How can we monitor our user experiences on an on-going basis to ensure that they’re operating effectively? How can we compare two design ideas and use the results to inform our solutions?

Quantitative measures can provide the ongoing, statistically significant or comparative data to answer these questions and can complement more traditional qualitative research methods.

Too often though, we measure things “because we can”, not because they’re good measures of success. “10,000 people visited this page last month” – is that a good measure of success? Probably not. Did we expect more visits or less? Did those 10,000 people get what they needed? Were 100,000 looking for it and only 10,000 found it? Quantitative measures are rarely defined within the context of objectives, and that makes it difficult to know if the experience is succeeding or failing. That means we can’t learn from our mistakes, and we don’t know if we’re improving the experience over time.

Like many things in life, quantitative measurement relies on good preparation. To effectively measure a user experience it must be divided into discrete pieces that can be measured against their objectives. In this full-day, hands-on workshop, participants will be guided through the steps required to create a Capability Strategy Sheet – a technique that defines the objectives and measures for pages within a user experience.

Using examples from their own work, participants will:

• Identify capabilities within their user experiences.
• Define & prioritize the objectives of a capability.
• Document a capability’s design & content strategy.
• Establish meaningful measures & success criteria for a capability.

Iteration has proven the most effective method to learn these techniques, so participants will collaborate in small teams to iterate through each step 3 or 4 times during the workshop, working on each team member’s capabilities in turn.

Upon completion of the workshop each participant will have a solid understanding of the theory, have experienced several practical iterations, and will leave with the beginnings of a Capability Strategy Sheet that can bootstrap their own quantitative measurement efforts.

If you're interested in beta testing this workshop and you can provide honest and candid feedback, sign up now at the special "expenses only" rate of $20!