Questions tagged [user-research]
Comprises multiple methods for gaining insight into user needs and behaviours from real end users.
834
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How to discover what users NEED and not what they WANT?
I have been thinking a lot about my favorite quote from Henry Ford:
If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'Faster Horses'. -Henry Ford
The trouble I have been having is that I ...
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Why is it important to focus on user needs as opposed to requests?
This question is written with digital product design in mind, but is not exclusively tailored towards digital.
It is pretty accepted that in order to design the 'best' solution to a problem, you need ...
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Should users be allowed to use any special character they want when creating a password?
I came across a number of login configuration settings where there is a list of allowable special characters and was wondering:
Does this limitation cater for a specific security or usability need?
...
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26
answers
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How to prevent users using your app while driving?
I'm working on an app project for professional drivers.
Besides all the features we need to offer them, we need to prevent as much as we can our users to use the app while driving.
Can you think of ...
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3
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Gender neutral photos for users who don't yet have a profile picture
I am administering a web application that has male and female users.
Currently, the default user photo is:
I don't like this because it seems rather masculine and gives me the impression that the ...
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votes
10
answers
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Is it OK to autocorrect users when they have mistyped parts of their email address?
When logging in, users might mistype parts of their email address. For example, name@company.con instead of .com, Yaho instead of yahoo, etc.
The main rationale is that by autocorrecting user input ...
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36
votes
4
answers
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Display comments order - best practice
I wonder what is the best comments order on the website. I assume there are two major methods to display comments:
from newest to oldest,
from oldest to newest.
Facebook uses method one and displays ...
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31
votes
7
answers
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Next vs. Continue
Is there any situation in which either Next vs. Continue would be more appropriate to use?
I'm working on an application that has many, many different forms (data entry), and have been using the word ...
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29
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9
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12k
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Dark on Light or Light on Dark? [duplicate]
For a very technical site documenting code, sharing code snippets, and documentation, I have been told that using dark fonts on light backgrounds is recommended for people being able to read the ...
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Should personal data be asked at the beginning or end of an online survey
Given a 10-step online survey (mostly yes/no radio buttons), where is it best to ask for the users' personal data e.g. name, age, contact details?
My intuition says putting it at the end will yield ...
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What is your UX strategy when your users want opposite things?
Getting clear user feedback is great. But what do you do with the feedback when different people, or groups of people, want different things?
I have encountered this situation a few times recently.
...
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21
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3
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2k
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Best empirical method(s) for determining how to name something?
I'm a UX/UI designer leading the redesign of a web application that serves a primarily technical audience (DevOps professionals).
A primary goal of our redesign is to make the UI more accessible to ...
- 331
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4
answers
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Simplifying the ui as a user gets more familiar with your app
Not long ago I read an article (probably on Smashing magazine or A List Apart, but possibly elsewhere) about gradually simplifying and changing the emphasis of a ui over time. e.g on a first visit the ...
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When (if ever) should links be opened in a new window?
I have seen a lot of discussion on this topic but it all seems to be opinion based without any research backing up the assumptions.
It seems that there are times that it is particularly relevant to ...
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What is the ROI of UI or UX design?
I was trying to find out if there have been studies on how much a bad UI or UX design affects sales on websites? I couldn't really find anything in my searches.
Also, does anyone know about any ...
user9533
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10
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Should usability testing of a competitor's website be a part of your usability testing routine?
I was reading up on best practices on usability testing for websites and a recommendation was that get your participants to do usability testing on your competitors website as well as that would help ...
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Apart from safety, has there been any research conducted, hopefully current, with respect to user-experience and right- vs left-hand traffic?
Background
The terms right-hand traffic and left-hand traffic refer to regulations requiring all bidirectional traffic, unless otherwise directed, to keep either to the right or the left side of ...
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11
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Is it ok to use arrows to indicate money movement in & out of an account?
I have seen numerous examples of banking applications that use arrows to indicate money in and out of an account. However the direction of the arrow is a bit problematic, specifically in which ...
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5
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When requesting a donation, is it better to have a prefilled button or enter their own value? [duplicate]
A non-profit organization is selling tickets to an event. I suggested they add an opportunity to make a tax-deductible donation line along with the ticket purchase, like:
2 Tickets .... $45
...
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18
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14
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Is user testing a luxury or a necessity?
I understand that you should be thinking of your users all the time but given the current climate where every pound counts, is user testing just for the richer companies? Should you discount your ...
Alan Tucker
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6
answers
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What is the best way to end a call between two parties (timer involved) in a non-disruptive way?
We are doing an app wherein one party (customer) can have a video conference with another party (consultant) in limited time (e.g. 15 minutes).
What is the best way to end the connection between two ...
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Accessibility: How to track peoples with disabilities on websites?
Is it possible (and How?) to track people with disabilities on websites? I want to know how much people on my website use a screen reader, use plugins for easier reading and surfing on websites, use a ...
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How valuable are user journeys?
The last time I mapped out a user journey was during a pitch process. The only reason I did a user journey was to demonstrate to the client how the user would get from point A to B without having to ...
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Most useful survey questions for user research?
In your experience, what are the most important questions to ask in a survey for a product redesign?
Direct interaction with users is prohibited by my organization, but I have been allowed to conduct ...
