Bite-Sized UX Research

Regardless of the cause for your company’s resource crunch, focus on getting small wins as often as possible throughout your involvement in a project. This is a fairly common piece of advice that crops up time and time again, but it’s very much worth repeating. And it applies just as readily to both situations where time is short and those when there’s just not enough of you to go around.

Baty, Steve. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>Research>Methods

Constructing a User Experience: The Cost-Benefits Compass

A common frustration among UX professionals who are employed in the software development industry is the perception that executive-level management gives lip service to user experience rather than supporting specific UX activities by allocating sufficient resources for them.

Werner, Ben. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>Methods

When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods

Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>User Experience>Usability>Methods

Design Research Methods for Experience Design

There is a trend among some in the UX community to take the U out of UX and refer to our discipline simply as experience design. One reason for this change in terminology is that it lets us talk about a specific target audience in terms that resonate with business stakeholders more than the generic term user—for example, customer experience, patient experience, or member experience. The other reason for using the term experience design rather than user experience design is that it recognizes the fact that most customer interactions are multifaceted and complex and include all aspects of a customer’s interaction with a company or other organizational entity, including its people, services, and products.

Hawley, Michael. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Experience>Research>Methods

Integrating Prototyping Into Your Design Process

Prototyping is a big deal right now. We get wrapped up in mailing list threads, new tools are released at an astonishing pace, books are being published, and articles show up on Boxes & Arrows. Clients are even asking for prototypes. But here’s the thing… prototyping is not a silver bullet. There is no one right way to do it. However, prototyping is a high silver content bullet. When aimed well, a prototype can answer design questions and communicate design ideas. In this article, I talk about the dimensions of prototype fidelity and how you can use them to choose the most effective prototyping method for the questions you need answered.

Beecher, Frederick. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>User Experience>Prototyping>Methods