OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Branding

I have chosen to re-design the UI of the Morrisons grocery website because it seems to have the poorest UX of the top 4 supermarkets. In order to do this I will need the Morrisons brand guidelines which is proving difficult to find.

The only way that I can use the colours for Morrisons is to take the logo and use the colour picker tool on illustrator and photoshop to attempt to keep the colours the same. I did, however find the font which is used within the Morrisons branding.





Re-brand

Landor Associates also did a re-design of the Morrisons brand which gave the supermarket a new lease of life. The old Morrisons logo was abit tired and made the supermarket look dated so the introduction of a new logo really helped the Morrisons brand in becoming more modern and up-to-date.



The case study from the Landor website explains how the agency overcame the challenges of the brief and also explains their reasoning behind their design decisions.

OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen

 When speaking to Lowri she informed me that one of the best sources for UX research was Jakob Nielsen, Lowri called him the Grandaddy of UX so I thought it would be a good idea to take a look.

Nielsen formed the Nielsen Norman Group with his friend, Donald Norman. The company has become one of the leading names in the UX industry, with their research assisting many UX projects. I looked for some more information regarding Nielsen and found some interesting facts on the Nielsen Norman website.



Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Dr. Nielsen established the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.

Jakob Nielsen has been called:

  • "the king of usability" (Internet Magazine)
  • "the guru of Web page usability" (The New York Times)
  • "the next best thing to a true time machine" (USA Today)
  • "the smartest person on the Web" (ZDNet AnchorDesk)
  • "the world's leading expert on Web usability" (U.S. News & World Report)
  • one of the top 10 minds in small business (FORTUNE Small Business)
  • "the world's leading expert on user-friendly design" (Stuttgarter Zeitung, Germany)
  • "knows more about what makes Web sites work than anyone else on the planet" (Chicago Tribune)
  • "one of the world's foremost experts in Web usability" (Business Week)
  • "the Web's usability czar" (WebReference.com)
  • "the reigning guru of Web usability" (FORTUNE)
  • "eminent Web usability guru" (CNN)
  • "perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet" (Financial Times)
  • "the usability Pope" (Wirtschaftswoche Magazine, Germany)
  • "new-media pioneer" (Newsweek)
  • One of the "world's most influential designers" (Businessweek)

Usability Articles

Since 1995, Dr. Nielsen's Alertbox articles on usability topics have been essential reading for usability and user experience professionals. Currently, the Alertbox receives over 12 million page views annually.

Books

Professional Background

Jakob Nielsen holds a Ph.D. in human–computer interaction (HCI) from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen.
From 1994 to 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. He was hired to make heavy-duty enterprise software easier to use, since large-scale applications had been the focus of most of his projects at the phone company and IBM. But luckily the job definition of a Distinguished Engineer is "you're supposed to be the world's leading expert in your field, so you figure out what would be most important for the company for you to work on." Therefore, Dr. Nielsen ended up spending most of his time at Sun on defining the emerging field of Web usability. He was usability lead for several design rounds of Sun's website and intranet (SunWeb), including the original SunWeb design in 1994.
Dr. Nielsen's earlier affiliations include Bellcore (Bell Communications Research, Morristown, NJ), the IBM User Interface Institute at the T.J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, NY), the Technical University of Denmark (Copenhagen), and Aarhus University (Århus, Denmark).
Professional journal editorial board memberships: Behaviour & Information Technology, Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction, Interacting with Computers, Journal of Usability Studies(JUS), International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia. For each journal, contact the editor-in-chief to submit a manuscript.
In June 2000, Dr. Nielsen was inducted into the Scandinavian Interactive Media Hall of Fame and in April 2006, he was inducted into the ACM Computer-Human Interaction Academy. He was the 2013 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Human–Computer Interaction Practice from SIGCHI, the premiere professional society in the HCI field.

Profiles

Some profiles and interviews on other sites:
Cover stories and features stories with Jakob Nielsen from the printed press.

Parodies

Many sites have made fun of me. Here are some of the more funny ones:

Community Service

Member of the Board of Trustees for Ballet San Jose.


OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Marc Hemeon YouTube

Interview with Marc Hemeon, Senior UX Designer at YouTube





I found this video by WeLoveFounders where they interviewed Marc Hemeon, the senior UX designer at YouTube in San Francisco. In the video Marc describes how difficult it can be for designers to detach themselves from their designs and create something that is usable. He also touches upon how lazy users are becoming. Using the example of his 4 year old daughter he describes that she does not want to 'text' anymore but prefers to send her friends videos. This is an interesting insight into how technology is progressing and the severity of human beings being exposed to technology from a young age. 

OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Weinschenk 7 Principles

Susan Weinschenk Ph.D

I watched this video by Human Factors International featuring the voice of Susan Weinschenk. In the video Weinschenk gives her 7 principles to create an engaging website. I used this video within my essay as it gave great insight into human motivations. 



