Elance User Experience Test Answers



What is usability?

Usability relates to how easily, efficiently and satisfactorily a product is used by a person to achieve their goals within a specified context of use.
Usability is a technique to ensure websites are liked by the end users.
Usability is about how efficiently an interface talks to the hardware and devices that help run a website.
Usability is how quickly a user can use a website to perform a task.

 

 

Skeuomorphic visuals can be useful in UX because...

physical metaphors can make interface elements feel more familiar to users
certain visual elements (e.g. gauges) don't make sense outside a skeuomorphic context
skeuomorphic buttons are easier to identify on a screen
they are inherently more attractive than "flat" or "authentically digital" visual approaches

 

 

What is the difference between surprise and delight?

Surprise is emotionally neutral. Delight is emotionally positive.
Surprise is emotionally positive. Delight is emotionally neutral.
Surprise is sudden. Delight is not sudden.
Surprise is not sudden. Delight is sudden.

 

 

Which of these is generally considered a BAD design for forms?

Multi-column layout for inputs
Only using native form elements rather than custom designed ones
Labels located in-line with inputs
A submit button that says anything other than "OK" or "Submit"

 

 

The color red typically implies...

excitement and action
it depends on the culture
love and happiness
anger and frustration

 

 

When would you visualize data in a radar chart?

When there are fewer than 3 variables
When you wish to present it in 3 dimensions
When you wish to plot it along one axis
When you have multivariate data

 

 

What is a design pattern?

A commonly used user interface
A reusable button or sprite used on Web 2.0 sites
A reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem
A background pattern used on websites
The navigation bar on mobile devices used to navigate content

 

 

What is faceted search?

A search which serves personalized results based on a user's browsing history
A method of searching in a linear fashion
A technique for searching by keywords
A search method which allows users to select filters to narrow results

 

 

What is relationship between "usability" and UX?

They are unrelated
Usability is quantified UX
Usability is one factor that goes into good UX
UX can help improve usability

 

 

Which is not a field or organization that has fed into UX?

Product Management
Usability
Computer-Human Interaction (CHI)
Human Factors

 

 

What is Conway's law?

The law that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
The law that organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
The law that adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
In cryptography, a system should be secure even if everything about the system, except for a small piece of information - the key - is public knowledge.

 

 

What is a SME?

Single Malleable Experiment
Subject of My Experience
Subtle Material Experience
String Matter Entry
Subject Matter Expert

 

 

All of the following are typical job titles of people in the User Experience field except...

User Researcher
Quality Assurance Analyst
Visual Designer
Interaction Designer
Usability Professional

 

 

What is NOT an important attribute to consider when setting digital type?

Ink traps
Hinting
Kerning
Letter spacing

 

 

What is "banner blindness"?

An inability to track the eyes consistently from left to right
A usability problem that occurs when page advertisements are too visually distinctive, drawing attention away from the main content
A tendency by users to ignore visual elements that look like advertisements
A significant accessibility concern for disabled users

 

 

What is the most common form of colorblindness that can make poorly-designed interfaces difficult to understand?

Red-Green
Yellow-Purple
Blue-Orange
Black-White

 

 

What is repurposing?

Neither of these
Designing different user interfaces for each main platform
Reusing the same material across as many platforms as possible

 

 

Which of these is NOT a common persona type?

Buyer/Influencer
Primary User
Secondary User
Designer

 

 

What do User Experience, Customer Experience and Service Design have in common?

They use similar techniques and methodologies to resolve design challenges with users and customers being the main focus
User Experience and Customer Experience are research disciplines, whereas Service Design is a design discipline
They use similar techniques and methodologies to resolve design challenges with business being the main focus
They don't have anything in common. They are unique disciplines.

 

 

You want to show a user's path through your application. You create:

A mind map
A user flow
A persona
A wireframe
A scatterplot

 

 

What is a Persona?

A theoretical user that exhibits specific behavior and product usage / patterns
Fake user accounts created on your site to make it appear like it is being used more frequently
Actual users of your site
An actor that pretends to be a real user in order to test your site
Descriptions of users you would like to use your site in the future

 

 

What is 'chartjunk'?

Statistics that are part of the Long Tail and not relevant information
Visual elements in charts and graphs that are not necessary to comprehend the information represented on the graph
Outliers in scatterplots
Misinformation in charts and graphs that mislead the users
Exaggerated statistics in charts and graphs that misrepresent key information

 

 

What is an advantage of client-side form validation as compared to server-side?

Security
Better error reporting and logging
Preserving inputs after submission
Speed/responsiveness

 

 

A usability test is run in order to...

gauge how easy it is for your target audience to use your product or site
determine who your target audience is by seeing who is able to use your product or site
confirm that there are no bugs or errors that would prevent people from using your product or site

 

 

What is the key to understanding users’ needs?

