Comments on: Big Wins with Quick Changes

By: Jaan Orvet

Jaan Orvet — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:50:15 +0000

The Twitter idea is good, I like that.

(The user testing I meant was pre the initial launch; poorly phrased question on my behalf.)

By: Jaan Orvet

Jaan Orvet — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:48:48 +0000

Mike – Cheers, thank you. Sounds like the right approach.

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:50:49 +0000

Hey Giania – The images look OK now. Are you still having trouble? Thanks for the heads up!

By: Giania

Giania — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:35:09 +0000

Firstly – I LOVE Mockingbird. (I can’t remember who first turned me onto it, it may have been you all.) I’ve used it to fly through a couple wireframes now. I had tried Balsamiq before but it felt kludgy by comparison to this – which may be a change in me rather than a quality of Balsamiq. It’s definitely earned a permanent spot in my toolkit.

Secondly – Skitch seems to be letting you down in the image showing department. :( I cannae see the meat that compliments your articles potato-y goodness.

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:06:04 +0000

Cheers – that’s what we were aiming for! :)

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:18:03 +0000

I can totally relate to the process you have gone through here. At first glance I would have thought the first design was a good one too, but the second iteration is obviously better.

Reacting to your feedback so quickly has made a much more engaging site for your users.

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:13:55 +0000

Totally agree – there are some things you just can’t see until you launch and your users point them out :)

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:19:44 +0000

@Nuno – Thanks for the feedback – much appreciated.

By: Kerry Watson

Kerry Watson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:00:11 +0000

Great post — sounds like incorporating immediate user feedback the day after a launch would be an excellent addition to the project schedule! You *always* know more after a launch than you did before.

By: Nuno

Nuno — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:08:54 +0000

Amazing. Great work guys. It made me see straight way… I have a suggestion that it can be good with what just happened. I am loving the videos, I was expecting more things that is hard to find on the net: web typography, iphone… etc. (I am loving the design ones, user testing, html e-mail, etc amazing). But after a certain time you guys will have to make something new. And my suggestion would be make case-studys of examples (maybe not real world like this one) but it would be good to see examples involving different technologies and experts being solved in depth. Well done…

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:24:18 +0000

I like Mockingbird. It works offline and it’s free, so it seems great to me. It’s built with Cappuccino so no need for Flash.

By: Angus Bradley

Angus Bradley — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:56:04 +0000

How do you find mockingbird? Is this a change from balsamiq?

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:53:30 +0000

We don’t have any measurement in place for this change. As I mentioned to Jaan below, it was obvious the change needed to be made, and that the UX would be massively improved, just based on the feedback.

However, in the future, we’re going to try to do more formal A/B testing.

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:52:08 +0000

This was one of those changes that we just knew we needed to make. We were receiving enough negative feedback that it was obvious it needed changing without any testing.

Regarding my view, in general, towards testing wireframes: I think it’s a great idea to run them by your followers on Twitter, for a very informal sanity check. It’s not a proper test, but usually it irons out a few obvious things you’ve missed.

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:52:00 +0000

This was one of those changes that we just knew we needed to make. We were receiving enough negative feedback that it was obvious it needed changing without any testing.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:38:54 +0000

Hi Jaan,

We did do user testing on this project here at Carsonified HQ with some helpful volunteers. We took the user testing to a point where we knew getting it out in the public domain was the best way of getting real feedback that would help us fine tune the site. Our philosophy with this site is that it’s never finished. We’ll always be trying to improve the experience.

By: Jaan Orvet

Jaan Orvet — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:56:15 +0000

Hi Ryan,

Curious about your view on testing wireframes and comps before committing, and whether you did any testing on this project. I’m guessing with a quick turnaround ability on changes it’s not strictly necessary.

By: Gareth Poole

Gareth Poole — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:42:15 +0000

Love the new design!

It’ll be cool to see how the design has improved the experience for your users; do you have any measurements in place to keep a tab on how the new design performs?

By: B. Moore

B. Moore — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:02:27 +0000

2 Thumbs UP!

The ecommerce site I work for is about to roll out a huge redesign…

I will be sharing this post in the next meeting we have and maybe then they will listen to reason.