A common mistake people make when they’re new to conducting usability tests is taking verbatim notes. Note taking for summative tests can be pretty straightforward. For those you should have benchmark data that you’re comparing against or at least clear success criteria. In that case, data collecting could (and probably should) be done mostly by the … Continue reading Data collecting: Tips and tricks for taking notes
You’ve actually been making design decisions your entire life. In this course, you’ll gain skills and learn techniques for using design consciously to define problem spaces and to carry out your intent. This highly interactive field course presents processes and practices for applying design to digital government and policy. The activities and assignments in this … Continue reading Human Centered Government Service Delivery
In an ideal world, we’d have one person moderating a user research session and at least one other person taking notes or logging data. In practice it often just doesn’t work out that way. The more people I talk to who are doing user research, the more often I hear from experienced people that they’re … Continue reading Easier data gathering: Techniques of the pros
As I have said before, taking notes is rife with danger. It’s so tempting to just write down everything that happens. But you probably can’t deal with all that data. First, it’s just too much. Second, it’s not organized. Let’s look at an example research question: Do people make more errors on one version of … Continue reading Making it easy to collect the data you want to collect
(This article was originally published on May 30, 2008. This is a refresh.) Research that you do alone ends up in only your head. No matter how good the report, slide deck, or highlights video, not all the knowledge gets transferred to your teammates. This isn’t your fault. It just is. So what … Continue reading Observers are your friends
I’ve seen it dozens of times. The team meets after observing people use their design, and they’re excited and energized by what they saw and heard during the sessions. They’re all charged up about fixing the design. Everyone comes in with ideas, certain they have the right solution to the remedy frustrations users had. Then … Continue reading Ending the opinion wars: fast, collaborative design direction
It was a spectacularly beautiful Saturday in San Francisco. Exactly the perfect day to do some field usability testing. But this was no ordinary field usability test. Sure, there’d been plenty of planning and organizing ahead of time. And there would be data analysis afterward. What made this test different from most usability tests? 16 … Continue reading Wilder than testing in the wild: usability testing by flash mob
There are some brilliant questions on Quora. This morning, I was prompted to answer one about recruiting. The question asker asked, How do I recruit prospective customers to shadow as a part of a user-centered design approach? The asker expanded, thusly: I’m interested in shadowing prospective customers in order to better understand how my tool … Continue reading Bonus research: Do the recruiting yourself
One of my favorite radio programs (though I listen to it as a podcast) is Radiolab, “ a show about science,” which is a production of WNYC hosted by Robert Krulwich and Jad Abmurad and distributed by NPR. This show contemplates lots of interesting things from reason versus logic in decision making to laughter to … Continue reading Retrospective review and memory
There are a bunch of things to do to get ready for any test besides designing the test and recruiting participants. make sure you know the design well enough to know what should happen as the participant uses it copy any materials you need for taking notes copy of all the forms and questionnaires for … Continue reading Getting ready for sessions: Don’t forget…