| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |
For years, SAS has collected information from SAS Global Forum attendees about how they use SAS software. In recent years, we have also conducted small usability tests and surveys. The results are always useful and interesting. In an effort to help SAS Global Forum 2010 attendees find all of the paths to providing their feedback, I conducted a quick interview with Paul Hankey, who manages the SAS Usability Lab. Be sure to look for his station and provide your feedback while at SAS Global Forum.
Renee: From my vantage point on the demo floor, I can see that you usually have people two and three deep at your booth. What are you doing over there?
Paul: We’re getting feedback from SAS Global Forum attendees on new product designs. Sometimes it’s just a component that will go into a product, but other times we’ll use a fully-functioning prototype for the evaluations. We also gather attendee reactions to various customer-facing Web sites.
Renee: Usability sounds interesting. What exactly does that mean?
Paul: There are four main phases to the usability process.
- The first is user research – defining what users need to do their job and using that to help determine what should go into a product.
- The second phase is designing the feature workflow (e.g. how you get the user from Point A to Point X) as well as creating the user interface.
- The third part is putting the design in front of representative users and getting their input on what works and what doesn’t work.
- Finally, information from the evaluation is used to modify the design. We typically do a combination of the first and third steps at SAS Global Forum.
Renee: Do you get good information doing this small/short timeframe test?
Paul: The quality of information we obtain is excellent. Obviously we can’t look at everything in a 15-minute timeframe, so we’ll choose the more important features of a product to focus on. We wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t helping us improve our products!
Renee: What are you testing this year?
Paul: We’ll have five or six different things to show and test. We’ll get feedback on some of the new Flash Flex components, test a tree-map visualization, gather information on the design of the 9.2 documentation Web site, and look at different features for the Outlook portion of Add-in for Microsoft Office. We’ll also be demonstrating and getting feedback on the design of a new SAS social-media component.
Renee: Can you tell us a little about how the information you have gathered has changed SAS products and services?
Paul: Information we’ve gathered at previous conferences has directly impacted a number of SAS products, such as Web Report Studio, the Outlook portion of Add-in for Microsoft Office, the e-Learning framework, the Documentation Library, as well as Web sites from Publications, Technical Support and Education. We’ve also had people compare designs for bullet graphs that could be used in dashboards, and the BI Dashboard, itself. Every year the variety of products and services we evaluate seems to grow and grow.
As you can see, the feedback that SAS gathers from our customers is valuable. If you find yourself on the demo floor with 15 minutes to spare, be sure to look for Paul and do a little testing.
| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |