10 things you should do when running a usability study. Remembering all the steps leads to good research insights. (The second of 2 videos on usability study checklists.)
Internal validity ensures that your study design does not favor any particular condition or response, while external validity is about a naturalistic study setup and choice of participants.
Users don't work hard enough to discover how to use your design in the intended manner. Bad user! But really, they're just prioritizing their own time and interests and behaving the way evolution made people.
Visual-design principles can be applied consistently throughout the process of creating a polished UX map. Start by choosing a tool, then create a visual system, establish the basic layout, and finally add content and make adjustments.
UI elements that are close together are perceived as belonging together, whereas users think that things that are apart play different roles in the interaction.
Members of a design team will often argue for different solutions to a UI problem. That's when to say "show me the data" to resolve the debate by empirical insights, rather than who argues the best.
What's most useful in building a DesignOps program depends on the level of maturity in the specific organization. In the beginning, focus on pain points. Later, focus on building scale.
Delight can be experienced viscerally, behaviorally, and reflectively. A great design is supported by all three of these pillars and is best evaluated with specific research methods.
Well-designed questions related to age, gender, race, income and other demographic characteristics help UX researchers screen participants, recruit a diverse participant pool, and segment data. These questions are sensitive and should put research participants at ease.
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.
