Earlier this year, a butler named Jeeves retired and AskJeeves.com became Ask.com in a major rebranding and redevelopment effort.

Central to this relaunch was a user centred design process which Rae Hoffman, writing for SearchEngineWatch, discusses with Michael Ferguson, Senior User Experience Analyst for Ask.com

Michael Ferguson also discusses some of the problems they previously faced with AskJeeves. For example, due to “market pressure”, decisions were made to focus on advertisements to the detriment the user experience. This was a pertinent point in their history, because this was when Google gained a massive share of the search engine audience. Google had a clear focus, the user experience.

Ask.com are not alone. It’s something we often hear, that organisations can’t afford to spend money or the time on defining the user or their goals and how they interact with your site (through techniques like persona workshops or user testing). However, in reality, they can’t afford not to.

How did Ask.com keep the user at the centre of the design process?

Many organisations have a clear business need to rebrand or redevelop their online presence, but how often do they consider their users in the process?

Ferguson mentions how Ask.com brought their users along with them through

ethnographic studies, eyetracking, interactive evaluations, focus groups, and usability sessions …

to get at different facets of user experience.

The rationale behind these techniques, Ferguson later explains

You have to get close to your users and see the site experience from their point of view

Read the article

Read the full article on SearchEngineWatch.com.