"Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people's attention for much longer because visit - durations follow a negative Weibull distribution."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted on September 12, 2011 | Permalink

Do you make these 4 mistakes when carrying out a usability review?

Following review recipes (a.k.a. tips, do's and dont's) means you're following algorithms; if you follow anything, let it be heuristics.

"When properly carried out, usability reviews are a very efficient way of finding the usability bloopers in an interface. But there are four common mistakes made by novice reviewers: failing to take the user's perspective; using only a single reviewer, rather than collating the results from a team; using a generic set of usability principles rather than technology-specific guidelines; and lacking the experience to judge which problems are important."

(David Travis a.k.a. @userfocus)

Posted on September 02, 2011 | Permalink

Reliability and Dependability in Usability Testing

"Usability testing is a form of user research, in so far as it allows you to make conclusions about a large population based on observations of a small sample of that population. Essentially, we try to assess our products' suitability for our marketplace - as well as its usability for the population of interest - by testing it with a group of typical users. Usability testing often involves both quantitative and qualitative data - either of which can be subject to misunderstandings. This column discusses principles of rigorous research as they apply to usability testing, with an emphasis on reliability and dependability."

(Mike Hughes ~ UXmatters)

Posted on June 24, 2011 | Permalink

Measuring information behaviour performance inside a company: A case study

"Measuring information behaviour performance to provide practical guidance for knowledge workers is an important issue for the success of a company. Drawing upon the literature from psychology, marketing, management and information systems, this paper develops a practical model of information behaviour that provides fundamental determinants of knowledge workers' performance."

(Yujong Hwang ~ Information Research, 16(2)

Posted on June 16, 2011 | Permalink

Comparing User Research Methods for Information Architecture

"In this column, I'll summarize and compare the latest generative and evaluative methods for IA user research. The methods I'll examine include open card sorting, Modified-Delphi card sorting, closed card sorting, reverse card sorting, card-based classification evaluation, tree testing, and testing information architecture with low-fidelity prototypes. I'll cover the advantages and disadvantages to consider when choosing between these methods, when it makes sense to use each method, and describe an ideal combination of these methods."

(Jim Ross ~ UXmatters)

Posted on June 08, 2011 | Permalink

The Art of Design Research (and Why It Matters)

"(...) sometimes design teams don't have the patience to see the value in dragging out a study in an effort to make it scientifically or statistically significant. We're just not wired that way; we prefer to make and experiment and then analyze later. So what is research good for?"

(Jon Freach ~ The Atlantic)

Posted on May 31, 2011 | Permalink

Capturing Meaningful and Significant User Experience Metrics

"How many times have you wondered how you can collect meaningful and significant metrics to validate your research? Many researchers struggle with this same dilemma on a daily basis. For example, how can we know the magnitude of the issues we are detecting in a traditional usability lab study? Surprisingly, there are many ways to capture useful UX metrics if you have the knowledge of what solutions to use and how to use them."

(Kim Oslob ~ UXmatters)

Posted on May 24, 2011 | Permalink

UX Analytics: Getting a Quick Win (2/2)

"First, consider what is the most critical action you want your customers to accomplish on your site - what is your primary conversion? For an ecommerce site, the purchase that a thank - you confirmation represents is commonly the key conversion. From there, work backward to determine the key steps a user takes to get to that conversion point. In checkout, it might be - in reverse order - order confirmation, order review, shipping/billing/payment information, and adding a product to the shopping cart." (Kristi Olson ~ UXmatters)

Posted on May 11, 2011 | Permalink

The Problem with Design Education

"Design - central to successful technologies - is too isolated from science education, argues design guru Don Norman." (MIT Technology Review) courtesy of markvanderbeeken

Posted on April 06, 2011 | Permalink

How Design Thinking Can Help Prevent Another Mortgage Bubble

"Here was a chance to remake a tool that plays a vital role in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year. But what happened that day turned out to be much more than streamlining a critical form in the home-buying process. Even much more than the redesign of a vital 'touch point' within the larger 'user experience'. What happened was that the symposium's attendees discovered just how radical a solution Design Thinking could offer; not only to the problem of a broken mortgage process, but to public policy at its highest levels." (Monica Bueno ~ Co.Design)

Posted on April 05, 2011 | Permalink

Imagine Design Create

Interview with Hugh Dubberly "Design practice does not learn. As a profession, we don't even know how to learn. We're stuck. Trapped in the past. Unable to move forward. Unclear on what forward might mean. Lacking mechanisms to build and share knowledge. Lacking even a model of design knowledge. In fact, the problem is so structurally embedded, so pervasive, so deep, that we don't see it." (Dubberly Design Office)

