Comments on SchwabLearning.org: A Case Study

Jon Freach — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:46 GMT

Jeanene:
Congratulations on your contributions to helping parents and kids with this condition and on a fine article.

I feel compelled to note four issues that were apparent to me as I read your post.

1. Branding
I was confused by the name of the organization because Schwab is such a prominent financial services brand. Your backstory was helpful, but I think most folks wouldn’t associate “Schwab” with “learning difficulties,” “parents,” or “kids.” Could a name that is more descriptive of Learning Difficulties be a quicker read?

2. Research Documentation
The research seemed quite informative, but the graphic documentation appears to be a bit melodramatic, thin on data and hard to access. For example, the diagram illustrating “Mom’s evolution of knowledge” seems terribly confusing (I’m not sure where to begin reading this one) while the user type diagram showing the four basic interaction models would probably communicate better using a simple numeric hierarchy to communicate most important-to-least important tasks.

3. Wireframes
The usability issues you described appear to be a result of the interface design tactics used at the low-fidelity level. If the wireframes actually looked more like an interface that a confused parent would be interacting with and less like a deliverable from a consultant, then maybe the first round of usability testing would have revealed some of the insights discovered during the second round.

4. Site Maintenance and Site Degradation
The current version of the home page seems to have abandoned the simple, straightforward and seemingly useful homepage design of February 2002. Can you comment on why you think this degradation has occurred? It has the look of retail, rather than the accessibility of a service.

Finally, please pardon the criticism, but as a former Director of User Experience at Sapient I was rather surprised to see this quality of work. While I understand that you were pleased with your service and deliverables, I see much room for improvement.

Thanks.
Jon

Joseph Landers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:45 GMT

Jeanene,
I am so proud of you and the work you and your team have done to help others with the need to learn.

Dad

Steve — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:56 GMT

I’d love to know what guided the decision to use audio prompts on this site? For a dialup user, the site is painfully slow. User studies and wireframing don’t mean anything if someone seeking information about LD is waiting around all day for the site to load.

Brad Jensen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:56 GMT

Jeanene, you like google and now you can put a ‘search my site/search Google’ branded search engine on it – I ‘ve seen a couple so far.

Also, simple, self-paced elearning from some of your articles would give the parents the confidence that they are understanding the important ideas and pricnicples ine ach article. Article to elearning cost should be under $500 if you do it internally. A simple author-built LCMS costs less than a minimum wage employee.

Brad Jensen
www.eufrates.com

doug — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:56 GMT

The “blinded by vision” problem is so prevalent in projects like this. It sounds like SchwabLearning is a web experience built from the ground-up, i.e. that it invented its own model for the kind of experience that it wanted to provide. So of course its designers presented the ideal solution, and of course this ideal solution was implementable only if they spent a lot of money and a lot of time on it.

But of course it’s also important to have a notion of the ideal before you begin to build the real, so I think that the author made exactly the right decision to hire people who would use Sapient’s work as a roadmap, with the caveat that it had to be live in four months.

Now _that’s_ project management, not to mention board management and consultant management.

PS: I think that 10-12 consultants on a small project is obviously just too dang many fingers in the pie. Even though they managed to shepherd the design (pie) to a serviceable conclusion (identification of the ingredients), it’s hard to imagine that a platoon of cooks would be more efficient than a SWAT team, in this case.

Roy — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:56 GMT

Good stuff. It is good to see usability taking a front seat these days. Nice work to all.
A few thoughts—
Icon use. I would be more cautious with icon use. They seem to be proliferating on the new site—especially the sub pages.

The lexicon. Buzzwords are, at times, a necessary evil. New language may have to be created to describe a situation that more common terms cannot adequately contain, but I always cringe when I see terms like “landscape” and “domain” creep into client deliverables—especially if they are being used in ways unfamiliar to the client.
It hints at a failure of more universal language to describe the users’ universe—and I can’t believe that was the case here.
Personal peeves, I guess.

Always interesting to see different outfit’s methodologies. Some differences in approach, but there are so many commonalities and the outcomes are user-need based.

Good show.

Roy

mini-d — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:56 GMT

I’ve found it great too, i specially love the diagrams and many good screenshots… i’m very impressed cause i’m seeing good examples of IA and Usabilty on these days in this website, wich i’ve never found so easy in the old days :), i can’t wait for another case of study they’re so great… and this one was very complete.

jess — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:56 GMT

Wow! Thanks Jeanene for a fantastic read – your openess in your process and particularly your challenges was inspiring, encouraging, and educational. B&A at its best :)