Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa

**March 27 – Update: Laura has uploaded the usability presentation she gave at our March 4th event. You can access the presentation from Laura’s blog. She’s also listed some great web resources on usability discussed during her presentation.**

March 4th marked the start of 2010 for GGD Ottawa. What better way to start than with another sold out event!  This time our topic was “Guerilla Usability for Girl Geeks”.

The majority of people in attendance were interested in Web Usability, so that’s what Laura Wesley (@resultsjunkie), our guest speaker, focused on. Quite a few attendees tweeted the event and you can find a capture of the tweet stream here.

Laura Wesley talks usability while an attendee looks on

Laura plans to make her presentation available via her blog, including a list of website resources related to usability, and we’ll update this post with a link to the presentation when it’s available.

In the meantime, here are some key points Laura shared:

• The sign of a really good product is a learnable product.  People don’t buy products they can’t (easily) figure out how to use.
• No door should need instructions.
• In the context of the government, there is a direct link between user centricity and user confidence and public trust.
• Usability helps you move the conversation towards evidence-based decision making.  e.g. “I know you like blue but he likes red.”  “This word might make sense, but the product or the service is not for you.”
• The way people process information is fairly similar.
• When conducting usability testing, five people is enough. You will start to see a trend if something works or not.
• Questions to ask during testing are: Did the users complete the task? How long did it take? Did they enjoy the experience?
• Brand loyalty is not the most important thing when it comes to usability.
• A/B testing and multi-variate testing – is a method of creating two versions of a page and presenting each to a different group of visitors. Which works best?
• whichtestwon.com – a site where you can see completed A/B tests and ‘guess’ which one works better.
• Track conversion rates – how many people did what you wanted them to do?
• Create ratios if you can.
• Usability isn’t a standalone process – you need to have search engine optimization, a proper business model, etc. You can have the most usable site in the world but if no one visits, it means nothing.
• Seven things that are most important for a web site to be: useful, desired, valuable, findable, credible, accessible (aside from Usability)

Thanks again to Laura for an interesting and engaging presentation, to our sponsors and to all who were able to attend.  As always we welcome your feedback.  Let us know if you have any suggestions on speakers or topics of interest.  We look forward to a great 2010 full of exciting people, topics, door prizes and of course dinners!

Door Prize Winners

Caitlin Kealey accepts wine kit prize courtesy of Randy Little of indyadvisor.ca

Cate Huston accepts her Corel Photo and Video Bundle door prize

Della Siemens wins two tickets to the performance "Elementos" at the NAC

Mary Mary Beth Baker with her eco-friendly lunch kit courtesy of Eco-Tav Creations