computer interaction (HCI) and ergonomics for over 20 years. He established User Vision in 2000 and quickly developed an enviable client list and a reputation for practical thorough and affordable user centred design services to help clients gain a competitive advantage through improved usability.
As he grew User Vision, the services offered to encompass web accessibility, and the full end to end user centred design process from user research through to usability testing and post launch monitoring and optimisation of the user experience. He and the User Vision team offer user experience services across all digital platforms including interactive TV, software and mobile, and increasingly are involved in cross-channel user experience projects.
Chris has worked with clients across all sectors including financial services, public sector, retail e-commerce, travel & tourism, charity, media, telecoms pharmaceuticals and others. Clients include RBS, Emirates Airline, Cabinet Office, BBC, HSBC, IKEA, Pfizer, Orange, O2, Nokia, NCR, HP, the Scottish Government and Houses of Parliament among others.
Chris is also a recognised leader in the usability and user experience community in the UK. In 2005 he founded a new chapter of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) and served as President of the Scottish Chapter of the UPA. He is the European Regional Coordinator for the UPA, and member of several related industry groups including the British Human-Computer Interaction Group (BHCIG), and the Computers and Human Interaction Group of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-SIGCHI). Chris is a Board Member for ScotlandIS, the ICT industry group representing Scotland.
His particular user experience interests include web accessibility, the application of Rich Internet Applications such as AJAX and Flex, remote usability testing, interactive TV, eye tracking and persuasion architecture.
An engaging and dynamic speaker, Chris is regularly invited to speak at industry events and has recently spoken at the UPA conference in the US, Internet World, and the Andicom conference in South America. He is a regular contributor to resources offline and online including the Econsultancy blog and the User Vision blog.
Chris holds a BSc. in Engineering Psychology from Tufts University and a MSc. in Ergonomics from the University of Michigan.
In his spare time Chris enjoys improving his Spanish, travelling and sport, particularly ultimate Frisbee.
