Dana Chisnell

Tag: collecting data

  • Call centers as a source of data

    Usability testing is a fantastic source of data on which to make design decisions. You get to see what is frustrating to users and why, first hand. Of course you know this. There are other sources of data that you should be paying attention to, too. For example, observing training can be very revealing.  One of…

  • The essence of usability testing, in your pocket

    I’ve encountered a lot of user researchers and designers lately who say to me, “I can’t do all the testing there is to do. The developers are going to have to evaluate usability of the design themselves. But they’re not trained! I’m worried about how to give them enough skills to get good data.” What…

  • Crowd-sourced research: trusting a network of co-researchers

    Crowd-sourced research: trusting a network of co-researchers

    In the fall of 2012, I seized the opportunity to do some research I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Millions of users would be available and motivated to take part. But I needed to figure out how to do a very large study in a short time. By large, I’m talking about reviewing…

  • Just follow the script: Working with pro and proto-pro co-researchers

    She wrote to me to ask if she could give me some feedback about the protocol for a usability test. “Absolutely,” I emailed back, “I’d love that.” By this point, we’d had 20 sessions with individual users, conducted by 5 different researchers. Contrary to what I’d said, I was not in love with the idea of getting…

  • Wilder than testing in the wild: usability testing by flash mob

    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…

  • Usability testing is HOT

    For many of us, usability testing is a necessary evil. For others, it’s too much work, or it’s too disruptive to the development process. As you might expect, I have issues with all that. It’s unfortunate that some teams don’t see the value in observing people use their designs. Done well, it can be an…

  • Researcher as director: scripts and stage direction

    For most teams, the moderator of user research sessions is the main researcher. Depending on the comfort level of the team, the moderator might be a different person from session to session in the same study. (I often will moderate the first few sessions of a study and then hand the moderating over to the…

  • Overcoming fear of moderating UX research sessions

    It always happens: Someone asks me about screwing up as an amateur facilitator/moderator for user research and usability testing sessions. This time, I had just given a pep talk to a bunch of user experience professionals about sharing responsibility with the whole team for doing research. “But what if the (amateur) designer does a bad…

  • Easier data gathering: Techniques of the pros

    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…

  • What counts: Measuring the effectiveness of your design

    Let’s say you’re looking at these behaviors in your usability test: Where do participants start the task? How easily do participants find the right form? How many wrong turns do they take on the way? Where in the navigation do they make wrong turns? How easily and successfully do they recognize the form they need…