UX Output Visualisation and Some Useful Tips
By: Userspots Nyc
Tags: UX, Data Visualization, Design

It is undeniable that our UX oriented work and past experiences have helped us position ourselves better on the way to developing good products. I would now like to talk about UX Visualisation, which is a concept that we have come to value and worked rigorously upon. This article contains a large portion of my presentation on UX Output Visualisation at the World Usability Congress at Graz.

Why Should We Visualise?

Fundamentally speaking, the quality of UX work is defined by the insights generated at the end and the design solutions, as well as the way these outputs are presented. That is why no matter how many “Wow Moments” your product has, you can still take its impact one step further by the way you present it. When we saw that the 100+ pages of user test reports that we prepared to demonstrate the results of our studies between 2009–2012 turned out to be illegible and rather unnecessary, as well as giving the impression that we were “self-immersed academics with little practical knowledge” to the marketing teams, we decided to do our best to explain ourselves better. That is where we began to work out ways for visualising things rather than reporting them.

What Can We Visualise?

Since the main goal here is to be understood well, basically all types of user experiences can be visualised. These include Usability Test Results, Persona, Customer Journey, Google Analytics Data and Benchmark studies.

Usability Test Results

We did our first visualisation work on usability tests. We started out by creating infographs instead of executive summaries especially for e-commerce sites who were eager to take these outputs and use them right away. By capturing demographic information, the average shopping duration, survey results and common mistakes in one single visual, we created a very useful alternative for e-commerce sites that wanted a more condensed version of their test results. We later began to work with finance companies, which introduced the concept of Single Usability Metric and the visualisation of that type of results into our lives.

SUM (Single Usability Metric)

The ISO 9241 standard definition for usability reads: “The degree of effectiveness, productiveness and satisfaction with which a product can be used by its user base in a certain context that serves its purpose of usage”. Therefore, SUM comes up as a type of data that we can benefit from in displaying how usable an interface or an interface function can be within the statistics that adhere to ISO standards. For more information, click here. So we began to create infographics using SUM in comparative benchmark studies we worked on. We eventually began creating videos by using the results of user tests. The video here explains the numeritic differences between an older and newer version of a site.

Persona

Persona is already a type of UX output that is visually dominant, but in order to make it more effective, we use real or realistic profiles and perform special shoots with them. Stock photos are not very useful in achieving the desired effect.

Customer Journey

In order to understand the interaction and journey that the customers experience with the product, we use different types of visualisation. In addition to visualisations like Service Blueprint, using a “loop” type of visualisation is also useful in depicting a continuous journey.

Benchmark

Visualisation methods like Sunburst can be very beneficial in comprehending the type of functions and focus points that your local and global competition is using.

Google Analytics Data

It can be tremendously helpful to highlight the important points that have been obscured among the mountain of data by turning a Google Analytics analysis into an infograph. You can find out more about the details of this visualisation method by clicking here.

Sunburst Visualisation Method

6 Tips for UX Visualisation

1. Think Outside the Excel Boxes

It is easy to gather stats from an Excel file and turn them into a graph, but Excel and Powerpoint outputs are not effective enough fort he visualisation of the effect we have in mind.

2. Form Follows Data

We wouldn’t want visual aesthetics to overshadow the data at hand. Our aim is to maximise the comprehension of data, if you simply accompany a weak insight like “people buy the cheaper product” with a good visual, it will never work.

3. Know Your Target Audience

The type of audience you will be presenting your visualisation to is also very important. If it is a CEO, then you might want to avoid details and focus on highlights, if it is the team, then details should be included in the visualisation study.

4. Clarify Expectations

The audience or client should be clearly and concisely informed about the content of the presentation before the meeting.

5. Always Add a CTA

Every visualisation presentation should include clear actions. In presenting a benchmark study, it is essential that each graph is explained and their interpretation be passed over to the audience.

6. Get Inspired

Be open to inspiration at all times. Sites like ‘Behance’, ‘Dribbble’ and ‘Information is Beautiful’ are.

P.S. Written by mustafadalci and published at Userspots Almanac in Turkish language.