Portfolio: Open Market OM-Transact UI design and usability study

It was early in the life of the Web, back when Web apps were just starting...

Open Market needed help in designing their flagship product, OM-Transact. They asked Interaction Design to do a usability study because they knew there were some usability problems. After all, this was one of the first Web applications and we were still figuring things out.

After a rapid design-and-test cycle, we had one of the first Web order form UIs using the familiar mail-order form as a metaphor.

The usability study started with pencil sketches, and wound up with an HTML version:

Order form sketch

This familiar layout was the result of a week's worth of intense design and
paper usability testing.

The usability study was done with paper sketches, and was very successful. We gave participants a pencil and an eraser, letting them make changes as they went along. Some good ideas came out of that.

Overview of the project

Discover problems in the existing UI. Usability testing pointed out a number of problems in the existing interface, including places where users had a different model of shopping than the software had. This violation of user expectations makes it hard to learn and use a new product.

Redesign the ordering process. A series of paper usability studies allowed us to make very fast changes to the UI, reducing the number of screens that users have to navigate through. We gave participants pencil sketches, a pencil and an eraser. If they didn't like something, they could change it on the spot to show us how they thought of it.

Follow-up usability testing showed it to be successful.

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