Difference between revisions of "Category:User Research"

• Complete Beginner's Guide to UX Research by UX Booth
• Questions to ask for any UX Project by Steve "Doc" Baty outlines the basic elements of "who are we building for and why" at a level that any business organization should be able to answer before proceeding.

Card Sorts

• Introduction to Card Sorting by Emma Chittenden on https://webwhisperer.uk

Competitive Analysis

• Competitive Analysis Example by Amelia Bauerly on her website
• Competitive Analysis: Understanding the Market Context by Jason Withrow on Boxes and Arrows
• Essential Ingredients for Every Competitive Analysis by Chandan Mishra on UX Collective
• Top Things to Know About UX Competitive Analysis by Kim Purcell on UX Planet
• Web Design Museum shows screenshots of sites from the 1990s through mid-2000s so that you can go back and see what things were like in the early web. Useful for explaining "no really we've always done it this way" -- or finding out you were wrong about that...

Contextual Inquiry

• Contextual Inquiry by 18F

Empathy Mapping

• Updated Empathy Map Canvas by Dave Gray

Interviewing

• The Beginner's Guide to Contextual Interviewing by User Focus

Journey Maps

• Journey Maps

Legal things to keep in mind

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and User Research by Steph Troeth and Erica Kucharczyk for Design Research Matters.

• What user researchers ought to know about informed consent by David Travis on Medium

Personas

User Personas

User personas are a way to describe the users of a system. Personas and the role of design documentation by Andrew Hinton goes into detail about the intent of personas as a method and deliverable, and some of the pitfalls that can result when we treat the persona documentation as more important than the persona creation.

Design Personas

Design Personas are similar to User Personas in that they describe attitudes, beliefs, and personality. They're different because the persona being described is not a person, but rather the product being designed. In Designing for Emotion Aaron Walter describes the following fields for Design Personas:

• Brand name - the company or service
• Overview - what makes it unique?
• Personality Image - an image of a person who embodies the traits you wish to include in your grand
• Brand Traits - 5-7 traits you want your product to have, and at least one you want to avoid
• Personality Map - a map on an X/Y axis of your brand - friendly to unfriendly, and submissive to dominant
• Voice - if your brand could talk, what would it say? how would it speak?
• Copy Examples - pretty much what it says on the tin
• Visual Lexicon - overview of the colors, typography, and visual style that conveys your brand's personality
• Engagement Methods - the emotional engagement methods used to support the design persona and create a memorable experience

Additional Resources

• Personas and the Role of Design Documentation by Andrew Hinton at Boxes and Arrows
• Welcome to our startup where everyone is 23 years old because we believe old people are visually displeasing and out of ideas by Bob Vulfov at McSweeney's
• A guide to creating personas by Ben Ralph
• Back to Basics: Differentiating Personas by anne gibson at The Pastry Box
• Proper use of personas by anne gibson at Perpendicular Angel Design

Surveys

• How to estimate the length of a survey by Versta Research helps you break down how long a survey will take someone to complete

Usability Testing

• A fundamental mind shift for usability testing by Jared Spool argues that the "you only need 5-8 test subjects" axiom is a myth, and that proactively researching your users provides better results
• Why we do moderated, remote, usability testing by Joanna Briggs at Simply Accessible - covers the benefits of remote usability testing for accessibility.
• How to get started with user testing at your company by Lee Munroe at Invision's blog. (NOTE: we're not testing the users, we're testing the usability. I hate the phrase user testing.)
• The Art of Guerrilla Usability Testing by David Peter Simon at UX Booth
• The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a "quick and dirty" survey technique to find out whether an audience thinks a particular thing is usable or unusable. By Usability.gov
• 70+ Great User Testing Questions To Ask Before, During, & After User Tests by Lizzy Burnam at User Interviews

User Scenarios

• User Scenarios by 18f