Posted on March 30, 2011 | Permalink

Anatomy of a Design Decision

"The best designs come from not one, but hundreds of well-made decisions. The worst designs arise out of hundreds of poorly-made decisions. All that stands between you and a great design is the quality of your decisions. Where do they come from? For the last five years, we've been studying how designers make their decisions. When do they use outside information, such as research about their users? When do they go with their gut instinct? When do the designers look to past decisions and the lessons they’ve learned? What we found will surprise you. In this presentation, Jared will take you on an entertaining deep dive into the gut instinct of the best designers (without looking at all the gooey parts). You’ll learn five styles of decision making, from Self Design to Experience-focused Design, and which style produces quality results. Prepare to learn how to be a better designer, as Jared shares the secrets of the best and worst." (Jared Spool ~ UIE)

Posted on March 24, 2011 | Permalink

Design Thinking Won't Save You

"Ladies and gentlemen, let me break this to you gently. Design Thinking, the topic we're here to analyze and discuss and get to grips with so you can go back to Mars and instantly transform your businesses, is not the answer." (Helen Walters)

Posted on March 22, 2011 | Permalink

UX Analytics, Part I: A Call to Action

"As UX researchers, our goal is to identify customer pain points and obstacles in a given workflow or process, then tell a compelling story about their risks and provide general recommendations for alleviating those risks. But after eight years in UX research - even having mastered the arts of compelling storytelling and building stakeholder empathy - I still never quite saw the results I'd hoped for. Worse, my work required me to move quickly onto the next project, never to hear again about the outcomes of projects past." (Kristi Olson ~ UXmatters)

Posted on March 21, 2011 | Permalink

FYI: TMI: Toward a holistic social theory of information overload

"Research into information overload has been extensive and cross–disciplinary, producing a multitude of suggested causes and posed solutions. I argue that many of the conclusions arrived at by existing research, while laudable in their inventiveness and/or practicality, miss the mark by viewing information overload as a problem that can be understood (or even solved) by purely rational means. Such a perspective lacks a critical understanding in human information usage: much in the same way that economic models dependent on rationality for their explanations or projections fail (often spectacularly, as recent history attests), models that rely too heavily upon the same rational behavior, and not heavily enough upon the interplay of actual social dynamics — power, reputation, norms, and others — in their attempts to explain, project, or address information overload prove bankrupt as well. Furthermore, even research that displays greater awareness of the social context in which overload exists often reveals a similar rationality in its conceptualization. That is, often the same 'social' approaches that offer potential advantages (in mitigating information overload) over their 'non–social' counterparts paradoxically raise new problems, requiring a reappraisal of overload that takes social issues into account holistically." (Anthony Lincoln ~ First Monday Volume 16, Number 3)

Posted on March 09, 2011 | Permalink

Research Methods for Understanding Consumer Decisions in a Social World

"Ultimately, the goal is to understand the entirety of the consumer experience, so we can make the most informed decisions about online strategy, content, and positioning. In this column, I'll first summarize the findings from Edelman's article, then discuss how we can apply traditional user research methodology to supporting changes in marketing strategies." (Michael Hawley ~ UXmatters)

Posted on March 07, 2011 | Permalink

Approaches to User Research When Designing for Children

"Children's exposure to computing devices depends on a great variety of factors—including cultural traditions, economic power, and family values. But there is no doubt that, in general, children's access to technological devices and interactive products has increased dramatically in recent years. We are now seeing even higher adoption of technology among children—thanks to the unpredictably intuitive interaction of youngsters with touchscreen technologies and mobile devices that they can carry everywhere and use at any time." (Catalina Naranjo-Bock ~ UXmatters)

Posted on March 07, 2011 | Permalink

On the scalability of design thinking and transdisciplinary design education

"Interview with Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2011. Topics include design thinking and India, design,innovation and entrepreneurship driving India's inclusive growth, transdisciplinary design education and design thinking and designers." (aabhira aditya)

Posted on March 03, 2011 | Permalink

Measuring the User Experience on a Large Scale: User-Centered Metrics for Web Applications

