Driving Product Improvements through Customer Surveys: A Case Study  

IBM WebSphere Commerce is a software product that enables merchants to sell goods and services online. The user audience who has the task to understand the product complexities and build stores for the customers consists of store developers - a large group of users from external companies or within IBM. Conducting a survey to gather their feedback on store development proved to be a powerful method for understanding the various store development scenarios and identifying areas for product improvement. Some of the techniques that helped us create a successful customer survey involved using a multidisciplinary group to create the survey questions, tirelessly communicating the results, and following up on the issues.

Markova, Uliyana. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods

Using Benchmark Testing to Measure Ease of Use Improvements: A Case Study  

In order to measure how future releases improve on the current store development scenario in our product, IBM® WebSphere® Commerce, a multidisciplinary team of user experience analysts, information developers, and testers decided to create a benchmark test that we can apply to each new version of the product. This paper discusses how we prepared and planned for the test, as well as the execution and results of the first test. We also discuss lessons learned and how we can improve our benchmarking process.

Markova, Uliyana, Diba Bot-Roche, Erin Heximer and Justine Yoon. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Usability>Testing