Articles

Therese Fessenden

Therese Fessenden is a Senior Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group and host of the NN/g UX Podcast. Her research focuses on understanding human behavior, attitudes, and expectations in order to better orchestrate system and service design strategies. 

Articles and Videos

  • Accessibility vs. Inclusive Design

    "Accessible design" and "inclusive design" are often used interchangeably. While they are related, their focuses are different.

  • Level Up Your Focus Groups

    To avoid common issues with focus groups, consider using these strategies to maximize participation and minimize the potential for bias.

  • Informed Consent for UX Research

    Ethically sound UX research requires informed consent from a research participant. Informed consent means the participant fully understands what the study entails and the potential consequences of participating.

  • Design Risks: How to Assess, Mitigate, and Manage Them

    The risk-management process enables teams to assess risks during the design process in order to reduce harm to users and to the organization. Risk mitigation involves systematically reducing the likelihood or the impact of a risk.

  • Democratization of UX

    Democratization of UX work, or making it acceptable and accessible for everyone, must be accompanied by due diligence: setting guidelines, educating others, and demystifying the process.

  • Building Trust in UX

    Whether UX succeeds or fails comes down to whether other people in the organization trust the UX team, the UX process, and the UX findings and designs. Low trust = poor outcomes, no matter how good the work, so building trust is a priority.

  • Three Pillars of User Delight

    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.

  • Screen Your Research Participants to Avoid Bias in User Research

    Rule #1 for all user research is to study participants who are representative of the target audience. 5 best practices for recruiting screeners will improve the validity of your research.

  • Five Ways to Recruit Participants for User Research

    Getting representative members of the target audience as your test participants is essential for user research validity. You can outsource recruiting to an agency, or do it yourself. Each method has its own advantages and possible biases.

  • Guided vs. Unguided User Studies

    Directed user research where you ask people closed-end questions can bias the outcome in favor of those things that are being asked about. Unguided studies are often better at revealing true user preferences.