Better designs should never come at the cost of another person’s wellbeing. Informed consent is a fundamental part of an ethical research program, which respects participants and protects them from harm.
Moderating a usability test? Follow these 10 simple steps to make your sessions go smoothly. Download an example facilitator guide at the bottom of this article.
Both UX research techniques help you gain quantitative insight into user behavior. Each method provides different types of information and can answer different kinds of research questions, however.
Both UX workshops and usability tests benefit when facilitators are focused on goals, follow a meeting guide yet are open to improvisation, encourage participants to act, and don’t talk too much.
Test early and often is a key recommendation for UX research. Dora Brune shares her approach, including regular Open Test Labs to engage more product teams and make user research more agile. Kinder Eggs make for a nice warmup task, even in remote tests. (Recorded at a participant panel at the UX Conference.)
Usability studies with international users can be very informative, but if you don't speak the foreign language, you will need interpretation to understand the user (and for the user to understand you). These 5 guidelines will improve the value of translated research sessions.
Know the inherent biases in your recruiting process and avoid them in order to recruit study participants that are representative for your target audience.
Two user research methods allow you to quickly test a large number of design alternatives, thus accelerating UX innovation. Rapid iterative design and within-subjects testing of multiple alternate designs aren't for every project but are great when they do apply.
Some business stakeholders say that 5 test users can't represent all customers, and so it's too dangerous to release a new design. Better to keep existing workflows unchanged. How to respond to such claims.
User research, especially for complex apps and domain-specific design, may require study participants with high expertise who can be difficult to recruit. Here are 5 tips for getting expert users.
Improve design decisions by looking at the problem from multiple points of view: combine multiple types of data or data from several UX research methods.
To gain a holistic picture of your users, exchange data with the non-UX teams in your company who are collecting other forms of customer data, besides the user research you do yourself. You gain; they gain.
We compare the budgets needed for different kinds of qualitative user research: in-person usability testing vs. remote studies run by software (unmoderated) or run by a human moderator.
Tips for placing all information about users in a single place, so that the entire UX team can leverage this knowledge. Eden Lazaness shares her experience and demos the tools her team used. This was filmed during a participant experience panel after a recent UX Conference.
Pain points are problems that occur at the different levels of the customer experience: interaction level, customer-journey level, or relationship level.
User testing in different countries helps identify culturally specific usability issues. Testing correctly and at the right time will help you thrive in a new market.
Usability testing can yield valuable insights about your content. Make sure you test with the correct users, carefully craft the tasks, and ask the right follow-up questions.
