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Tag: User experience

Posted
August 21, 2023
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Advice, Career
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25 Years in UX Research

It’s hard to believe that I first started in the field of User Experience 25 years ago. In 1998, I began the Master’s degree program in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at DePaul University. Since then, I’ve worked for four different companies—as both a generalist UX designer/researcher and as a UX research specialist.

I recently published an article on UXmatters about the changes I’ve perceived in the field of UX Research over the last 25 years: Changes Over the Last 25 in UX Research.

I cover the expansion of UX education, the change from “Usability” to “User Experience,” changes in UX job titles, increased business buy-in to the value of UX, surviving several economic downturns, usability testing moving earlier in the design process, the decline of heuristic evaluations, the increase in generative research, people increasingly demanding better user experiences, an explosive increase in the number of UX jobs, improvement in user experiences, the increase in remote research, the development of research operations, and the ability of UX research to easily adapt to technology changes.

Posted
September 20, 2021
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Advice, Methods
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Even More Difficult Usability Testing Participants

Four years ago, in 2017, I published an article in UXmatters giving advice about how to handle ten types of difficult usability testing participants, Wrangling Difficult Usability Testing Participants. The ten types of difficult participants were:

  • Bad Fits to the User Profile
  • Untalkative Participants
  • Overly Talkative Participants
  • Participants Who Ramble Off Topic
  • Inarticulate Participants
  • Participants Who Struggle to Think Aloud
  • Participants Who Have No Opinions
  • Uncritical Participants
  • Participants Who Blame Themselves
  • Uncooperative Participants

Four years later, I felt I had encountered enough new types of participants to write a part two, Wrangling Difficult Usability Testing Participants, Part 2. These include:

  • Happy Clickers
  • Talkers, Not Doers
  • Givers of Facts, Not Opinions
  • Representatives of the Business
  • Participants Who Take Prototypes Too Literally
  • Professional Research Participants
  • Uncomfortable, Nervous Participants
  • Participants Who Are Too Relaxed
  • Harassers

Of course, most participants are just regular people who are trying to do their best in the unusual situation of participating in a usability test. It’s up to you as the researcher to help them understand what you need them to do.

Image by Rinaldo Wurglitsch under Creative Commons License

Posted
June 21, 2021
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Publications
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Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

When you’ve been regularly writing online articles for 13 years, with an average of six articles per year, eventually you find that you occasionally come up with a great idea for an article, but later you realize that you’ve already written an article on that topic. That’s happened to me a few times, most recently with an idea to write an article about getting up to speed on the subject matter involved in a project. I realized that I wrote an article almost ten years ago. October 6, 2011, I published an article “Learning the Subject Matter” on Johnny Holland, a UX magazine that stopped publishing new articles a few years later.

I thought about writing an updated version with what I’ve learned in the last ten years, but it didn’t make sense with that original article still being online. However, I recently took a look at that article, and found to my distress that JohnnyHolland.com is no longer online. Sometime within the last year it went offline.

It seemed to be a sign that it was time to finally write that update. Luckily I was able to find my Johnny Holland articles on the Internet Wayback Machine, and I downloaded the text. My original Word documents of those articles had disappeared from a few computers ago. So I recycled the original article and wrote an updated version, revising the original article significantly and adding and removing pieces based on my experiences from the last ten years.

On June 21, 2021, almost 10 years later, I published the updated version on UXmatters, Learning Complex Subject Matter.

Image reduce-reuse-recycle-repeat by Phil Gibbs is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Posted
October 24, 2020
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Advice, Methods
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Remote UX Research: Advantages and Disadvantages

Partially sunken fishing boat

With COVID, we’ve all had to move all of our UX research to remote UX research. Remote UX research methods have improved greatly over the past ten years to the point where they have many advantages over in-person research. However, there are still some disadvantages of remote UX research.

In the past, we had the luxury of choosing to do in-person research when it made the most sense or remote research when that made the most sense. Since we no longer have a choice, we’ve had to be creative in overcoming the limitations of remote UX research.

In my latest two-part article on UX matters, I discuss the many advantages of remote UX research and how to best overcome the disadvantages of remote UX research. Check these out on UXmatters:

Remote UX Research: Advantages and Disadvantages, Part 1

Remote UX Research: Advantages and Disadvantages, Part 2

“Houston, we have a problem – Fishing boat; Marsaxlokk Harbour” by foxypar4 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Posted
June 22, 2020
Category
Methods
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Remote User Research: Now More Than Ever

Stay Safe Keep Your Distance social distancing marker on pavement

With everything going on now with COVID-19, remote user research is the only type of research we’ll be able to safely do for the near future. In-person research, in which you need to sit close enough to interview a participant and observe what they’re doing, doesn’t really work with social distancing. At the same time, some people have questioned whether it makes sense to continue performing user research during such unusual times. Aren’t participants going to act differently, won’t that affect the results, and should we ask them to participate in user research at a time like this?