Engaging with the users by talking with them and observing them using the product or service
Collaborating with your client and getting them to tell you what their users need
Listening to what they want regarding the product or service being designed
Researching on the internet about those specific users and learning about what they want

 

 

Which of these is generally considered to be a component of UX?

Tone and voice
(All of these choices)
Interactivity
Branding

 

 

What is "universal design"?

Design intended to be used in space
A set of considerations to ensure that a product or service is usable by everyone, regardless of individual limitations
A legal requirement for Section 508 compliance
A design process to ensure that your content is readable on a wide range of digital devices

 

 

What is probably not an acceptable typeface for body copy?

Helvetica
Verdana
Impact
Georgia

 

 

What tends to result in users paying more attention to a specific piece of content?

Content is located at the top of the page
(all of these)
Imagery of other humans looking at the content
Content is visually distinct from its surroundings

 

 

What is the difference between Sorting and Filtering?

Sorting shows / hides content based on a user selection, Filtering reorders content
Sorting reorders content, Filtering autocompletes a user's query
Sorting is alphabetical, Filtering is alphanumeric
Sorting reorders content, Filtering shows / hides content based on a user selection
Sorting itemizes content, Filtering hides inappropriate items

 

 

What do you do if there’s a conflict between a business need and user need?

All of these answers
Depending on the severity and impact on the end user, sometimes you have to be flexible and decide when to let the business need override the user's need
Try to get research-based evidence to support a resolution by factoring in the dispute/conflict in a user-centered design activity
Ensure the client is involved in user-centered design activities to fully understand and appreciate the nature of the user's needs

 

 

What makes for a good UX practitioner?

A person who understands how users use the internet and knows how to build web pages
A person who has a background in industrial or graphic design
A person who has studied IT at university and understands websites
A person with an open mind who understands the importance of designing for end users

 

 

What is user-centered design?

A rigid set of techniques that have to be followed in order to ensure a usable website or system
A flexible methodology incorporating research, design and evaluation techniques to ensure a user friendly website or system
A technique where the user is responsible for designing the website or system
A research-based methodology to gather user requirements for a website or system

 

 

What does Usability mean?

Usability deals with the efficiency and user-friendliness of interfaces.
Usability is how the user feels about the interaction with the system.

 

 

What does HCI stand for?

Human-Centered Interaction
Human-Computer Investment
Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interface

 

 

What is a weakness of A/B testing?

Its impact is generally limited to incremental and local improvements
It is typically very expensive
There are no good guidelines for implementing it in a scalable manner
It is not statistically robust

 

 

How are breadcrumbs used?

They act like tooltips and contain additional information
Within the footer of a site, near About Us and Contact
Periodically throughout your website when you feel like it
As a way to quickly navigate to previous / parent sections of a site
They appear after a significant action is taken on a site

 

 

What elements are important to designing a good user interface?

Interaction Design and Information Design, but not Visual Design
Information Design, Interaction Design and Visual Design
Interaction Design and Visual Design, but not Information Design
Information Design and Visual Design, but not Interaction Design

 

 

The primary goal of UX is:

To improve revenue for a website.
To help users achieve a goal easily and without frustration.
To make your website device agnostic
To lengthen the amount of time people spend on your website.
To assist disabled users with using your site

 

 

What is information design?

Information design is the way sentences are put together to form meaningful paragraphs on a website
Information design is another term for content writing for websites
Information design is the way paragraphs are put together to form a web page
Information design is how content on a website is structured, labelled, grouped and related to other content on the site

 

 

How can other activities and disciplines benefit from knowledge of UX?

UX ensures all products and services look the same so people know how to use them.
They can’t. UX has nothing to offer to other disciplines.
UX is a foolproof approach to design that ensures 100% success.
A knowledge of UX can improve the outcome and development of all products and services that have a user/customer facing element.

 

 

What should UX personas be based on?

Tasks or duties typically performed by the user
Patterns in behavior and attitude
Title and job description
Age and occupation

 

 

How has the focus of user experience changed over the years?

It’s less about users and more about what the business wants.
It has narrowed to be specifically about the internet.
It hasn’t changed at all.
It has widened to be about both physical and digital things a person interacts and engages with.

 

 

According to BJ Fogg, what is required for a user to take action?

A call to action
Appropriate affordances in the design
Motivation, ability, and a trigger
An appropriate mental model

 

 

What is the ideal organizing principle for any user interface?

The speed at which the user can complete a task.
The user's mental model of the task space.
The system's technical architecture.
The conceptual structure of the knowledge domain.
The priority of business requirements.

 

 

According to eye tracking studies, what letter shape best approximates the path that people's eyes typically follow through a web page (especially when browsing casually)?

