Don Rickert Design

Ethnography Basics (Online Presentation)

Depth Interviewing Narrated Slideshow (Online Presentation)

Illustration with narration of a Depth Interview. This video is a series of photos taken of a Participant (brown hair) who is showing the Researcher (red hair) how she transfers pictures from her telephone to her computer. This particular artifact review is interesting because there were lots of work-arounds the Subject had to invent to compensate for bad user interfaces on the phone as well as the computer.

Online Card-Sorting Demonstration (Online Presentation)

Visual Preference Assessment Example (Online Presentation)

Brainstorming and Mind Maps in Product Development (Online Presentation)

Personas and Scenarios in Product Development (Online Presentation)

Appeal Study Example (Online Presentation)

Don Rickert Research and Design Products and Online Retail

If you are interested specifically in Don Rickert Research and Design's work related to cutting edge muscial instruments, video and audio production, furniture and other fascinating "niche" products, please visit Adventurous Muse (www.AdventurousMuse.com). From that site, you can link to our various online retail stores (www.AdventurousMuseStore.com; www.AdventureandWhimsy.com; www.JonWhiddon.com)

Allergan Dermatology Division Specialized Marketing Web site

www.tazorac.com/

Website focused on “marketing” a new acne medication (TAZORAC)

Advisory/educational consultation to the primary consultants (another firm) on how to conduct a high-quality Usability/UX evaluation to yield useful design insights

HMV Online Retail

www.hmv.com/

The U.K.-based HMV (stands for His Master's Voice) is one of the world's largest retailers of Video and audio media (i.e. DVDs and CDs)

Online Retail Website Re-Do

• User Experience guidance and education
• Field Usability Testing (actual users)
• Usability Review
• Information Architecture (complete site revision)

To learn more about about Don Rickert's work with HMV...

HMV.com

State Farm (Auto Insurance Division) Insurance

www.statefarm.com/

State Farm Auto Insurance Rate Quote Website Revision. Dr. Rickert and associates consulted extensively on the usability, usefulness and appeal on State Farm's Auto Rate Quote website.

• User Experience consulting
• Usability Testing
• Design Research and guidance to Designers

WalMart Online Retail: Walmart.com

www.walmart.com/

• User Experience guidance and education
• Field Usability Testing (actual users)
• Lab Usability Testing (actual users)

To learn more about Don Rickert's work with Walmart on its online retail...

Walmart.com

NCR ATMs

www.ncr.com

New  “Portable” (less than 2 tons) ATM to Compete with Diebold’s “Portable” ATM

• Usability and Ergonomics Research Design (100 research subjects)
• Maintain good relations with NCR Design Team in Dundee, Scotland
• Project Management and Logistics
• Obtaining working ATMs from both vendors (had to purchase Diebold through “gray market”)
• Advanced Statistical Analysis

To learn more about Don Rickert's work on NCR ATMs...

NCR Retail Self Checkout Terminals

www.ncr.com

New line of Self-Checkout Terminals (now fairly universal in many retail establishments)

• Usability and Ergonomics Research Design
• Usability Review
• Advanced Statistical Analysis

To learn more about Don Rickert's work on NCR Self-Checkout terminals...

NCR Retail Checkout Job Aid for Cashiers

www.ncr.com

APRICOTS, a produce identification reference system for grocery store cashiers. The goal is to save grocery chains the millions of dollars that are lost every year by mis-identification of produce at checkout time.

• Usability Testing and Evaluation
• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)

For more information on Dr. Rickert's work on APRICOTS...

APRICOTS: System to Teach Cashiers How to Correctly Identify Produce Items by Name

Pfizer Animal Health Division Specialized Marketing Web sites

Veterinary Pharmaceuticals Site

In-development versions of Prototype websites related to Rimadyl, a Pfizer canine arthritis drug.

1. Rimadyl.com: education of Veterinarians and consumers
2. Rimadog.com: an attempt to build an interactive online community of pet owners

Usability and appeal evaluations of two prototype web sites, now part of the main Pfizer Animal Health website.

• Usability Evaluation
• Aesthetic Quality Evaluation

For more information...

Rimadyl.com and Rimadog.com

ThoughtMill (Now part of American Systems Corporation)

www.americansystems.com

Primarily Corporate Information Technology Related Consulting

1. Thoughtmill’s public-facing corporate website AND
2. Website of the American Systems Corporation, who had just acquired Thoughtmill

Work included:

• Usability Evaluation
• Terminology Study
• Appeal Study

Deliverables were proprietary

American Systems Corporation public-facing website

www.americansystems.com

Dr. Rickert and associates assisted American Systems Corporation, a consulting firm engaged in National Security (i.e. Defense) and related work of a classified nature, on the usability, usefulness and appeal of its public corporate website. Targeted users are actually U.S. Government procurement officers

• Competitive Landscape Evaluation (evaluation of about a dozen other company websites)
• Usability Evaluation
• Terminology Study
• Appeal Study

For more information...