"More and more products and services are being deployed on the web, and this presents new challenges and opportunities for measurement of user experience on a large scale. There is a strong need for user-centered metrics for web applications, which can be used to measure progress towards key goals, and drive product decisions. In this note, we describe the HEART framework for user-centered metrics, as well as a process for mapping product goals to metrics. We include practical examples of how HEART metrics have helped product teams make decisions that are both data-driven and user-centered. The framework and process have generalized to enough of our company's own products that we are confident that teams in other organizations will be able to reuse or adapt them. We also hope to encourage more research into metrics based on large-scale behavioral data." (Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson, and Xin Fu ~ Google Research)

Posted on February 22, 2011 | Permalink

Developing Your Interview Skills, Part II: During the Interview

"(...) I'll address how to manage an interview to ensure it starts on the right track and stays there. This article also touches on some ways to develop your interviewing skills throughout your career." (Mia Northrop ~ UXmatters)

Posted on February 07, 2011 | Permalink

The Art of the Design Critique

"Critical discussion around design is as important as the design process itself. If you work in a design team, feedback from your colleagues can keep you challenged, and can push you to improve. Despite its value to the outcome of the design process, it's far too often avoided like a trip to the dentist because we subconsciously feel criticism of our work is not just a reflection on our design, but is a spotlight upon our personal shortcomings. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Proper design criticism focus on goals, outcomes, and the needs of the users." (Aarron Walter ~ Think Vitamin)

Posted on January 26, 2011 | Permalink

Nokia design head speaks about mobile UX trends

"Marko Ahtisaari speaks about existing and emerging design patterns for mobile devices. He says that the iOS design pattern is very well executed but very constrained (...); it's the almost perfect rendition of a superlinear, application-centric design model." (Gabriel White ~ Small Surfaces)

Posted on January 26, 2011 | Permalink

Understanding the Kano Model: A Tool for Sophisticated Designers

"This model predicted the reaction of users as the key elements of Flickr's personalized homepage propagated to other web sites. It predicted why users were initially delighted and why the delight faded over time. We find the Kano Model to be an indispensable tool for designers. Let's take the model apart, so we can understand why it's so useful." (Jared Spool ~ User Interface Engineering)

Posted on January 19, 2011 | Permalink

Internet Skills: Vital Assets in an Information Society

"This dissertation is about being able to keep up with the digitalization of contemporary society. It starts with a brief historical overview of changes in communication technologies and the increasing demands they have put on users. Special attention in this chapter is given to the communication technology that in a relatively short periode of time has vastly changed the way information is collected and used: the Internet." (Alexander J.A.M. van Deursen)

Posted on November 25, 2010 | Permalink

Developing a Strategy and Vision: Part 1

"A good strategy doesn't fall out of the air by itself. You'll want to have several strategies on the table later on so that you can choose the best one. So first we need to create some basis for creating strategies." (Martijn van Welie)

Posted on October 19, 2010 | Permalink

Richard Buchanan Keynote: SCAD 2010

"Designers are great facilitators of conversations among people who have wildly different views about the world. That's a definition of a "wicked problem" by the way. A wicked problem is where there are essentially contested values. Not accidentally contested, not arbitrarily contested. But essentially contested, meaning that there are fundamental differences that cannot be resolved. That to resolve them would be to violate the truths that have been discovered by different people. Designers work with wicked problems. They work with them by the use of dialectic (...)" (Jeff Howard ~ Design for Service)

Posted on October 13, 2010 | Permalink

Researcher-practitioner interaction update (UXRPI)

"One thing that has been useful for me is the overall model of the problem space that emerged for me." (Keith Instone) - courtesy of resmini

Posted on October 01, 2010 | Permalink

Information science as a social science

"This paper traces the specifics of information science as a social science. The paper examines the background of the social sciences in the history of academic disciplines. The paper discusses the ways in which positivism and interpretativism, the leading traditions of the social sciences, assert themselves in information science as a social science. It is argued that received ideas about the social sciences impact how information science as a social science is perceived. It is also argued that information science as a social science can and should provide valid scientific explanations. This paper distinguishes social interaction as the defining feature of information science as a social science. To this end, the paper proposes global complexity not as a theory or solution, but as a metaphor for information science as a social science to address the pressing issues of our increasingly interconnected world." (Sylvain K. Cibangu ~ Information Research 15.3)

Posted on September 15, 2010 | Permalink

Interviewing Users

"Despite many weaknesses, interviews are a valuable method for exploratory user research." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 26, 2010 | Permalink

Knowledge Visualization in Design Practice (.pdf)

