Dana Chisnell

Tag: tips

  • What to do with the data: Moving from observations to design direction

      This article was originally published on December 7, 2009.    What is data but observation? Observations are what was seen and what was heard. As teams work on early designs, the data is often about obvious design flaws and higher order behaviors, and not necessarily tallying details. In this article, let’s talk about tools…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Popping the big question(s): How well? How easily? How valuable?

    When teams decide to do usability testing on a design, it is often because there’s some design challenge to overcome. Something isn’t working. Or, there’s disagreement among team members about how to implement a feature or a function. Or, the team is trying something risky. Going to the users is a good answer. Otherwise, even…

  • Getting ready for sessions: Don’t forget…

    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…

  • Moderating tips and techniques

    Getting the right information from the participant can be a difficult. As the moderator, you must attend to many things besides what the participant doing and saying. Focusing on a few specific behaviors of your own will help you have a better test. Focus your attention on what’s happening now Quickly build rapport with the…

  • Why create a test design?

    I get a lot of clients who are in a hurry. They get to a point in their product cycle that they’re supposed to have done some usability activity to exit the development phase they are in and now find they have to scramble to pull it together. How long can it take to arrange…