Using Multiple Data Sources and Insights to Aid Design
Studying how people use software is not a trivial task. UX practitioners have their own preferred techniques: usability studies, ethnography, or even CPM-GOMS. However, most of the time, people tend to use one or two techniques, depending on time, knowledge, budget, etc.But the best way to grasp this is through the combination of several techniques. This article at inspireUX delves into this problem, through the definition of a framework to help practitioners selecting appropriate approaches. Sometimes, adding just one more cost-friendly technique will deeply broaden the spectrum of insights that one can grasp – which takes us to our second post of the week.
Creative Ways to Use Unmoderated User Research
Doing large usability tests, covering different user profiles, is one of the best ways of understanding how usable a software is. But the price and time tags for such studies limits their application more often than not.A recurring proposal, and once again stressed on this article at UXmatters, is to complement usability tests with a low-cost alternative, unmoderated user research. Putting users in their own context, interacting with the software for long periods of time, is a key aspect of this kind of studies. Gathering log data, diaries, etc., complement the technique, and allow for a bigger picture on how people use the software's UI.
Complementarly, a blog post at UX Magazine discusses how to apply remote user research effectively.
Card sorting is dead- long live card sorting
Oh boy, this title could surely raise flame wars between UX practitioners. But rest assured – spoiler alert – at the end of this article at cimex, it is mentioned that Card sorting is not dead, far from it.Once again, and keeping up with the spirit of this week's Chapter, the authors stress the fact that card sorting, by itself, most probably won't generate enough useful information from users, and that the time taken for post-it analysis might not be worth the effort. But they do say that it's yet another technique in the UX belt that, complemented with other techniques (e.g., for already deployed Web sites, Web analytics is a paramount helper), provide a better insight on the results from card sorting sessions.
Opinions vs. Data
Final post for this week. And, once again, talking about the same subject: having a one-sided view of UX analysis can lead to misleading (no pun intended) assumptions.This article at ignore the code discusses how preconceived ideas can be incredibly wrong. A short discussion about Gmail's latest UI changes that introduce a new, awkward, UI element – a hybrid between a checkbox and a dropdown list – despite how strange it might appear, has usability data backing its effectiveness by a broad range of users. The quantitative beat the qualitative.
that's it for now. next week I'll definitely have more to share! meanwhile, if you haven't read previous posts, or would like to re-read them here are the links for all chapters: III II I
(this is part of an experiment on posting some links I found around the Web centred on UX topics. most of them come from my shared feed of UX blogs. thanks for reading this post!)