American Systems Corporation

Enterprise Software Systems

As Director of Consumer Insight and Human Factors at S1 Corportation, Don Rickert's job was to drive product strategy and organizational decisions through clear communication of customer insights derived from secondary and primary consumer research, including surveys, focus groups, usability testing and interviews, combined with rigorous real world observation of real people doing real things (sometimes called “consumer ethnography”). Some of the large software systems that Don and his team have helped to invent are listed below.

• S1 Personal Banking
• S1 Business Banking
• S1 Corporate Banking
• S1 CRM
• S1 Full-Service Banking Solutions (S1 Enterprise Teller, S1 Sales and Service Platform, S1 Banking Call Center)

For more information on this long story...

Online Reference Systems (various domains)

Dr. Rickert has been involved in a large number of Online Reference Systems and Interactive Job Aids. He created some of the earliest hypertext references, many years before the existence of the Internet or the World Wide Web. To see the particulars on some of these older projects, as well as more recent web-based systems, see...

Online Reference Products

TrustMark Bank CRM and Related

www.trustmark.com/

CRM and Bank Branch Teller Systems Prototypes

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Testing
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

M and T Bank CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Related

www.mantbank.com/

CRM and Bank Branch Teller Systems Prototypes

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Testing
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

Check Processing System for Large Financial Institutions

Bank of America (under contract to GoldLeaf)

www.goldleaf.com/

www.bankofamerica.com/

New Check processing and imaging “backroom” system, cross-continental work coordination/communication system

Interface with physical check sorting equipment

Note: Long-term consulting engagement

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Evaluation
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

For more information...

S1 Corporation Enterprise Teller

http://www.sone.com/

New Bank Teller System by S1 Corporation--Customer Service for Bank Branch Tellers

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Evaluation
• Usability Testing
• Terminology Studies
• Attractive Quality Studies
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

For more information on Enterprise Teller...

Also, see the presentation below, which has some usability testing video of an Enterprise Teller prototype.

State Farm Bank Online Banking

www.statefarm.com  (Choose State Farm Bank)

Over a period of about 7 years, collaborated with numerous State Farm teams to create the current State Farm Online Banking system

• Card-sort/naming/navigation studies (including the complex statistical analysis)
• Usability Testing (lab-based)
• Usability Testing (in the field)
• Depth interviews (50+)
• Ethnography
• Visual Design
• Standards and Guidelines
• Information Architecture

For more information, including a demo...

State Farm Bank

SunTrust Bank Online Banking for Small Businesses

www.suntrust.com

Evaluated the degree to which the current system was meeting the needs of SunTrust’s small business users.

• Ethnography (small business owners)
• Depth Interviews
• Usability Review
• Usability Testing
• Terminology Study
• Attractive Quality Evaluation
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

For more information...

SunTrust Small Business Banking

Regions Bank Online Banking

www.regions.com

Customization of Personal Online Banking

• Usability Review
• Standards and Guidelines

For more details on this project...

 

 

 

 

 

M and T Bank Online Banking

www.mantbank.com

Evaluation of an online banking prototype

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Testing
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

For more information...

M&T Bank (with short Usability Testing clip)

TrustMark Bank Online Bill Payment

www.trustmark.com

Evaluated the bill payment aspect of an online banking prototype

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Testing
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

For more information and a demo...

Trustmark Bank

Eggs Overnight

www.eggsovernight.com

 

New system to interface with the major shipping firms to complement a proprietary physical container technology and logistics systems for high-value fragile items

• Depth Interviews
• Observational Research (Ethnography)
• Usability Evaluation
• Information Architecture
• UI Design

Usability Testing Clip of Small Business Online Banking

Brain Attack Virtual Conference

The Brain Attack (Stroke) Virtual Conference, part of the National Medical Practices Knowledge Banks project (funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology) was an on-line, intelligent multimedia desk reference (including text, audio, narrated surgery video, relevant medical images and virtual reality simulations) for medical specialties (initially neurosurgery). Users include medical professionals and students.

