Plenty of books, conferences, and websites give professionals information on how to engage in user-centered design when they have the time and budget to pay for it, but few focus on what to do when there is little or no budget.

This session will give you insight into how you can conduct usability studies on a small budget with limited time. We’ve compiled techniques used today in companies around the world; many of these techniques are not commonly known because the people using them seldom publish their secrets.

Benefits

• Learn how to structure your user-centered design research in a cost-effective way
• Review more than 15 research methods that can be run quickly and inexpensively
• Review cost-effective tools, websites and equipment for testing and evaluating websites and products
• Determine how to sell your results in your organization to get future funding

Topics covered

• Research methods that can be run quickly and inexpensively
  • Usability testing
  • Field studies/Contextual inquiry variations   
  • Journal studies
  • Surveys
  • Card sorting
  • In-depth interviews
  • Expert/heuristic reviews
  • Competitive analysis
  • Best practice and guidelines inspections
  • Forums and special interest groups (SIGs)
  • Peer reviews
  • Task scenario analysis
  • Accessibility tools
  • Analytic engines
• Recruiting users on a budget
  • ecruiting without a large agency or dedicated headcount
  • Traditional and not-so-traditional recruiting ideas that can be done cheaply
  • How to plan ahead for easier, cheaper recruiting in the future
  • Compensating participants (or not) 
• Running the study: How to cut costs
  • Research locations
  • Facilitators
  • Testing tools
• Analyzing and reporting results
• Designing on a budget

Format

The course is mainly in lecture format with a couple of group exercises to reinforce the learned principles and guidelines.

The course also includes:

• Screenshots of testing websites and tools
• Opportunities to ask questions and get answers