Hot answers tagged user-research
97
Make sure that you focus on goals.
Don't ask what your users want or need in terms of functionality or form. Find out what they need (or want) to achieve .. that way the parameters you use to define and solve the problem will be much clearer and focused.
Questions to ask your users might run along the lines of;
what they need to achieve.
how they ...
29
I had a customer a few years back who had gone through several stages of improvements to the way their system worked.
Initially they managed everything in Excel and it kind of worked, but it started getting a bit bloated and rather out of hand - well you can imagine the problems!
Then they got a team of developers in-house to improve the situation. How? ...
29
My friend at Malmö University, André Mabande, wrote his Bachelor degree on the topic with the title Designing for Dialogue. He concludes that:
The findings in this study seem to validate the hypothesis of the chronology as a
major factor for generating a consistent discussion within a commenting field. When
comments are shown in the order posted ...
16
Place demographic questions at the end of the survey. If you place them at the beginning, you will induce a phenomenon called stereotype threat.
Stereotype threat says that if you remind someone of a stereotyped attribute of themselves, it will impact their performance even if they don't believe that stereotype. For example, suppose a girl has heard a ...
15
Why would you want something more contemporary which users don't understand? What are you improving about their experience by doing this?
Don't use something different just to be cool or clever. All you would be doing is illustrating that good graphic design is not the same as good UX design.
15
This will help to know the power of ROI impact on UX and UI
Human factors Video explaining ROI for UX
UPA take on ROI with metrics
Top key points that i remember are :
UX issues are in the top ten reasons for project to fail
Good UX will reduce customer care calls
Early changes with UX design will take just 10 percent cost when compared to later stages.
...
15
If you expect comments to be part of a conversation, then you should order them from oldest to newest (bottom posting). This follows reading direction, and is far easier to follow a series of related comments. Examples include this site's comments and Reddit.
If you want to emphasise novelty over conversation, you should order comments from newest to ...
12
I've come across this before and the following image illustrates just part of the problem:
I've found that one way to find out what a user actually needs is to really understand the user's requirements, to the point where you can put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself "What would I need in this position?"*
The other thing I've found that helps is ...
12
Standard Progressive Disclosure should start at the simplest, least intrusive information first. Maybe even consider allowing users to put off answering some parts of the form (this will probably reduce completion rate of the "extra" fields but increase the completion rate of the start of the survey). But if you must do it all in one go, I'd generally ...
12
No, neither is better. They deal with different aspects or strategies, and in general you need both.
A small change lets you refine your design and have a better understanding of what affects conversion, but may let you end up with a local maxima.
A more radical change with many elements will not help you understand what affects conversion, but may also ...
12
For starters there are a number of articles which call out the possiblity of doing User research on a low or non existent budget. A good article to start would be 10 Tips on Doing User Research with No Budget which has provides 10 different ways you can get research data without having to spend any of your budget.
To briefly quote some of the points in the ...
11
Here's what is rapidly becoming the new replacement save icon:
That's assuming it's needed at all of course. For example, it's used by Google Docs here - although they've added text as well in this case:
11
There are companies who specialise in recruitment for usability testing, they will be able to source the correct user groups for your needs. I would generally only use this route if you need to target specialisms, for instance medical staff or lawyers. I would provide examples, but it would depend upon your locale.
In my experience, having worked with ...
11
I would strongly recommend reading this excellent article on smashing magazine on Lean UX,to paraphrase the article:
Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of our work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed.
Traditional documents are discarded or, at the very least, ...
11
Yes, there are a few considerations for domain names:
Is the name memorable? Could your domain name be confused with another address, such as goggle.com vs. google.com?
Is the name easy to relay? Can you tell another person the name by saying something like "penny-dash-arcade-dot-com"?
Is the name accurate to your brand? If your site is "Cheap Pens Now", ...
11
I have read up on this a bit, and it seems that my answer will contradict some of the things that have already been mentioned. My sources are all academic, and as such reflect the use of on-line surveys for conducting experiments. Feel free to read the sources that I link to, and draw your own conclusions. I mention some peripheral work as it relates to ...
11
This article cites some studies about it:
Some recent research in the Journal of Business and Psychology
reveals that placing demographic items at the beginning of a survey
increases the response rate to those items in comparison to
demographic items placed at the end. And more importantly, it did not
affect scores on the three noncognitive ...
10
Below are the 6 factors used in the O'Brien/Toms User Engagement Scale.
1) Perceived Usability: users' perceived effort, their ability to accomplish tasks, the navigation and organization, and the emotions evoked in user.
2) Aesthetics: screen layout and graphics/images, overall aesthetic impressions of attractiveness, and sensory appeal.
3) Focused ...
9
You aren't as likely to discover their needs by analyzing their reactions to something that you've built. I agree with codeinthehole - research that independently of your ideas.
Some questions that might be helpful:
What's a random day in their life like? When / where do they use tools similar to yours?
What do they need to know beforehand in order to ...
9
I think that they are reliable as what they are - cursor mapping heatmaps. They indicate where the user is positioning the cursor. In the same way, eye-tracking heatmaps indicate where the users eyes rest. Neither of them actually indicate what the user is doing when their eyes or the cursor rest there.
So I think that they are useful for some sorts of ...
9
For most people, domain.com is as clear as www.domain.com, and so the preference depends on the designer (although I prefer domain.com)
However, naked domains (i.e. domain.com) and the www version are not always synonymous. First make sure that the naked version works.
Don't just use the naked version without first checking.
8
The only way that you will ever understand what people need it to first understand them and their problem. There isn't any magic formula or set of steps to go through to do this, but any steps that you can take which help you see their problems from different perspectives will help.
That is the reason that most successful software is written by people ...
8
There are a number of research methods you can use depending on your scenario.
But first, state your research goals...
Get the questions out of your head and onto paper and share them with others, get feedback. Start out getting all collaborative right off the bat. Plan the whole process and verify you actually have the time and funds available.
...and ...
8
"http://domain.com" is unambiguously a website. "www.domain.com" is equally clear but technically not necessarily a website. "domain.com" is likely a website. "go.to" (Tongan TLD) is recognized by the internet savvy as a domain name and likely a website, but many people might miss that meaning.
I'd be inclined to use "http://" or "www." as a prefix to ...
8
My experience has been that people have strong feelings about dark themes, in that they either love or hate them.
Light coloured themes on the other hand people are a lot less passionate about. They neither love nor hate them. This makes light themes the "safe" choice.
With modern technology it is fairly simple to offer both a light and a dark theme, ...
8
If your app is really just two screens of content, then you can try treating each screen as a pane in a horizontal carousel where you can swipe between them. Take a look at the iOS weather app as an example.
8
I believe the users that didn't want to read much will find that the buttons are not obvious enough and the primary button stands out and it catches the attention.
I can suggest two options:
Create a subtle button for each link like the one shown in the image below
Use the same arrow as the other button and highlight it so the user can quickly identify ...
7
You're right on. There is no such thing as the average user. It is all dependent on context. But that's what our job is. When a client or colleague starts talking about the average user, we need to start asking the right questions to get more information.
You need to essentially build that persona (if even just implicitly) for the system you are working ...
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