The project was conducted by a consortium comprising NIST, NCR, AT&T, Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, Allegheny General Hospital, Allegheny University of Health Sciences, Carnegie-Mellon University and Clark-Atlanta University. The planned system included support tools and services that facilitated the capture, organization, access to, and use of expert experience and knowledge. These tools and services included computer-supported conferencing, “synthetic interviews” with experts, illustrative cases and patient management plans, on-line references, medical procedures video and case data.

On this huge project involving many teams, Don Rickert played a key leadership role in conducting needs finding (ethnographic field study), participatory design (scenario-based design), formal task/scenario representation, user interface design and usability evaluations.

For more information...

The Brain Attack Virtual Conference

Bell Atlantic’s (now Verizon) Interactive Television (ITV)

Prior to the advent of the World-Web Web, the Internet was viewed simply as a system for research collaboration. It was definitely not an entertainment medium for consumers. Interactive TV was the dream of many organizations, especially telephone companies, as a way to put to use what was then a new and revolutionary DSL technology. The Bell Atlantic Stargazer ITV/VOD market trial went live in May of 1995. It was first video-on-demand service designed for commercial deployment.
Many of the user experience (UX), usability and ergonomics (relating the the set-top boxes and remote controls) principles discovered are now expected basic features of contemporary digital cable. This is particularly true of the the interactive programming guides that digital cable and satellite TV users have become accustomed to.

Dr. Don Rickert led all consumer research related to ITV and remote control devices (ethnography and other field studies, focus groups, surveys, usability testing)—Defined the total customer experience for Bell Atlantic’s Stargazer Interactive Television service, including—

• Packaging and the consumer “out-of-the-box” experience
• User interface design
• Design, evaluation and manufacture of remote control devices
• Training procedures for cable installers and Customer Support
• Collateral materials (e.g. “quick guides”) for consumers

For more information...

Bell Atlantic's Stargazer Interactive TV / Video-on-Demand

Remote Control Devices for Interactive TV

Product Development Process Consulting for Our Clients

Example: A Large Enterprise Software Company

Most companies that produce physical goods use a process very close to that developed by the famous New Product Development firm, IDEO, many years ago. The high-level diagram for such a process is shown below.

 

Large Software Development companies often use one of several well-known “Methodologies” or "Development Processes" in an attempt to provide a common model for coordination of work and deliverables among the many teams involved in big software engineering projects. One of these Processes is called the Rational Unified Process and is better known by its acronym, RUP.

RUP. well as its competitors such as Extreme Programming, is extremely complex and rarely meets the needs of its users without modification and additions. One general area, despite the rhetoric of product literature from IBM (the current owner of the RUP process and the plethora of expensive software necessary to implement it), which is barely modeled in RUP are all of the tasks having to do with End Users--the end-user-centric parts of software development  are often called User Experience (UX) and include the areas of... 

• Training
• Documentation
• Human Factors & Usability
• Parts of Software Engineering that deal with or affect the design and development of User Interfaces

The Project:

While an employee of a financial software firm, and later as a consultant, Dr. Rickert led a cross-disciplinary team to model the neglected expertise areas mentioned above and to develop formal deliverable templates (i.e. templates for documents) to correspond to the added and/or revised workflows (tasks). Don Rickert had many years of experience with development methodolgies going back to his days as a Product Manager with James Martin Associates, creators of the Information Engineering, RAD (Rapid Application Development) and other similar methodologies.

Click on the “Roadmap" thumbnail for a larger view  or you may wish to View this image full-size so that you can actually read it.  The revised “RUP Roadmap” reflects substantial and significant revision to standard RUP. Much work was done on all of the workflow rows, but we are only going to focus on one of them here. 

The highlighted row (called a "Swim Lane" in RUP parlance) labeled “Human Factors & Customer Insights” shows a number of deliverables added to standard RUP. Additionally,the deliverables with a red highlight are those that were extremely modified in order to be useful. Note that the many interrelationships between tasks in one area and those in other areas are not shown in this version of the map for the sake of simplicity.

Summary of the RUP changes for the Client

New Workflows

Analyze Most Current Research Findings

• Previous usability testing of the same product
• Usability testing results from other related projects
• Client Company Customer Satisfaction Survey
• Other strategic customer/user studies conducted by Human Factors & Customer Insight


Usability Review of the UI Concept

• The UI Concept is illustrated in the Functional Requirements Document (FRD), described later.
• This is an expert review (AKA “Heuristic Evaluation
• Answers the questions…
  • Does the UI Concept describe a user experience that has a high probability of being usable? …Accessible?
  • Are the UI Concept and Use Cases consistent with known Customer/User Research findings?
  • Were the UI Best Practices and other related standards followed with fidelity?
  • What are the probable high severity problems?
  

