Identifying the main themes in data from user studies — such as: interviews, focus groups, diary studies, and field studies — is often done through thematic analysis.
Many platforms for unmoderated usability testing have similar features; to choose the best tool for your needs, focus on the type of data that you need to collect for your goals.
For 30 years, the recommendations have remained the same for improving usability in a UX design project on a tight budget: simplified user testing with 5 users, early test of paper prototypes, and heuristic evaluation.
In cognitive mapping sessions, users are asked to produce a visual representation of their mental models. This type of user interview can provide stimulus for conversation, generate insights, and act as a facilitation aid.
Formative evaluations are used in an iterative process to make improvements before production. Summative evaluations are used to evaluate a shipped product in comparison to a benchmark.
Use the affinity diagramming method with stakeholders and members to efficiently categorize then prioritize UX ideas, research findings, and any other rich topics. Work together to quickly develop a shared understanding among your team.
Cognitive maps, concept maps, and mind maps are diagramming techniques that can be utilized throughout the UX process to visualize knowledge and surface relationships among concepts.
Customer visits and other field studies to observe users in their natural habitat are one of the most important user research methods. This video covers the 4 basic steps to prepare and carry out ethnographic-style research, preferably early in the UX design process.
When conducting research for customer-journey maps, use qualitative methods that allow direct interaction with or observation of users, such as interviews, field studies, and diary studies.
“That’s just one person” and “Our real users aren’t like that” are common objections to findings from qualitative usability testing. Address these concerns proactively to ensure your research is effective.
Locating features or content on a website or in an app happen in two different ways: finding (users look for the item) and discovering (users come across the item). Both are important, but require different user research techniques to evaluate.
学习如何运行一个远程慢化可用性测试. This second video covers how to actually facilitate the session with the participant and how to end with debrief, incentive, and initial analysis with your team.
In remote usability studies, it's hard to identify test participants who should not be in the study because they don't fit the profile or don't attempt the task seriously. This is even harder in unmoderated studies, but it can (and should) be done.
A simple method for visually identifying strong vs. weak themes in qualitative data from user research: by placing individual observations in a spreadsheet and color-coding them.
Qualitative user research is invaluable for UX design. Here's an overview of 5 key methods beyond standard usability testing that are especially useful for early discovery studies.
When conducting user interviews or running usability studies, don't rush to talk as soon as the user stops speaking. Deliberately staying silent for longer than it feels comfortable will often prod users into saying more.
Qualitative and quantitative methods both have their place in user research, but they address different issues in the UX design process. Understand the differences to pick the right method to learn what you need.
Testing a small number of participants gives qualitative insights, which are great. But if 4 out of 5 test users do something, don't conclude that 80% of all users will do the same.
Users' answers to survey questions are often biased and not the literal truth. Examples include acquiescence bias, social desirability bias, and recency bias. Knowing about response biases will help you interpret survey data with more validity for any design decisions based on the findings.
The first rule of user experience design is: don't base the product on what customers *say* they want. You must watch what people actually *do* when using your design.
Different user research methods are suited for different stages of the UX design process. Here's an overview of the best methods to discover, explore, test, and listen.
当为一个用户体验设计的项目,做用户研究we can ask questions in two ways: open-ended (no fixed set of response options) and close-ended (users are restricted to picking from a few answers). Both work well, but only for those research questions they are suited to answer.
Task analysis is the systematic study of how users complete tasks to achieve their goals. This knowledge ensures products and services are designed to efficiently and appropriately support those goals.
Exact costs will vary, but an unmoderated 5-participant study may be 20–40% cheaper than a moderated study, and may save around 20 hours of researcher time.
For most teams, approaching persona creation qualitatively is the right balance of effort vs. value, but very large or very small organizations might benefit from statistical or lightweight approaches, respectively.
Likert and semantic differential are instruments used to determine attitudes to products, services, and experiences, but depending on your situation, one may work better than the other.
Our survey results reveal that many UX practitioners perform discoveries in some shape and form, although many are on the short side, lack user research and don’t involve the right people.
Our latest research on UX careers looks into specialization, explores unique backgrounds of practitioners entering the field, and details the skills and responsibilities needed to work in UX today.
Remote unmoderated usability testing is so fast and easy that some teams make it their only evaluation method. But don’t shy away from its more robust alternative, the remote moderated usability test, which can give you more information and is also inexpensive.
Although there can be many different instigators, roles, and activities involved in a discovery, all discoveries strive to achieve consensus on the problem to be solved and desired outcomes.
You can learn the right kind of things and much more in user tests if you start with broad tasks instead of immediately leading to areas of interest. Prepare additional, focused tasks that can be used to direct users.
User-related questions and assumptions are not tracked throughout a product’s lifecycle, causing misalignment and overconfidence. Documenting these questions and assumptions in a knowledge board differentiates them from real facts.
By first working independently on a problem, then converging to share insights, teams can leverage the benefits of both work styles, leading to rapid data analysis, diverse ideas, and high-quality designs.
