[Sigia-l] post mortem help

[Todd Warfel]

Well, first, how would you define a "post-mortem?"

Hopefully, you were thinking ahead during the design/development phase 
and actually set some baseline measurements for a post launch 
review/measurement (which is what I would think of when seeing 
post-mortem).

Here's what we do:

1. Make some kind of initial base-line measurement during the research 
phase. (Ours is a four phase process known as DIVE: Discover, 
Interaction, Visual, Engineering).

2. Test against that baseline during Interaction/Visual/Engineering 
phases utilizing things like paper and interactive prototypes.

3. Post-launch, we do a follow up measurement to see first and foremost 
that we didn't do any damage (e.g. did it get worse than it was before 
the (re)design - hopefully, this never happens and so far it hasn't), 
next we'll look at the metrics we setup (e.g. decrease transaction 
process time, decrease abandonment rates, increase customer loyalty), 
which is typically measured over a predetermined period of time (e.g. 
3-6 months).

This is done using a variety of tools (e.g. surveys, additional 
usability testing, usage patterns) depending on available resources 
(e.g. time, money, man power) and customer needs.

On Oct 25, 2004, at 12:03 PM, Wendy Cown wrote:

> Hi all, I am looking for resources or guidance on conducting 
> post-mortems.
> I launched my first project at this job and intend to do a post-mortem 
> and
> realized I need some help.

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design and Usability Specialist
MessageFirst | making products easier to use
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