It is not often that you get to work with someone as forward-thinking, talented, professional, and hard-working as Ezekiel. It was an absolute pleasure to work with Zeke on Interactive Landing Pages and Banners for companies including GNC and AARP. He dives into projects with high-level thinking and ideas that seem impossible until he shows you they're possible and isn't afraid to do the small tasks to help the team succeed as well. He provides very clear direction but isn't afraid to take suggestions or shift gears when a colleague brings up a valid point. With Zeke on your team, get ready for innovative ideas and high conversion rates!
-Debra Pivko, CEO & Founder of Intrigue Creative
About Me
"Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new." |
UI/UX Designer
Dumont Project I am currently a UI/UX Designer for a digital marketing agency in "Silicon Beach." I own the user testing process for our Fortune 500 accounts, have created e-Commerce flows for multi-million dollar campaigns, and provide UX support throughout the agency. M.S. Human Factors
California State University, Long Beach The M.S. Psychology, Option in Human Factors program focuses on developing skills in the User Experience field. The program covers UI design, formative and summarize usability testing, analytics, statistics, and much more. I spent a full year working as a graduate researcher in the Center for Usability in Design and Accessibility (CUDA) where I assisted with moderated, lab-based usability research for a CSU web product and co-authored a final report. Finally, I am working on my thesis looking at the connection between personality and advertisement preference. |
My Research & Design Process
Below is my process for research and design. Please select the tab for the specific process you wish to view.
- Whether it's optimizing a product or building one from scratch, I always ask myself three questions: Why, What, and How? Click the button below to view case studies of research projects I conducted, or take a look at my research process.
Every test must have a purpose. The purpose is typically a combination of customer requirements, user needs, and test objectives.
Customer Requirements - "The customer is always right." Most of my work has been for Fortune 500 clients, and I always keep their best interests in mind. In this phase, I must understand exactly what the client wants to get out of the test, and ensure those criteria are met.
User Needs - I must understand the population I am testing. Perhaps I am testing an interface intended for the visually impaired. The various constraints imposed by this population must be considered in my research design.
Test Objectives - My favorite part. By the end of this test, what do I want to have obtained? Do I want general, qualitative user feedback, or hard numbers and percentages? These objectives help drive the design of the test.
Great! Now I know why I am conducting this test. So how am I going to do it? Depending on the freedom I have, I can choose the type of testing (e.g. remote, moderated, etc.), but this can often be determined by the requirements established in the previous step. If I can choose, then it depends on how complex the system is, and what the goals are. A basic exploratory user test an be easily accomplished via remote testing, but ensuring that specific questions get answered appropriately may require a moderated test.
Write Clear Tasks - You aren't really testing the site when you write complicated tasks, you're testing the user's ability to understand the task. Tasks should be simple, succinct, and straight to the point, especially in remote settings.
Think Out Loud - A user test is pointless if you don't know what the user is thinking! I am fascinated by the user's thought process, so I always promote the think-out-loud protocol.
Phew...I have collected the appropriate data based on my test objectives, now what did I find? User testing data comes in two forms: qualitative and quantitative. This is how I turn data into learnings:
Quantitative - There are many quantitative metrics, but let's use time-on-task as an example (measure of efficiency). If my client wants to know what tasks take users the longest, I compile the average times for each task, and present them in a bar graph. I always use graphs to present my quant data.
Qualitative - I go through each participant narrative and group similar concepts together. I assign each group a number and create a list of issues that correspond to the group number. For example, if I had a bunch of users give feedback about navigation, I would assign the number "1" to that issue. Most importantly, I'd create highlight reels for each issue. A highlight reel is the "graph" of qualitative user data; it paints a picture anyone can understand. - Coming soon!
Recent / Current Projects
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Thesis on Personality and Advertising
I am currently working on my graduate thesis looking at the relationship between the Big 5 Personality types and preference towards different types of advertisements. This process involves an extensive literature review, development of an experimental methodology, and a written thesis to describe my findings. I will actually be presenting my proposal at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Student Chapter Conference in March, so please feel free to take a look at my poster to learn more about this project. |
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