Using Forums to Connect with Users 

by Jennifer Cowley, BIC UI Analyst Intern

There are two new forums on support.sas.com. One of them is a private forum where SAS Web Report Studio usability analystsconduct design reviews and surveys. The other is a public forum where users can pose questions to their peers. Both are for users of SAS® Web Report Studio.

The private forum has a unique purpose. In the design process, many small questions arise about how users will perceive or understand an interface component; often the usability analyst does not have clear answers for them.. Consequently, the designer is left to make an educated guess. This may become a problem when lots of educated guesses are made without any idea about how those guesses will impact usability. So to compensate, I thought a private forum might be a good place to connect with users immediately for quick answers. The forum becomes a mechanism to facilitate iterative design because questions are posed in the forum, answers are collected and design changes are then made. This does not take the place of conducting a full evaluation of the interface in the usability lab (Such as the one that Paul Hankey conducts.) but rather, complements this type of evaluation. Forums may be a viable mechanism to help usability analysts refine product designs based on user feedback such that they can be tested more extensively in the usability lab.

What kinds of questions can we get answered in a private forum?
One example study I ran in the private forum involved terminology. In development, we distinguish the differences between a parent filter and a child filter but in the interface and related documentation, we do not. So an attempt has been made in our upcoming release to identify the two by labeling them in the interface. However, we were not sure if the user could understand what we meant by a parent filter and a child filter since it is not technically a "parent-child" metaphorical relationship. So we asked users for terminology to describe the filters.

In addition, we asked the forum users how often they use certain functions and for what purpose. We also asked them how many hours a week they used the application and what their self-reported expertise level was. In the future, we plan to present screen shots of interface components and videos illustrating how simple dialogs work and then solicit user feedback. Ideally, we'd like participants to mock up interfaces in the forum but that technology is not yet available.

The public forum is meant to complement the private forum. 
In order to give back to the community of users for their time in the private forum, we created a public forum where users can network to discuss SAS Web Report Studio. Several additional benefits arise from the forum: First, SAS can find new participants for private forum studies. Also, the public forum is a window into the user experience. The SAS Web Report Studio development team can see the users’ questions and document them for further study and future optimization. All members of the team can view the contents of the forum; not just usability analysts. Finally, successful companies, including Apple and Starbucks, have shown that really listening to  users is the only way to produce a quality product!

Take a moment to check out the SAS Web Report Studio Discussion Forum. Bookmark it and add it to your SAS resource list. Also, it you’d like to participate in the SAS Web Report Studio private forum, e-mail Jennifer Cowley directly.