CategoryUser Research

January 16, 2015 — Storytelling is not just a tool to engage users. It is also a powerful way to teach organizations more about their customers. Most organizations are reasonably good at gathering data on their users. But data often fails to communicate the frustrations and experiences of customers. A story can do that, and one of the best storytelling tools in business is the customer journey map. Think of the customer journey map as a poster pinned to the office wall. At a glance, people should be able to see the key touchpoints that a user passes through. It should remind them that the customer’s needs must always be at the forefront of their thinking. Read more…

December 3, 2014 — Translation isn’t everything. Of course, for the user it’s all about the content: Is the content relevant and understandable and in line with the user’s cultural context? If you’ve decided to localize your website, then you are thinking seriously about expanding into other markets. This is great for a business of any size. Still, keep in mind that localization is not as simple as straight translation. There are many parts of the equation to consider. If you forget one part, the rest won’t add up. Read more…

November 5, 2014 — For many of us, the idea of doing formal user testing, is a formidable challenge. There are many reasons why: you don’t have enough lead time; you can’t find enough participants, or the right type of participant; you can’t convince your boss to spend the money. User testing is the best way to improve your designs. If you rely on anecdotal data, or your own experience, you can’t design a great solution to your user’s problems. User testing is vital. But how do you make the case for it and actually do it? Read more…

November 4, 2014 — A diagnostic can be done during design and development to ensure that the mobile website or app adheres to best practices and guidelines. It also serves as a great starting point for a redesign to identify particular opportunities for improvement. In this article, Lyndon Cerejo will describe a process you can follow to evaluate a mobile UX, be it for an app or a website accessed on a mobile device. Alongside the explanation of each step, you’ll illustrate the step using the United States Postal Service as an unwitting real-world example. Read more…

July 25, 2014 — Knowing how groups influence people can help you to move from being a common designer to a strategic influencer of your target audience with relative ease, and social influence, particularly social identity theory, provides key concepts for you to address through UX design. You can influence people by thoughtfully incorporating social identity concepts into your design. In this article, Victor Yocco will focus on how concepts related to social identity theory can help UX professionals to more effectively incorporate social influence in their work. Read more…

July 11, 2014 — The method of pitting two versions of a landing page against each other in a battle of conversion is called A/B testing, and it lets you test two entirely different designs for a landing page or you can test small tweaks, like changes to a few words in your copy. Running A/B tests on your website can help you improve your communication with visitors and back up important design decisions with real data from real users. With the multitude of tools available, split testing has become easy for even non-technical people to design and manage. Read more…

June 30, 2014 — Having to make choices with limited information is not unusual — especially in complex projects or with brand new products. But, at some point, though, these choices start to feel like pure guesses and the ground under your feet feels shaky. What can you do about it? Approaching potential users for research, such as interviews and usability tests will help your whole team build a solid foundation for product strategy and design. You’ll find that the skills you develop will give you confidence to pursue the answers you need, leading you to better experiences for yourself and others. Read more…

April 10, 2014 — If you are building a product, you should always speak with customers and test your idea before. But you probably don’t know that *you *might be making some of the most common mistakes when running your experiments. Mistakes include testing the wrong aspect of your business, asking the wrong questions and neglecting to define a criterion for success. In this article, Grace Ng will show you a guide to designing quick, effective, low-cost experiments. Read more…

March 11, 2014 — A powerful report combines data gathered from a variety of sources, such as interviews with users, and analysis of the website’s analytics. The goal is to put the key insights from your research of a website into a single document. For this article, Kyle Larson created a fictional Widgets website, which you’ll work on to build a data report. Read more…

January 27, 2014 — The debate about what a “User Experience Design” exactly is, is as old as the discipline itself, and while sitting back and watching the drama is sometimes fun, let’s try to figure out which user experience techniques are useful for startups, in-house teams, big corporations and anyone who wants to improve their website, product or service. Read more…