Exploring the power of knowledge visualization in problem solving - "This paper presents knowledge visualization as a design activity in problem solving. In contemporary design practice the increasing complexity of problems and range of information that design practitioners engage with is driving the need for more robust processes and tools in order to design relevant, meaningful solutions for people. We situate visualization within a four phased model where the intent is to understand the dimensions of a problem. Visualization aids in sensemaking and cognitive processing of complex information. It accomplishes this through framing ambiguous states, bringing order to complexity, making sense out of seemingly unrelated things or finding insights that are buried in data. We propose that in a problem solving context its value goes beyond the functional level of simply representing information but rather operates as a powerful instrument for thinking in analysis, synthesis and insight generation. Visual models and frameworks serve as tools to illuminate relationships and meanings within data and define the areas to explore and construct solutions." (Joanne Mendel and Jan Yeager ~ Parsons Journal for Information Mapping Volume 2 Issue 3)

Posted on July 21, 2010 | Permalink

Debunking the Myths of Remote Usability Studies

"Success in a diverse global marketplace increasingly demands that companies engage customers from diverse global backgrounds in both discussions and usability studies. However, funding for user research travel is becoming more limited, and the availability of local users who meet the need for diversity is often insufficient. Therefore, UX professionals have started using remote usability testing methods to gather adequate user feedback." (Corrie Kwan, Jin Li, and May Wong ~ UXmatters)

Posted on July 06, 2010 | Permalink

Recruiting Better Research Participants

"Recruiting the right participants is the foundation of effective user research, because your research results are only as good as the participants involved. Representative, well-spoken, and thoughtful research participants can provide invaluable feedback. Yet finding and recruiting such ideal participants and getting them to show up for their sessions is sometimes difficult." (Jim Ross ~ UXmatters)

Posted on July 06, 2010 | Permalink

Ethnography in UX

"On my current project, I'm designing and implementing a framework for business that provides workflow management and supports information gathering and reporting. While there may be a software component further down the track, for now the technology is taking the form of procedures, reporting templates, and guidance material. This technology is both intellectual and social. Its goal is to support teams within the organization, and it requires people to work together. The biggest challenge with designing and implementing such technology is not creating code or a user interface, but ensuring its compatibility with team dynamics. This is where ethnography comes in." (Nathanael Boehm ~ UXmatters)

Posted on June 21, 2010 | Permalink

What every UX professional needs to know about statistics and usability tests

"Do you like computers, but hate math? Would you love to work on creating cutting-edge technology, but don’t think you have the quantitative aptitude to be a programmer or electrical engineer? Then become a user experience professional! If you can count to 5 (the number of users in a usability test), then you already know all the math you'll need! Everything else is art! I bet you're good at art, aren't you?" (Stat 101) courtesy of usanews

Posted on June 17, 2010 | Permalink

Global User Research: Practical insights to ensure success

"(...) the first book to focus on global user research. The book collects insight from UX professionals from twenty countries and, following a typical project timeline, presents practical insights into the preparation, fieldwork, analysis and reporting, and overall project management for global user research projects." (About the authors)

Posted on June 09, 2010 | Permalink

So, You Want to Do User Research: Characteristics of Great Researchers

"One of the best things about user research is that anyone can do it. On the other hand, it takes real commitment and a lot of personal development to do user research well. People commonly assume that research is research—and doing any kind of research is better than doing none at all. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Not all user research is created equal. Flawed research can be a significant liability to the success of a product, as well as the company developing it, so it really is important to get it right." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain ~ UXmatters)

Posted on June 07, 2010 | Permalink

Designing with Behavioral Economics

"Much of economics theory is based on the premise that people are rational decision-makers. In recent years, behavioral economics—also known as behavioral finance—has emerged as a discipline, bringing together economics and psychology to understand how social, cognitive, and emotional factors influence how people make decisions, both as individuals and at the market level. Many of the findings of behavioral economics have a direct influence on how users interact with a product. In a worst‑case scenario, a product’s design may encourage user behaviors that are detrimental to users’ best interests." (Peter Hornsby ~ UXmatters)

Posted on June 07, 2010 | Permalink

Combining Methods: Web Analytics and User Testing

"After presenting on combining methods at the EuroIA in 2009, Adam Cox and Martijn Klompenhouwer again showed the benefits of combining two separate sources. They delivered their presentation at the yearly Usability Professional Association conference in Munich (UPA2010). This time they focused on how to use Web Analytics in the preparation and execution of usability testing. Drawing from their experience of combining Web Analytics and User Research over the years, they illustrated several practical examples of how this combined approach works when it comes to user testing. After a short introduction of the individual methods, they demonstrated this approach by showcasing specific usability testing projects with a presentational style that was both visual and conversational." (User Intelligence)