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A/B Testing Technique
My friend and I were having a discussion about different ways of A/B testing. His technique was to make a single small change (e.g. changing the colour of a button) and then perform A/B Testing to see ...
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The design and implementation of the purely theoretical "self destruct" button
I had an Adobe Flash instructor in college who told me a story about getting bored at work. He had some downtime and was looking for a way to pass the time. While looking at some Flash code, he ...
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What research methods can I use to create personas?
My experience with personas has been from creating personas with data that already exists usually provided by the marketing team based on their research.
How do you go about conducting research to ...
- 1,260
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6
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Metrics for measuring user engagement for web applications
Unlike business and e-commerce sites, web applications don't necessarily have an end-goal or target for users to achieve. What are some metrics that can be used to measure how 'engaged' users are with ...
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How do you handle not knowing what it's like to be the person using the softwares you need to design
I have a general question so I'll provide an example:
Let's say you were assigned to build a software which will be used on a daily basis as a professional tool, let's say a statistician's.
Now, you ...
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How to extract more insightful UX requirements from User
We do iterative releases, and thus I see a good number of user UI/UX requirements come in. Which is great so we can focus on the key areas.
Naturally these requests are in the format "The system ...
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What are significant UX KPIs for an enterprise product?
Most KPI lists I have found (like Google's HEART/GSM model) assume a free user - one that can show up to use your product, and then choose to stay or go based on how pleasant the experience is, and ...
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Do users care about https?
We were discussing the usage of https on our company website, at least in the checkout process. Since we are already using a Cloudflare business plan, I suggested running tests and turning on their ...
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4
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Number keyboard UX
Hello Folks.
I just wanted to understand what research results show why the number keyboard consists of letters which are not used. Why is this needed?
The number keyboard should have only numbers, ...
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7
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Alert colors are really user-friendly to color-blind users?
I have seen many alert boxes are differentiated using only colors, even bootstrap has given. Has this box been really user-friendly to color-blind users?
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What evidence is there that users lose interest after 7 seconds?
'7 seconds' is often trotted out as the maximum amount of time you get to impress someone when they land on your website. Where does this figure come from, and has the rule ever been proven?
Edit: ...
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5
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What ways to conduct user research quickly and cheaply are there?
Let's face it, in today's world - everything is moving fast and with approaches like agile, UX gets squeezed. It doesn't have to be this way and from what I hear many companies are using Sprint 0 ...
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3
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How can I get useful usability data from a focus group that are not made up of end-users?
After my company has recently been acquired, we have been allotted an hour of "usability testing" at an upcoming conference. The catch is, if we follow the template that has been put forth to us, it'...
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3
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Should I ask for demographic information in a survey at the end or beginning? [duplicate]
I'm conducting a survey, and will ask for demographic information, e.g., gender, age, level of education, frequency of computer use. Should I ask users for this information at the beginning of the ...
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Is there any research with respect to how font-weight affects readability?
Is there any research with respect to how font-weight affects readability?
Obviously, there is some relation there, but I'm struggling to make a decision based on any facts.
I created a jsFiddle ...
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13
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4
answers
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What to do when client can't afford user research?
I feel most experts would agree with me when I say "User research is king". You can't know how your users will react to a product until you ask them.
That said, some clients are on tighter budgets ...
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votes
2
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Are remote preference tests (A vs. B) always flawed because of learning effect?
Currently doing UX testing on low budget. We have prototypes in Figma and user tests in Maze.
Now one of the main goals is to compare two versions of a feature.
The problem?
All the remote testing ...
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How do users react to a browser request for geolocation?
Is there a study about a user's reaction to a browser request of a geolocation?
What is the percentage of acceptation?
In which case?
What triggers acceptance and what triggers denial?
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Floppy disk icon for "Save" [closed]
It's funny that we still use floppy disks icon for save operation association while floppies have long been outdated, unused and many computer users nowadays don't even know how floppy disks actually ...
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How to explain the difference between user research and user testing to stakeholders?
I recommended conducting user research, but my client considers research and testing to be the same concepts. I am not sure how to explain the difference between research and testing in layman's words....
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Should printed graphics of a domain start with www, uppercase/lowercase? How to make the user understand that it's a domain?
Consider a car used by a company which has "advertising" printed on it regarding the actual company.
How should domains be displayed on such a car? Is there any research regarding this? With a wide ...
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What is the difference between human factors and UX design?
I appreciate that this question might not have a well defined scope but i am hopping that providing a context might help. So consider the aviation industry ( often associated with Human factor) as an ...
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How to recruit user test participants?
Where do you find participants for user tests and interviews for persona building? Is it OK to recruit them via an existing web site for example? How much do you pay them?
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Is it possible for a web application to be *too* fast?
Note, I've seen: How fast is too fast?, and What to do when loading is TOO fast? so I want to clarify the non-duplicity: I'm not asking about the animations, but more or less about the application in ...
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How do you determine an appropriate number of personas? [duplicate]
I created 4 Personas for an online car reseller based on focus-group and analytics data. The head of sales pointed out that there are more user groups on our website.
I know that usually 3 personas ...
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How do you handle not being allowed to do stakeholder interviews?
I was recently hired for one of my first new projects and have been interviewing stakeholders. I got through the interviews with other people who work for the client, with no problems. However, the ...
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