From the category archives:

user research

do-gooders are easy to research

I like nurses. They do Good (capital G) I spent a fair amount of time around nurses when my first son was born, and walked away with the impression that they are the glue of our medical system. Yet for some reason it seems that there isn’t a whole lot of innovation (i hate that [...]

Tagged as: data visualization, good, nursing, word clouds

click to continue…

a quick thought on attention

design

I was going through my old bookmarks today and came across this short manifesto from Design Observer. I’ve written before on the true attention cost of things, but rereading the manifesto got me thinking a little further: Currently, we decide to bring things (be they artifacts or bits of information) by a simple ratio… utility/cost. [...]

Tagged as: attention

click to continue…

what the news can teach you about user interviews

user research

When doing user research, don’t ask leading questions. By definition they encourage the questionee (not a word) to give you the answer you want. It can be nice getting what you want sometimes. But in this case you aren’t looking for the “answer” itself, you want know how the user feels. What are you relying on [...]

Tagged as: user research

click to continue…

are attractive designs really more usable?

design

There has long been a precedent that users find attractive designs to be more usable. About a decade ago, a study found that users perceive attractive ATM’s as more usable. Recently, Rob Tannen noted a similar study on the effect aesthetics has on the perceived usability of cell phones. Now I’ve long since been sold on [...]

Tagged as: aesthetics, usability

click to continue…

best practices in usability testing

sustainability

Beth Loring wrote a great post over at Farm on best practices in moderating usability tests. Her webinar presentation below touches on bias in user research, how much to interact, and dealing with failure. It’s a solid, high-level resource on a topic that isn’t as well-represented on the interweb as I’d like, and definitely worth [...]

Tagged as: bias, moderating, usability

click to continue…

is a secret bias blinding your research?

user research

If you are even remotely involved in user research, a hidden bias could be blinding you to the crucial insights that lead to breakthrough products and profits to match. Bias is nothing to be ashamed of, everyone (including researchers) has it. In fact, the only group of people that should be ashamed are the researchers [...]

Tagged as: bias, user research

click to continue…