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
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
Contextual Inquiry
Empathy Mapping
Interviewing
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.
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
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