All posts from
March 2020

Changing Design Education for the 21st Century

Added on 10 March 2020 Peter Bogaards

Deep thinking on (design) education (not training!) in combination with a practical implementation.

“​Designers are entrusted with increasingly complex and impactful challenges. However, the current system of design education does not always prepare students for these challenges. Designers are moving into new areas, many of which require management, social, technological, and political skills never before thought of as the responsibility of design. Not only has technology increased and changed dramatically in recent decades, but society has become more and more concerned with weighty global issues, such as hunger, health, education. Design skills for developing creative solutions to complex problems are becoming more and more essential. Businesses are starting to recognize that designers bring something special to the work—a rational belief based upon numerous studies that link business success to a design-driven approach. These are all powerful opportunities, yet we are not always training our students appropriately.”

Donald A. Norman and Michael W. Meyer ~ jnd.org ★ courtesy of marcovanhout

Practices and Challenges of Using Think-Aloud Protocols in Industry: An International Survey

Added on 9 March 2020 Peter Bogaards

Language as the gateway to the mind.

“​Think-aloud protocols are one of the classic methods often taught in universities for training UX designers and researchers. Although previous research reported how these protocols were used in industry, the findings were typically based on the practices of a small number of professionals in specific geographic regions or on studies conducted years ago. As UX practices continuously evolve to address new challenges emerging in industry, it is important to understand the challenges faced by current UX practitioners around the world when using think-aloud protocols. Such an understanding is beneficial for UX professionals to reflect on and learn from the UX community’s practices. It is also invaluable for academic researchers and educators to understand the challenges faced by professionals when carrying out the protocols in a wide range of practical contexts and to better explore methods to address these challenges. We conducted an international survey study with UX professionals in various sized companies around the world. We found that think-aloud protocols are widely and almost equally used in controlled lab studies and remote usability testing; concurrent protocols are more popular than retrospective protocols. Most UX practitioners probe participants during test sessions, explicitly request them to verbalize particular types of content, and do not administer practice sessions. The findings also offer insights on practices and challenges in analyzing think-aloud sessions. In sum, UX practitioners often deal with the tension between validity and efficiency in their analysis and demand better fast-paced and reliable analysis methods than merely reviewing observation notes or session recordings.”

Mingming Fan, Serina Shi, and Khai N. Truong ~ UXPA Journal 15.2 ★

Inbodied interaction: Introduction

Added on 6 March 2020 Peter Bogaards

On invasive technologies.

“​HCI practitioners are increasingly interested in designing interactive technologies to support the body. At the CHI conference, research around health in particular has grown over the past decade. Once consisting of a session or two on health-related papers, it has since become one of the largest dedicated tracks in the conference. That said, few of us in HCI are experts in how the body works as a complex suite of physiological, interacting systems. Understandably so: Such expertise takes years of study in, for example, body-oriented fields like medicine or sports science. It is not a huge stretch, however, to expect that having more expertise about the body’s complex systems would enable us to design better tools. For example, a screwdriver can be effective for working on some parts of a car, but if we wish to ensure that the engine under the hood is running well, we need additional, specific tools like timing lights and spark-gap slides. Understanding how to use these tools, of course, is an essential requirement for ensuring the optimal performance of that machine.”

M.C. Schraefel ~ ACM Interactions Magazine 27.2 ★

A guide to asking the right user research questions

Added on 3 March 2020 Peter Bogaards

It’s the answer that matters.

“​User feedback is a vital input for product development. But to maximize the effectiveness of your user research, it’s necessary to ask the right questions. Before talking to your users, think about the overall objective of the research: What do you want to know? Do you want to find out if a certain feature is useful? Or are you trying to learn what problems the user is facing? At this point, focus on the overarching theme of your research, and not specific questions.”

Jeremiah Lam ~ Maze ★

A usability evaluation of Web user interface scrolling types

Added on 3 March 2020 Peter Bogaards

Paper against pixels, hence scrolling.

“​This paper details a usability evaluation of scrolling techniques on Web sites. The scrolling methods evaluated were normal scrolling (with default pagination), infinite scrolling, infinite scrolling with a load more button and infinite scrolling with pagination. The four scrolling types were evaluated in the context of tasks that involved either serendipitous type tasks or goal-oriented type tasks. The evaluation was principally about the raw’ performance and participant perceptions. This is because it was felt that the greatest gap in knowledge concerned these aspects. The evaluation was done by means of an experiment and the data collected was statistically analysed. The results were mixed in nature, where no single scrolling method stood out as being the most usable.”

Sushil Sharma and Dr. Pietro Murano ~ First Monday 25.3

Digital experience systems: Expanding design systems to serve the full customer experience

Added on 2 March 2020 Peter Bogaards

The scope of design systems is getting larger and larger.

“​In this era of ever-evolving technology and innovation, organizations can no longer rely solely on a static dot-com to connect with customers. Increasingly, customer expectations are driving the need for an unprecedented mix of dynamic touch points, such as websites, customer portals, native mobile, wearables, chatbots, and voice interactions. Modern marketers need to manage these experiences intentionally and consistently to provide valuable brand interactions across the full customer experience. Further complicating the trend of multichannel experiences is a need within organizations to continually assess the impact and return on each customer touch point.”

Kristen Cromer ~ Adobe XD ideas ★