Posted on May 28, 2010 | Permalink

Doing User Research Faster and Cheaper

"Despite our seeing some initial signs of a recovery, for most people the economy still sucks. Companies have less money to spend and are more cautious about how they spend it. Companies that haven't already cut user research from their project plans altogether are asking researchers to achieve the same results for less money, in less time—or just to do less. Is it possible to scale back user research and still provide value? If so, how can we do things faster and cheaper?" (Jim Ross ~ UXmatters)

Posted on May 03, 2010 | Permalink

Enhancing User Research with Emerging Technology

"As technology evolves and new gadgets and electronics emerge in the marketplace, our options for the use of technology in conducting our user research continue to expand. The processes through which we have long gathered data—such as surveys and interviews—are no longer the only ways in which we can understand people and how they respond to our clients’ products and services. As professional user researchers, we have the opportunity to devise new and innovative ways of more accurately understanding user experience through the use of technology." (Bryan McClain and Demetrius Madrigal ~ UXmatters)

Posted on May 03, 2010 | Permalink

The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX: Match the Mental Model to the Conceptual Model

"A mental model represents a person's thought process for how something works (i.e., a person's understanding of the surrounding world). Mental models are based on incomplete facts, past experiences, and even intuitive perceptions. (...) A conceptual model is the actual model that is given to the user through the interface of the product." (Susan Weinschenk - UX Magazine)

Posted on April 15, 2010 | Permalink

Defining the Designer of 2015

"(...) it has been apparent that design studios and corporate departments have been looking for a new kind of designer, one that has traditional skills and yet a much broader perspective on problem solving. Because one of AIGA’s central responsibilities is to keep abreast of developments in the industry, we recognized that we needed to better understand the emerging role of designers and to enter into a deeper discussion with educators and design leaders on how to prepare designers for future changes." (AIGA)

Posted on April 14, 2010 | Permalink

The riddle of experience vs. memory

"Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our 'experiencing selves' and our 'remembering selves' perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness." (TED2010)

Posted on April 14, 2010 | Permalink

Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet

"And what does Mary Meeker see in her crystal ball this year? Two overwhelming trends that will affect consumers, the hardware/infrastructure industry and the commercial potential of the web: mobile and social networking." (Mathew Ingram - GigaCom)

Posted on April 13, 2010 | Permalink

Design anthropology: What can it add to your design practice?

"Designers primarily concern themselves with how to create a 'successful' communication, product, or experience. But with the past 10 years of globalization, digitalization, and ever increasing design complexity, designers have come to realize that to answer the question of design 'success' requires that they answer that question of how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it means to be human. This 'humanness' can range from how humans control the environment through tools (homo faber); how high-heeled shoes affect natural ways of walking; to moral issues of how participation in the design process empowers marginalized communities. In this space, the practice and theory of design anthropology has emerged." (Dori Tunstall)

Posted on April 07, 2010 | Permalink

IDSA Design Research

"We have launched this site in connection with the release of the spring issue of Innovation Magazine, which is dedicated to design research. All of the articles from the magazine are available here. We encourage you to read these articles and share your thoughts and ideas through the site."

Posted on April 04, 2010 | Permalink

User-Centered Innovation is not Sustainable

"Only forward-looking executives, designers, and, of course, policy makers may introduce sustainable innovation into the economic picture. They need to step back from current dominant needs and behaviors and envision new scenarios. They need to propose new unsolicited products and services that are both attractive, sustainable, and profitable." (Roberto Verganti - Harvard Business Review)

Posted on March 22, 2010 | Permalink

Sustainable User Research

"Traditionally, user research involves directly observing and talking with people in the context of their work or play. Either researchers travel to observe participants in their natural environments or participants travel to a usability lab or focus-group facility. How better to understand how people use a product or technology than to observe them using it firsthand?" (Jim Ross - UXmatters)

Posted on March 22, 2010 | Permalink

Preso: Data-Driven Design

"A five minute rant on the importance of letting data be your guide when making tactical design decisions. An introduction for managers of design teams who are driven from a heuristic, or 'genius' perspective." (Ryan Freitas)

Posted on March 10, 2010 | Permalink

The State Of Customer Experience 2010

"Only 11% have a very disciplined approach to customer experience." (Bruce Temkin - Customer Experience Matters)

Posted on February 26, 2010 | Permalink

Research Is Communication

"In actuality, the reason so many small software businesses fail so quickly is because they don’t understand that their knowledge of how to build a product is not sufficient to build success. The true vision of a multidisciplinary team of engineers, designers, product people, marketers, business people, and researchers is foreign to them. If some of the people creating software don’t understand our role, it’s not surprising consumers don't." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain - UXmatters)