Elaboration Usability Testing

• One or two Usability Tests
• Optional second test can be a test of different functionality or a re-test of a problem area observed in the first test.
• Conducted in a formal Usability Laboratory or at a customer site
• At least 8 participants who are judged to be similar on relevant characteristics to actual end-users of the product
• Artifacts to be tested are either the current demo or mockups of the UI (or both).
• Not merely a certification exercise
• A way to help UI Designers to refine their approach
• Principle of iterative development


Construction Usability Testing

• Certain aspects of usability, such as realistic performance, can only be tested with a true production system.
• The following should be tested:
  • Production UI
  • Installation
  • Online Help
  • Manuals
  

New Artifacts (Deliverables)

User Experience and Usability Supplemental Specifications

• The most current and useful research data related to—
  • Usefulness
  • Usability
  • Must-have requirements
  • Appeal
  • Key information about essential external standards related to usability and accessibility
    • e.g. Common Industry Format
    • e.g. ADA, WAI, Section 508 etc.

Research Approach Document

• Summarizes the high-level assessment of the type of usability tests that will be necessary in Elaboration and Construction.


Elaboration Usability Test Plan

• Low-level tactical plan for the two usability tests of the Demo/Mockups in Elaboration
• Summarizes results of the UI Concept Review.
• Format is based on the guidelines set forth in the Common Industry Format for Usability Reports standard (ANSI/INCITS-354 Common Industry Format).

Elaboration Usability Results

• Documents the usability of the UI Demo/Mockup in Common Industry Format (CIF)
• Identified problems are prioritized by severity.


Construction Usability Test Plan

• Low-level tactical plan for the usability test of the Production UI in Construction


Construction Usability Results

• Documents the usability of the Production UI
• Identified problems are prioritized by severity.


Certification Checklist for Usability

• Not new per se, but new as a formal part of the sanctioned development process
• A Certification artifact that certifies that the product is usable and accessible


Existing RUP Artifacts That Were Generally Ignored

Screen Specifications

• Used to verify that recommendations from Usability Review and Elaboration Usability Testing have been incorporated into the overall UI design.
• Pointed to the need for development teams to actually create the Screen Specifications—something that had been skipped by most development teams..

Functional Requirements Document (FRD)

• Contains screen mockups and explanations of system behavior
• Important for the creation of usability test plans as well as for usability review of the UI Concept
• Challenge: Not all development teams created an FRD


Design Approach Document

Existing RUP Templates That Had to be Revised or Expanded

Marketing Requirements Document (MRD)

• The MRD template was revised to include Human Factors & Customer Insight
• Addtional enhancements to the MRD template included:
  • A section on User Intent
  • illustrative scenarios based on strategic field research conducted by Human Factors/Customer Insight as well as lessons learned documented by UI Designers.
  • A section on Competitive User Experience (comparison to similar products from competitors)

Reviewer and Approver Matrix

• The RUP template, Reviewer_Approver_Matrix.dot was revised to include Human Factors & Customer Insight.


Project Definition Document

• The template, PDD.dot was revised to include Human Factors & Customer Insight.

 

Process That Don Rickert Research and Design Follows

Since every consulting engagement is different, and our clients have their own product development processes, there is no single process. That being said, when developing our own products we do follow a specific NPD process, summarized on the diagram below. The diagram is a good way to organize communication of all of the things we can do FOR YOU. Watch the short video below for the details.

 

Industry by Product Matrix for Don Rickert Research and Design

Download Industry by Product Matrix (the matrix below in PDF document form)

Download a table containing specific project summaries and links to details on each project 10-7-10 (PDF)

	Customer-Facing Websites					Internal Interactive Systems for Customer-Facing Jobs		“Back Room” Operations	Physical Devices
Industry	Online Shopping	Marketing / Educational	Other Sales (e.g. insurance rate quotes)	Corporate Website	Online Banking	Customer Relationship Support	Job Aid	Interactive	Retail Checkout, ATMs, Remote Control Devices, Set-top Boxes
Retail	X			X		X	X		X
Insurance		X	X	X	X	X
eCommerce				X			X		X
Pharmaceutical		X		X
Consulting		X		X
Defense		X		X
Software		X		X	X	X		X	X
Financial				X	X	X	X	X
Shipping/Supply Chain/Logistics						X	X	X
Medical		X					X
Interactive TV			X	X					X

 

Note: “Retail” and “eCommerce”, while related, have distinct meanings here. Retail refers to organizations that sell goods. eCommerce refers to organizations that produce systems and equipment to support the Retail as well as the Banking industries.