Diary studies involve a series of tradeoffs as researchers must capture participants’ natural behaviors, but the method to do so can be intrusive and reward producing more entries.
Designing a good survey is harder than it may seem. Ensure accurate and reliable data by writing questions that are appropriate for the method and worded to minimize bias.
Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about ethnographic research methods like field studies and diary studies.
Inviting users to directly participate in UX Workshops can vastly improve the workshop output; however, the exact strategy and methods for including them vary based on the workshop type and goals.
Individuals often modify their behavior if they know they are being observed. That phenomenon became known as the Hawthorne effect or the observer bias. We can mitigate this effect by building rapport, designing natural tasks, and spending more time with study participants.
All the details of your benchmark study need to be stored in your research repository for further reference. They include the study methodology, the tasks, the screener, the definitions of the collected metrics, as well as the raw data obtained from the study.
In this article we discuss best practices when researching with vulnerable participants, tackling sensitive topics, using deception, and lack of confidentiality in user research studies.
Response biases make it difficult to create good surveys. Follow these tips to counteract 10 of the major survey response biases and improve your survey data.
Keeping participants engaged and providing good-quality entries in diary studies can be challenging; recruit the right people, incentivize them appropriately, and keep recording entries simple.
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.
Contextual inquiry can be conducted remotely for certain types of tasks, provided that your participants can share most of their work setting through a video-call platform.
Interviewing stakeholders provides helpful information about their context, allows us to identify business goals they are concerned with, and increases their support.
Stay focused and avoid long complaint sessions during a field study by communicating the purpose of the visit early on, maintaining the partnership relationship with participants, and looking for concrete examples over abstract generalizations.