Posted on January 04, 2010 | Permalink

Customer journey mapping

"Customer journey mapping is the process of tracking and describing all the experiences that customers have as they encounter a service or set of services, taking into account not only what happens to them, but also their responses to their experiences. Used well, it can reveal opportunities for improvement and innovation in that experience, acting as a strategic tool to ensure every interaction with the customer is as positive as it can be." (Cabinet Office)

Posted on November 11, 2009 | Permalink

Co-creation through generative design thinking

"Co-creation is not just the next new thing in marketing. It is an alternative way of seeing and being in the world. Existing and thriving in the emerging co-creative landscapes will require the creation and application of new tools, methods and methodologies for connecting, innovating, making, telling and sharing. These generative tools must be useful and usable for all types of people. Generative design thinking provides a design language for all of us, designers as well as non-designers, to use in provoking the imagination, stimulating ideation, stirring the emotions, discovering unmet needs and facilitating embodiments of future possibilities. Examples of this generative design language in action, from projects ranging from consumer product and service development to the planning and architecture of new healthcare campuses, will be shared." (Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders - IASDR09)

Posted on October 30, 2009 | Permalink

Science and Design

"But as the world grows more complex, more interconnected, with the underlying infrastructure less and less visible, hidden inside electronic and optical mechanisms, conveyed as all-powerful yet invisible information and knowledge, design more than ever needs a body of reliable, verifiable procedures. Science is the systematic method of building a reliable, verifiable, repeatable, and generalizable body of knowledge. Science is not a body of facts: it is a process. Design is the deliberate shaping of the environment in ways that satisfy individual and societal needs. Scientific methods can inform design. Designers can create a science of design." (Donald A. Norman - IASDR09)

Posted on October 30, 2009 | Permalink

Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts

"The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. For computer scientists, this fast-growing mountain of data is opening a tantalizing window onto the collective consciousness of Internet users. An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world's unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data." (Alex Wright - NYT)

Posted on October 15, 2009 | Permalink

What is Design Thinking Anyway?

"Toward the end of the nineteenth century, American philosophers such as William James and John Dewey began to explore the limits of formal declarative logic — that is, inductive and deductive reasoning. They were less interested in how one declares a statement true or false than in the process by which we come to know and understand. To them, the acquisition of knowledge was not an abstract, purely conceptual exercise, but one involving interaction with and inquiry into the world around them. Understanding did not entail progress toward an absolute truth but rather an evolving interaction with a context or environment." (Roger Martin - Design Observer)

Posted on October 15, 2009 | Permalink

IORG: The Information Overload Research Group

"We work together to understand, publicize and solve the information overload problem. We do this by (1) defining and building awareness of information overload, (2) facilitating and funding collaboration and advanced research aimed at shaping solutions and establishing best practices, and (3) serving as a resource center where we share information and resources, offer guidance and connections, and help make the business case for fighting information overload." (About The IORG)

Posted on September 30, 2009 | Permalink

Audience Segmentation Models

"Understanding the people who will ultimately engage with a product or service provides the foundation for user experience design. Modeling those people and segmenting our models into meaningful groups lets us explore different clusters of needs, then address our solutions to meeting the needs of people belonging to specific clusters." (Steve Baty - UXmatters)

Posted on September 21, 2009 | Permalink

Book Chapter: Designed Animism

"What does pervasive computing have to do with animism? Essentially, it can become a tool in manifesting what I call designed animism. The goal is fundamentally experiential, but the conequences are profound: designed animism forms the basis of a poetics for a new world." (Brenda Laurel)

Posted on August 26, 2009 | Permalink

Designing for Interaction: Design Research

"If only a small bit of the typical time, money, and resources used to make and market a product or service were put towards design research—observing, talking to, and maybe even making artifacts with customers and users—the products and services we use would be greatly improved. Dan Saffer explains." (Dan Saffer - Peachpit) - courtesy jhollandmag

Posted on August 20, 2009 | Permalink

Using the Internet: Skill related problems in users' online behavior

"This study extends the conventional and superficial notion of measuring digital skills by proposing definitions for operational, formal, information and strategic skills. The main purpose was to identify individual skill related problems that users experience when navigating the Internet. In particular, lower levels of education and aging seem to contribute to the amount of experienced operational and formal skill related problems. With respect to information skills, higher levels of education seem to perform best. Age did not seem to contribute to information skill related problems. Results did reveal that age had a negative effect on selecting irrelevant search results. Individual strategic Internet skill related problems occurred often, with the exception of subjects with higher levels of education. Younger subjects experienced far less operational and formal skill related problems, but there was no difference regarding information and strategic skill related problems." (Alexander J.A.M. van Deursen and Jan A.G.M. van Dijk) - courtesy of shuggie

