Tag Archives: ux

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Marcy Kellar

[This is the fifth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame at the very least statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. If you’ve gone to any SharePoint conferences in the past few years, you may have met-and had your jumpshot taken by-Marcy Kellar. A bubbly usability-focused consultant, Marcy is a passionate and supportive member of the SharePoint community at large. Check out her SharePoint blog here, and her event photography portfolio here. And if reading her story inspires you to share yours, please feel free to email me.]

Hello.  I’m Marcy Kellar. I own my own boutique consultancy that focuses on solution strategy and user experience design.  I am a consultant who goes by whichever title is appropriate at the time.  I’m a solution strategist, solution architect, user experience architect, user interface designer, creative director, branding specialist, business analyst.  Basically, I solve problems using user-centered design methods.  My primary focus is on SharePoint but I also engage in early strategy envisioning and user experience design while its platform agnostic.

1)       Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment–a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology? Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Marcy Kellar

Notes from the User Testing Files: Content Grouping


[Photo Credit: Jocko B]

Useability testing, be your testers sheep or goats, is a fascinating, frustrating and (hopefully) enlightening process. Once you’ve chosen your tasks and assembled your testers, you sit back and watch them use your site. Grapple with it, actually. You wonder: Why are you looking there? Don’t you see that tab? Can’t you tell this is a local search? Whyyyyareyoudoingthatstopitanddoitright!

This sort of thinking is counter-productive.

Your poor, beleagured tester is doing this instead of that because that is not obvious. Or, alternatively, this seems to be a more likely goldmine than that. If the latter is the case(something you’ll need to ask the tester during the debriefing bit) then it’s time to rethink your categories.

Let’s say you run an online boutique that sells clothing for dogs, quechiccanine.com. Um, yes, these exist! And no, I don’t dress my dog in argyle. Yet. Continue reading Notes from the User Testing Files: Content Grouping