A few months ago I gave a presentation as part of 501 Commons’ Brown Bag Training series on UX for nonprofits. The emphasis was on quick, low-cost activities that people at nonprofits could start doing without a lot of training, but would still provide useful feedback for their websites. I framed the presentation in terms of the kinds of goals nonprofits are typically trying to accomplish with their websites, but the basic techniques are applicable to anyone without a lot of budget or time, but still wants real user data to guide their design decisions.
The meat of the presentation is in the presenter notes since I don’t like to put a lot of text on my slides if I can avoid it, but for anyone looking to start diving into this kind of work, here’s a list of links to some good overviews and guides, plus the tools I talk about in the presentation.
Surveys
- 20 Tips for Writing Web Surveys
- Better User Research Through Surveys
- Google Forms
- Instant.ly
- Usabilla
Card Sorting
Content Inventories
A/B Testing
- A Beginner’s Guide To A/B Testing
- The Ultimate Guide To A/B Testing
- Google Content Experiments
- Optimizely
- Usabilla
Usability Testing
- Thinking Aloud: The #1 Usability Tool
- The Art of Guerilla Usability Testing
- Silverback
- UserTesting.com
And that should be more than enough to get anyone started!