A Customer Experience Analysis is a heuristic or expert analysis of the utility and usability of an application.
Using key tasks and the profiles of the targeted users, the analysis walks you through how this user encounters the application.
We need a few things to get started with this analysis:
- Identify the key tasks and primary users for each task
- Provide access to the product as a user would see it
- Prepare to walk-through and take screenshots/pictures of the user’s encounter with the product
Step by step, the story of how this user moves through the product is documented. Issues around the utility and usability of features and controls, as well as successes, are called out.
The advantage to an organization is that a CEA highlights in a visual way what people are trying to express verbally. This analysis also provides language to discuss and differentiate issues. One client of mine would hand a copy of the CEA to anyone who came to her with a complaint about the product. She would ask them to go away, study the documentation, and mark it up with their comments. This was a concrete and very useful way to provide structure around the feedback. It also started the conversation at a common place, the CEA document.
How can you perform a CEA? A simple approach is to pick three key tasks. Identify the primary user performing each task. Find someone to act as that user profile and have them actually perform the task. Take screenshots for every change of the screen. Write the story with the screenshots in your favorite layout tool (i.e. Microsoft PPT or Adobe InDesign). Print the out the task and line the screenshots up on a wall. Gather your team together and provide sticky notes and pens. Go through and identify what worked and what did not. Compile the recommendations from the sticky notes into the layout and summarize the findings and recommendations. Print and bind copies of the CEA document and give them to your stakeholders.
Good luck.
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