Posted on August 14, 2009 | Permalink

Finding Gold in Your User Research Results

"This article describes a funnel that starts with the product, progresses to the users, and finally, plumbs the depths of the user research itself. I'll attempt to show how each of these stages can inform the next stage and move us toward finding the gold." (Daniel Szuc - UXmatters)

Posted on July 06, 2009 | Permalink

Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations

"Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 08, 2009 | Permalink

Symposium Contextmapping: The Videos

"About five years ago, we started the contextmapping research at ID-StudioLab. In these past five years, four PhD students have explored various elements in the procedure. Several hundred students at TU Delft have learnt its principles, as did many design students and practitioners in workshops in the Netherlands, Europe, and Asia. Several dozens of students have explored, varied, modified, and reflected on the techniques, their possibilities and limitations. In May 2009, the first 'contextmapping' PhD thesis will be defended. On this occasion, we take the opportunity to reflect on the new techniques for involving users in the fuzzy front end of product design. What was learnt, what are the opportunities and barriers in industrial practice, and what do we think should the next developments be?" - (ID-StudioLab - TU Delft) courtesy of paulvalk

Posted on May 20, 2009 | Permalink

Remote Research: Real Users, Real Time, Real Research (Chapter 1)

"Remote user research describes any research method that allows you to observe, interview, or get feedback from users while they're at a distance, in their "native environment" (at their desk, in their home or office) doing their own tasks. Remote studies allow you to recruit quickly, cheaply, and immediately, and give you the opportunity to observe users as they behave naturally in their own environment, on their own time. Our book will teach you how to design and conduct remote research studies, top-to-bottom, with little more than a phone and a laptop." - (Tony Tulathimutte - Rosenfeld Media)

Posted on May 19, 2009 | Permalink

User experience and web analytics

"(...) we would probably all benefit from a dashboard of reports that included the ones that we've come to expect from our analytics tools, but that also include other quantitative reports (such as from help desk logs) and, perhaps more importantly, qualitative reports from such sources as ongoing usability testing." - (Louis Rosenfeld - Bloug)

Posted on May 17, 2009 | Permalink

Bringing the everyday life of people into design

"This thesis describes a research journey in which I developed various communication tools and a theoretical framework for making user experiences useful for designers in the very beginning of the design process." - (Froukje Sleeswijk Visser - ContextQueen)

Posted on May 12, 2009 | Permalink

Attention and awareness in stage magic: Turning tricks into research

"Just as vision scientists study visual art and illusions to elucidate the workings of the visual system, so too can cognitive scientists study cognitive illusions to elucidate the underpinnings of cognition. Magic shows are a manifestation of accomplished magic performers' deep intuition for and understanding of human attention and awareness. By studying magicians and their techniques, neuroscientists can learn powerful methods to manipulate attention and awareness in the laboratory. Such methods could be exploited to directly study the behavioural and neural basis of consciousness itself, for instance through the use of brain imaging and other neural recording techniques." - (Nature Reviews Neuroscience)

Posted on May 07, 2009 | Permalink

Design Fiction

"Science fiction is a form of popular entertainment. The emotional payoff of the science fiction genre is the sense of wonder it conveys. Science fiction 'design' therefore demands some whiz-bang, whereas industrial design requires safety, utility, serviceability, cost constraints, appearance, and shelf appeal. To these old-school ID virtues nowadays we might add sustainability and a decent interface." - (Bruce Sterling - ACM interactions XVI.3)

Posted on May 07, 2009 | Permalink

Shall We Dance?