In my latest article on UXmatters, Remote User Research: The Time is Now, I discuss how to adapt to conducting all of your user research remotely and discuss whether it makes sense to continue conducting user research during this unusual time in our history.

 

“Coronavirus (COVID-19) Sheffield, UK” by Tim Dennell is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Posted
November 5, 2018
Category
Advice, Methods, User Experiences
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Catch 22: Scoping User Research

Architectural Plan

Scoping a project’s user-research phase is a classic Catch-22 situation. Before the project begins, you have to plan the user research activities and the time involved, but you rarely have enough information to make these decisions until after the project begins. In my latest article on UXmatters, I discuss some of the problems you may encounter when trying to scope user research, and I provide advice about how to make scoping more accurate.

Check it out: Scoping User Research

Posted
July 15, 2018
Category
Advice, Methods, User Experiences
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Better UX Recommendations

Findings and recommendations spreadsheet

As UX researchers, we tend to focus more time on explaining our findings than in providing our recommendations. Yet, however well we explain the findings and recommendations, there comes a time when we’re not present, and the people who have to implement the recommended changes have to rely on the written recommendations and what they remember from your explanation. So it’s very important to ensure that your UX recommendations are understandable, concise, specific, believable, authoritative, actionable, feasible, flexible, prioritized, and easy to review. I provide advice on how to provide better recommendations in my latest article on UXmatters:

Providing Better UX Recommendations

Posted
May 16, 2018
Category
Advice, Methods, User Experiences
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Is Any User Research Better Than None?

Donkey looking at camera

Any user research is better than doing no user research, right? If you can’t reach your target users, you can do research with your company’s employees, because they’re kind of similar right? If you can’t visit people in person to see them perform their tasks, maybe you can do phone interviews or send out a survey. That’s better than nothing, right?

The truth is that it’s sometimes better not to do any user research than to do half-assed user research. I’m not saying that you always have to the perfect user research conditions or its not worth doing. In reality, we rarely have all the time we need and the perfect circumstances to conduct extensive user research. So it’s understandable that we sometimes have to cut corners and make do with what we’re able to get. However, there’s a fine line between discount user research and half-assed user research.

The danger is when you always cut corners, you can become an enabler. Your shortcuts become the norm, allowing your company to check off the user research checkbox, allowing them to say, “Yes, we do user research.” If you can’t eventually convince them to devote more time and effort to user research, sometimes it’s better to practice tough love and let them fail by not doing any user research, rather than allowing them to rely on poor quality research.

In my latest UXmatters article, I provide advice about how to know when you’re practicing half-assed user research and how to improve. Check it out: Avoiding Half-Assed User Research

Image by Spider.Dog

Posted
July 11, 2017
Category
Publications, User Experiences
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Remember Clippy?

Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant

In my latest article on UXmatters, Five Degrees of User Assistance, I bring up a character that people love to hate – Clippy, of course! Although I do have sort of a soft spot for the little guy, he is a great example of unwanted user assistance.

Poor Clippy! It really wasn’t his fault, he came along at a time when computers were too stupid to accurately predict when people needed help. Programmed to jump out when certain events occurred, to enthusiastically offer his assistance, instead he came across as an unwanted interruption and annoyance.

Today, as technology becomes increasingly intelligent, computers are smart enough to provide more appropriate and more accurate user assistance. In my latest article I describe these five levels of user assistance:

  • Passively providing online Help content. Here’s help if you need it.
  • Asking if the user needs help. Can I help you?
  • Proactively offering suggestions that users can accept or ignore. Is this what you want, or do you want to correct this?
  • Alerting the user that it’s going to take an action automatically, unless the user says not to. I’m going to do this, unless you tell me not to.
  • Automatically taking an action for the user, without asking for permission. I’ve got this for you. Don’t worry about it.

 

Check it out at UXmatters: Five Degrees of User Assistance

Image source: Clippy, created by J. Albert Bowden II and licensed under CC BY 2.0

Posted
July 11, 2016
Category
User Experiences
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More UX Analogies

I just published an article on UXmatters today, “Why So Many UX Analogies?” It’s an investigation into why there are so many articles that compare UX to other things and whether these UX analogies have any value. I mentioned some examples in my article, but here are links to many more UX Analogies. Trust me, this doesn’t even scratch the surface.

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