Game testing researches the notion of fun. Compared with mainstream UX studies, it involves many more users and relies more on biometrics and custom software. The most striking findings from the Games User Research Summit were the drastic age and gender differences in motivation research.
Chunking is a concept that originates from the field of cognitive psychology. UX professionals can break their text and multimedia content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and remember it better.
User testing works best if you don’t direct participants too much, but sometimes you need users to go straight to a target page. How to get them there?
Sites must meet users' basic trust needs before they demand that visitors enter information or engage with them. The trust pyramid has 5 distinct levels of user commitment, each with separate design requirements before users will give a website what it wants.
18-to-25-year olds gave slightly higher ratings of flat designs than older adults did. That increased aesthetic appeal may not be worth the cost of flat design.
Measure people's attitudes toward a user interface by a controlled vocabulary test: give users the list of product reaction words and asks them to select those that best describe the design.
Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb for UX and not specific usability guidelines.
Empathy maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.
Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.
User interviews have become a popular technique for getting user feedback, mainly because they are fast and easy. Use them to learn about users’ perceptions of your design, not about its usability.
User journeys and user flows both describe processes users go through in order to accomplish their goals, but they differ in scope, purpose, and format.
iOS 26’s visual language obscures content instead of letting it take the spotlight. New (but not always better) design patterns replace established conventions.
Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.
In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users' expectations.