"It is with great pride that I welcome you to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Information Architecture. The Journal of Information Architecture is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, and its aim is to facilitate the systematic development of the scientific body of knowledge in the field of information architecture. The journal will focus on information architecture research and development in all types of shared information environments, such as for example social networks, web sites, intranets, mobile and Rich Internet Applications, from various perspectives such as technical, cultural, social, and communicational." - (Dorte Madsen - Journal of Information Architecture 1.1)

Posted on May 05, 2009 | Permalink

Analysis, Plus Synthesis: Turning Data into Insights

"Conducting primary user research such as in-depth interviews or field studies can be fairly straightforward, when compared with what you face upon returning to the office with piles of notes, sketches, user journals, and audio and video recordings. You may ask, What should I do with all this data? and How do I turn it into something meaningful?" - (Lindsay Ellerby - UXmatters)

Posted on April 28, 2009 | Permalink

IA Summit 09 - Keynote

"Michael Wesch opened the IA Summit this year with an inspired keynote that provides a fresh and ambitious direction for all designers. He points out that our 'audiences' aren't audiences at all, but rather creators, and our job is not to lecture but to enable. With this new approach comes not only design challenges but the joy of reconnecting people to each other, which he illustrated with a series of extraordinary video clips." - (Jeff Parks - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on April 06, 2009 | Permalink

User (experience) research, design research, usability research, market research

"(...) a much more significant change was made at Yahoo! more recently: a merger of the user experience research group and the market research group, yielding an organization named, Customer Insights." - (Richard Anderson - Riander)

Posted on February 19, 2009 | Permalink

User Research Friday

"One thing I was really listening for was how people actually use research to do design. In my practice as an interaction designer, I find user research to be extremely important. I'm a strong advocate of ethnographically-inspired fieldwork (...) because it helps me understand how people really work and think." (Lane Halley - Cooper Journal)

Posted on November 17, 2008 | Permalink

When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods

"Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases." (Christian Rohrer - Alertbox)

Posted on October 06, 2008 | Permalink

Users Participation in Online Conversation

"In the past, user participation in editorial publications was limited to writing "letters to the editor." On the web, users take an active role in shaping the message through their comments and debates. Bond Art + Science looked at how traditional media and online publications invite, manage and benefit from user participation, and we identified some best practices and common pitfalls." (Bond Art + Science)

Posted on August 27, 2008 | Permalink

What Adaptive Path Thinks When It Thinks About Eyetracking

"(...) you rarely hear about eyetracking leading to crucial insights. Eyetracking is helpful when you need to know something extremely tactical at a very precise level of detail. But we should think very hard about the payoff. There's a great deal of overhead and it's difficult to make this a flexible, nimble process." (Adaptive Path)

Posted on March 27, 2008 | Permalink

Extreme User Research

"What is the biggest problem I face almost every time a client hires me to do something about a web project going awry? They don’t know a thing about their users. They don’t have a clue, whatsoever. Unbelievable but true!" (Daniel Lafreniere - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on March 27, 2008 | Permalink

Filling Much Needed Holes

"Ethnographic research is fun. You get to go out into the world and watch, take pictures, satisfy your curiosity and inherent nosiness. Back at the office it is great fun to scribble notes, to post them on walls and rearrange them to form patterns. Then we can create personas, colorful little artificial people with cute, interesting lives, or maybe overstressed, over-busy lives. We delight at personas, at prototyping, at watching people go through their paces. New products galore. Innovation is the new hot topic. But does all of this activity lead to actual success in the marketplace? I fear not." (Donald A. Norman)

Posted on December 05, 2007 | Permalink

Design Research in 2006 

"In the US, it is the practitioners who have been leading with regard to design research in practice. So in the U.S., there is exploration and innovation in design research going on, but it is not as well disseminated. It is discussed in general terms so as not to give too much away to 'the competition'. It is not often published, though the interaction design community is doing a good job of sharing. Europe is way ahead of the US in design research of a participatory nature. Why? Because they (particularly northern Europe) have embraced a participatory attitude for a long time. The participatory way of thinking is antithetical to the US-centric mode of manufacturers pushing products at 'consumers' through marketing and advertising." (Liz Sanders - MakeTools)

Posted on September 19, 2007 | Permalink

Pick and Mix 

Consumers moving between online and offline channels in the context of leisure travel preparations (PhD Thesis 2007) - "Consumers are increasingly using web-based systems for the search and purchase of products and services. They are, however, also still using traditional, offline channels such as telephone, high street and mail order, on a regular basis. The research presented in this thesis investigated consumer use of e-services in the context of a multi-channel environment, with a special focus on voluntary channel choice and voluntary movement between channels. Both multi-channel usage and voluntary movement between channels are currently under-researched topics." (Geke van Dijk - STBY)

Posted on July 10, 2007 | Permalink

Design Documentaries: Inspiring Design Research Through Documentary Film 

"This paper shows how we can take inspiration and use techniques from documentary film in pursuing user research." (Bas Raijmakers et al. - STBY Design Documentaties)

Posted on July 10, 2007 | Permalink