7 Principles:

1. If you give people too many choices and they won't choose at all.

2. Social Validation

3. Scarcity

4. Food, Sex or Danger

5. Power of faces

6. Story

7. Commitment


Principles used within essay:

1. If you give people too many choices and they won't choose at all. Chapter 1

3. Scarcity. Chapter 1

4. Food, Sex or Danger. Chapter 1

5. Power of faces. Chapter 1



OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Plan for CoP Practical

After writing my dissertation I now have to think about what practical outcome would best suit the writing. I focussed on online grocery shopping as it is an emerging use of the web. I think it would be effective to either re-design or design an online platform for online shopping. I could propose a re-design of one of the big four supermarkets Asda, Morrisons, Tesco or Sainsburys) or attempt to design the online service for Lidl or Aldi.

___

I took my idea to Simon who said that it would be interesting to design the online service for Lidl or Aldi as they do not have an online service as of yet. I think this idea will be the best but I have to think about time scales and also understanding the culture of another supermarket such as Lidl and Aldi. I want my practical to focus on navigation and I think this should mirror the aisles in the supermarket so that users can immediately recognise the layout of the website.


__

I have chosen to re-design the Morrisons online grocery website as it has the poorest User Interface (tested on a group of people)

OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Essay Plan

OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - User Interface of Supermarkets

User Interface 

I have chosen to focus on supermarket grocery websites for my practical outcome as it offers a good link to my written element and also hold great value within day-to-day life. As web usage increases so does the online presence of supermarkets, people are turning to online shopping instead of going to the store themselves to buy their food. It is very important that supermarket websites are easy to use as customer loyalty cannot be guaranteed online. Users will go to the site they find easier, unless they have a particular preference of food quality or simply prefer a certain supermarket. There are also many people that will choose to go to another website which is not their local supermarket or the place they would psychically go for shopping. I decided to look at 6 website homepage's and judge them based on their UI (User Interface) I also asked other people to look at the 4 main supermarket homepage's (Asda, Morrsions, Sainsbury's and Tesco).


First I looked at Ocado which is simply an online supermarket. The UI is quite simple with every element fitting within the web page frame meaning users would not need to scroll down for more information. Offers are generally shown on a homepage to entice the user which is a great way to get users interacting from the start. Though, it is important that the user checks that the supermarket delivers to their address before they start shopping. This feature could be problematic as users may get lost within the website without knowing if the site is applicable to their location. In the bottom right hand corner of the site there is breakdown of how to work the site which is a simplified user journey map, showing a user exactly what they will be doing on each page is a great way to explain the process to new users and also gives the user a sense of power over the process. Like many other sites the logo for the site is in the top left hand corner, changing this would upset user expectations and might confuse the user about where they are in the site. 


 Marks and Spencers hide their food and drinks section within a confusing navigation bar - food and wine as a title might confuse users and also the topics within the drop down menus could be confusing. The lack of the word groceries might cause some confusion to users who are looking to do their food shopping. I wonder whether M&S have a separate website for food (M&S Simply Food) which has a more traditional navigation UI. The overall look and feel of the website is very pleasing and the layout of the DDM is clear and simple, the language used could be improved significantly.


Asda Groceries has a much more minimal UI though it uses some very bold colours. The navigation bar is clear and stands out from the site, their is clear order to the site which mirrors the layout of a supermarket. The addition of a search box is also a great way to give users control over their user journey but could also present problems with delivery options if a secondary search your post code box is not presented. Asda also show imagery of offers coupled with a friendly saying 'New Year, New You' which will appeal to the users in a conversational way - it is also a great way to catch a user's eye.




Sainsbury's has a much more complex UI which could confuse users and divert their attention to less important information. The use of imagery will appeal to human motivations of Food, also the use of Sale within the top banner is a great way to appeal to the human motivation Scarcity. The most important action within the website is along the right hand side of the page within a different coloured box - this does not change from page to page which is a very important feature. The navigation bar is less pleasing, especially to someone with bad vision - the information is displayed in a very small point size which might cause the user some frustration.


The UI of the Morrisons site is very simple but the use of garish colours makes the page look very unwelcoming. The navigation of the site is also confusing to users who do not have contextual knowledge of the supermarket - Market Street is specific to Morrisons and is not shown on any other site. This page does not have a search which is better for the user journey in the eyes of the designers but for the user they might be displeased that they are not able to search directly from the homepage.



Tesco has one of the best UI's as it is very simple and gives clear actions to the user without deviating from the user journey. The 2 buttons for sign in or register are clear and give good instruction that to continue shopping one must be registered. The navigation bar is also very simple and gives clear indication to food categories within the site.

Overall I think that Tesco has the best UI.

I decided to take M&S and Ocado out of my examples list and show other people the homepage's of the main 4 supermarkets. I asked each person to put the pages in order of preference.


Me:

  • Tesco
  • Asda
  • Sainsbury's
  • Morrisons

Laura Bruce:

  • Tesco
  • Asda
  • Sainsbury's
  • Morrisons
Issy Tanner:
  • Tesco
  • Asda
  • Sainsbury's
  • Morrisons
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