"T" shape
"L" shape
"F" shape
"O" shape

 

 

In typography, "type color" refers to:

The reader's emotional reaction to a mass of text, independent of the content itself
The hue of individual glyphs
The readability of a section of text
The overall visual tone of a particular mass of text

 

 

What is User Experience Design?

An approach to designing systems to allow users to securely buy things online
A set of techniques and deliverables that is completed at the start of a project
A discipline that encompasses all interactions and events, physical and digital, between users/customers and a product, service or organization
A modern term for graphic and web design

 

 

Especially on mobile devices, password masking (i.e. replacing password field characters with asterisks) can...

reduce usability and increase errors
greatly improve security
prevent HTTPS from transmitting the information securely
result in users choosing more complex and secure passwords

 

 

Typefaces with a taller x-height are generally...

more readable at small type sizes
less readable
more formal in appearance
better used in larger type sizes

 

 

What is User Experience?

A person's perceptions and overall experience of the utility and ease of use of a product / system
The number of features a product / system contains
The way a product / system works on a technical level
How well a product / system operates within a desktop browser or mobile device
Whether a product / system is better than it's competitors

 

 

According to the MIL-STD 1472, what is the maximum acceptable response time for "pointing" and "sketching" (i.e. direct manipulation) behavior of an interface?

0.01 seconds
1 second
0.2 seconds
0.001 seconds

 

 

In Gestalt theory of visual design, which one of these is NOT a law of perceptual organization?

Good Continuation
Similarity
Good Figure
Tetradic Colors
Common Fate

 

 

The difference between an open and a closed card sort is...

an open card sort allows users to add their own content cards and a closed card sort can only use the content cards provided
an open card sort is done collaboratively in a small group and a closed card sort is done in private
an open card sort has users label their card groups and a closed card sort has them organize under predetermined labels

 

 

What is a necessary tool for turning quantitative research results into user segments?

Persona hypotheses
Follow-up qualitative interviews
Eye-tracking studies
Clustering analysis

 

 

Fitts's Law predicts that

the time for users to understand and learn something new is less if they can model it off of something they already understand
the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target
the time it takes for a person to make a decision is a result of the possible choices he or she has

 

 

For effective and reliable customer segmentation, you typically need to do...

Quantitative surveying of potential users
Stakeholder interviews with marketing
User testing with high-fidelity prototypes
Qualitative interviews with potential users

 

 

Luke Wroblewski is best known for thought leadership in...

JavaScript performance and accessibility
Popularizing the idea of Personas
Web form research and mobile design strategy
Responsive design on the web

 

 

A "mobile-first" strategy would lead you to...

...design primarily for a mobile context, assuming that desktop users will be secondary
...strongly prioritize key interactions and content, while providing enhanced experiences for mobile device capabilities (like GPS geolocation)
...prioritize building an iOS or Android app over a responsive or desktop-focused solution, due to deeper device access and data control

 

 

Which is more end-to-end encompassing?

Usability
User Experience
User Interface
Customer Experience

 

 

According to Jakob Nielsen, what is the maximum time between command and response for an interface to avoid interrupting the user's flow of thought?

0.1 seconds
1 second
10 seconds
3 seconds

 

 

What is an "affordance"?

Budgetary constraints by "buyer" user types
A behavior that the designer expects the user to exhibit
An actionable property between the world and an actor
A visible interface element

 

 

According to the Stanford Persuasive Technology lab, what is "green path" behavior?

Acting without needing to understand the underlying system
Ecologically sensitive decision making
Exploration and discovery
Adopting a new behavior and continuing to do it indefinitely

 

 

Which of the following is a characteristic of User Experience as a discipline?

It focuses purely on the user and puts the business objectives second
It focuses on the efficiency of use, ease of use and satisfaction of use
It's a multi-disciplinary approach to design
It's a rigid and complete approach to designing interfaces

 

 

The three A's typically used to determine a user's technical proficiency are:

ability, agility, articulation
approach, adaptability, achievement
action, activity, atmosphere
attitude, aptitude, anxiety

 

 

According to Alan Cooper, what is the "elastic user"?

A derogatory term for the tendency of different stakeholders in the design process to define "the user" based on their own personal goals.
A specific "placeholder" persona intended to capture a wide and unpredictable range of behaviors not covered in other personas
A highly flexible and motivated user, requiring little contextual support or extrinsic motivating factors to engage with a product
A user who expects to access your content across multiple devices and contexts

 

 

Which of these is NOT one of Jared Spool's "design decision styles"?

Unintended Design
Self Design
Invisible Design
Genius Design

 

 

Based on Don Norman's framework of "activity theory", what is the correct hierarchy of user action, from most complex to most elementary?

Task > Activity > Action > Operation
Task > Activity > Operation > Action
Activity > Task > Action > Operation
Activity > Operation > Task > Action
Activity > Action > Task > Operation