CUA Exam Cleared

Hurayyyyyyyy !!!

Just cleared CUA™ (Certified Usability Analyst) Exam of HFI.

Sincere thanks to all of you, special thanks to Chirutha Dalal and Bhooshan Pandya for sharing their exam experience with me.

I am very much excited now, but yes, it do not stops here. I need to start implementing it in real world which would be much more difficult than giving exam.

Please do share your experience with me regarding Usability Implementation in your organization.

Power of GUI on iPhone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrVt2ZcrWUY

See how Powerful UI of product/application can make a difference and make it usable to 1 year old baby.

http://www.prashantpoladia.com/

HFI's Usability Course » June 2007 Batch

Recently, I have attended HFI's Usability Course from 18th June '07 to 28th June '07 (10 Days). It has changed my vision of designing web pages and application interfaces.

It has improved my thought process before designing anything and now it became the habit of asking myself :
• "WHY"... why I am designing this way and not the other way?
• Will this be useful for the actual user and serve their purpose?
• Will this be user friendly and easy to understand?
• Will they be able to complete their task successfully?
• Will this satisfy users?
and many more...

My experience througout the course was excellent and my take home from this course were:
• User's Conceptual Model (their needs and behaviour)
­• Industry Standards related to Designs
• Design Principles
• User Centric Analysis Process
• Importance of Usability Testing throughout product development
• How to put Research into Practice
• How to design effective websites & web applications
and many more ...

Topics of HFI's Usability Courses are:
• User Centric Analysis and Conceptual Model (3 Days)
• The Science and Art of Effective Web & Application Design (3 Days)
• Practical Usability Testing (2 Days)
• Putting Research into Practice (2 Days)

I strongly recommend this course for designers to attend it.

Certified Usability Analyst exam's paper pattern and guidelines

Recently, I had a talk with Chirutha Dalal about CUA (Certified Usability Analyst) exam. As I got few useful information about it, here I am noting down few DO's and DONT's for the exam and paper pattern as per what she explained me:

• Exam will be devided in 4 sections
• Each section will be having few set of questions (UCD-26, Design-38, UT-26, PRP-10)
• No Negative Marking
• 70 % passing score
• Suggestive time to spent on each section will be mentioned

• prepare separate notes or stick yellow notes on given material for easy reference
• Objectives type of Questions (Choose answer from 1-4)
• Can't Jump from one section to another (Sequential Navigation :) )
• Can Jump from one question to another within that section (Persistent Menu :))
• Questions will be more of scenario based and need to apply your experience
• Can flag a question to get back to it again
• Got to attend sections in form of (1 >> 2 >> 3 >> 4)

• Once a particular section submited can't go back to previous one (very important)
• Research Section (4th) is the easiest one so, spare 10-12 mins for it and you can score high
• go through given Study Guide thoroughly

I hope this would be useful.

Orkut Blog - Arrived!!!

Orkut Blog - Arrived!!!

On Monday, June 25, 2007 Orkut has launched it's on blog for users. Have a look at the site to check what's there inside.

User Centric Design at Glance

[Source - businessinnovationinsider]

Following is the process to accomplish User Centric Design approach.

1. Design Strategy
   • To understand Stake Holder's Goals and Expectations
   • To gather background information
   
   
2. Profiles and Personas
   Collect various profiles of:
   • User Profiles
   • Environmetal Profiles
   • Task Profiles



3. Data Gathering
   To collect data by way of:
   • Interviews
   • Contextual Inquiry
   • Focus Groups
   • Surveys & Questionnaires



4. Scenarios and Task Analysis
   • Scenarios to use across design life cycle
   • Define Task Steps



5. Primary Nouns
   • "Things" user take action on or manipulate
   • It needs to be obvious on pages



6. Information Architecture
   • Labelling Systems
   • Categorical Schemes
   • Hybrid Schemes
   • Hierarchical Organisation