Well-written screeners ensure that your study participants are appropriate for your research goals, improve data quality, save resources, and reduce bias.
Competitive usability evaluations help you understand how your competitors solve certain design problems and how you might outperform them. These evaluations are often performed at the beginning of design projects to shift their direction toward areas of opportunity.
When conducting usability testing with older adults, understand the unique needs of participants in this age group and adjust your test setup and tasks accordingly.
International usability testing examines how people from different regions use products. For successful testing, decide on the format, ensure clear communication despite language barriers, and select a facilitator familiar with the local context.
Users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing. This aesthetic-usability effect can mask UI problems during usability testing. Identify instances of the aesthetic-usability effect in your user research by watching what your users do, as well as listening to what they say.
Data on what works well or poorly on other sites saves you from implementing useless features and guides UX investments to features that your users need.
Data refers to unanalyzed user observations, findings capture patterns among data points, and insights are the actionable opportunities based on research and business goals.
Demographic questions related to age, race, gender and income can be sensitive topics for research participants and need to be carefully framed by UX researchers.
To understand the needs of work-domain experts, use retrospective testing, expert walkthroughs, and interviews instead of think-aloud usability-testing studies.
Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about planning, conducting, and analyzing qualitative user testing.
Competitive usability evaluations help you understand how your competitors solve certain design problems and how you might outperform them. These evaluations are often performed at the beginning of design projects to shift their direction toward areas of opportunity.
When conducting usability testing with older adults, understand the unique needs of participants in this age group and adjust your test setup and tasks accordingly.
International usability testing examines how people from different regions use products. For successful testing, decide on the format, ensure clear communication despite language barriers, and select a facilitator familiar with the local context.
Data refers to unanalyzed user observations, findings capture patterns among data points, and insights are the actionable opportunities based on research and business goals.
Demographic questions related to age, race, gender and income can be sensitive topics for research participants and need to be carefully framed by UX researchers.
To understand the needs of work-domain experts, use retrospective testing, expert walkthroughs, and interviews instead of think-aloud usability-testing studies.
Pilot testing involves conducting one or two test sessions to evaluate the design of a usability study. It checks for any issues before the actual testing phase, leading to more reliable results.
The Wizard of Oz is a UX research method that involves interaction with a mock interface controlled by a human. It is used to test costly concepts inexpensively and to narrow down the problem space.
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.
Research participants are more vulnerable than ever as researchers conduct remote usability tests, use third-party applications, and store data online. Protect participant privacy by adhering to best practices before, during, and after data collection.
The SUS is a well-established 10-question survey administered at the end of a user test; it gives you a measure of the perceived usability of your product and enables you to compare it with others.
Usability assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. Usability is defined by 5 quality components: learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction.
3 methods for cheap and fast UX work are still good advice to emphasize iterative design and accelerate UX maturity improvements (This was Jakob Nielsen's keynote at the in-person Washington DC UX Conference)
Facilitation experts demonstrate how to prepare a participant for the test session. Use a facilitator’s script to help remember the important information that participants need to know.
Well-written screeners ensure that your study participants are appropriate for your research goals, improve data quality, save resources, and reduce bias.
Users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing. This aesthetic-usability effect can mask UI problems during usability testing. Identify instances of the aesthetic-usability effect in your user research by watching what your users do, as well as listening to what they say.
Data on what works well or poorly on other sites saves you from implementing useless features and guides UX investments to features that your users need.
Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about planning, conducting, and analyzing qualitative user testing.
Use word of mouth to recruit research participants who rely on screen readers. Conduct the study in person to help participants feel comfortable, and plan to record the screen-reader output.
Developing your own research-participant database allows you to be efficient in recruiting study participants, enabling you to run more studies with faster turnaround.
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.
Maintaining participants’ data privacy and security before, during, and after data collection is critical to the user-research process. It protects participants from data breaches and cyber threats.
Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To help you know when to use which user research method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.
Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To help you know when to use which user research method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.
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.
