How can you do useful user research with social media? Social media is one of the dominant forms of interactions on the Internet. It allows researchers to tap into the recent experience of people without the formality of interviewing or user testing. Leading platforms such as Facebook and Twitter count hundreds of millions of users each month. In this article, Dave Ellender will show you how social media is a rich vein of data for user researchers.
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We often want information on what users and potential users of our designs think and how they behave in the context of where they will use our design. Intercepts allow you to engage users in a variety of settings to collect data to inform your design. In this article, Victor Yocco shares a method to design and carry out effective intercepts as part of your user research. You can use the steps and information provided in this article in your own process for intercepting users!
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In this article, Becky White will try to point out how you could avoid common pitfalls through UX considerations such as the variety of ways you can usability test with children, when and how to use non–digital prototyping, why you shouldn’t forget about adults, or when to incorporate audio/visual feedback. It’s not just taking grown–up content and dumbing it down. In fact, there are many reasons why designing for kids is actually more difficult than designing for adults.
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As a designer, you have the power to help millions of people live longer, healthier and happier lives. But a truly delightful and meaningful app doesn’t happen by magic. In this article, Jen Maroney presents useful examples and explains how you can achieve best results when design consumer-facing healthcare apps. She’ll explore how to plan and conduct research, design moments of delight, integrate data from third-party devices and develop a messaging matrix.
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Research should always influence our work. Not every project has a content strategist, but that’s no excuse for copywriters to write blindly. If you have the opportunity, seek out a content strategist or a user researcher; if research has already been conducted, they’ll be happy to walk you through it, and if it hasn’t, then now is the time to get involved. Even just one or two of these research processes and tools will help you learn a great deal about your users, and ultimately it will improve your final content.
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A lab environment can never replicate the natural environment of the participant, and the mere presence of a research facilitator or moderator creates a dimension of artificiality that can thwart the research goals. How you moderate will have a significant impact on the quality of your research findings. The goal, of course, is to get realistic findings. An effective moderator understands how the nature and timing of questions can influence — and sometimes even drive — the outcome. A skillful moderator is adept at managing these potentially conflicting goals in order to ensure the integrity of the research and equally adept at ensuring that their findings appropriately inform their business partners’ decisions.
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Claire Carlson had the opportunity to conduct in-home user interviews in São Paulo on behalf of a Brazilian real estate company called Zap Imóveis. This project provided her with invaluable insider knowledge on how to best conduct in-home user interviews in Brazil and, more broadly, how to conduct field research in foreign countries using the same underlying principles. This article presents her tips for foreigners planning to conduct in-home user interviews in Brazil, including parallels with research in India, China, and Spain.
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Mobile technology has brought us some fantastic benefits, but with always available, always connected technology, it can have a negative impact when it demands our attention and distracts us from the real world.When was the last time you enjoyed a meal with friends without it being interrupted by people paying attention to their smartphones instead of you? How many times have you had to watch out for pedestrians who are walking with their faces buried in a device, oblivious to their surroundings? We have to shift our design focus from technology to the world around us. As smartwatches and wearables become more popular, we need to create design experiences that allow us to create experiences that are still engaging, but less distracting.
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By 2030, around 19% of people in the US will be over 65. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well it happens to be about the same number of people in the US who own an iPhone today. Which of these two groups do you think Silicon Valley spends more time thinking about? This seems unfortunate when you consider all of the things technology has to offer older people. A lot of people in the tech industry talk about “changing the world” and “making people’s lives better.” But bad design is excluding whole sections of the population from the benefits of technology. If you’re a designer, you can help change that!
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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.
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