#24381
A Bright Idea: Web-Based Surveys
If you’re looking for a quick, simple, and cost-efficient way to survey your members, you may want to try a Web-based survey service such as Zoomerang. Zoomerang offers users the ability to create and design their own surveys, send the surveys to targeted groups, and download the results, which Zoomerang tabulates.
McEwen, Kathryn. Tieline (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys
#28355
Method acting can take your personas from the page to the stage. Think beyond traditional practice to give emotional life to your personas.
Fugaz, Zef. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
#21274
Bringing Your Personas to Life in Real Life
The way you communicate the personas and present your deliverables is key to ensuring consistency of vision. Without that consistency, you'll spend far too much time arguing with your colleagues about who your users are rather than how to meet their needs.
Freydenson, Elan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
#25931
Building Effective Customer Surveys
Well-designed customer surveys can yield valuable information for your business. Unfortunately, though, a poorly worded survey can set you marching off in exactly the wrong direction. Below are some tips on designing surveys to get reliable, useful data.
#19916
Building Usability in from the Beginning: Analyzing Users and Their Tasks 
In this interactive session, attendees will practice their skills in interviewing users, creating task scenarios from the users’ perspective, and turning the task scenarios into designs for information products.
Hackos, JoAnn T. and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Usability>Methods
#24755
Card Sorting Tools: Final Summary
A summary of how IBM's USort/EzCalc and CardZort worked for results entry and analysis.
Maurer, Donna. DonnaM (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting
#22482
Card Sorting: A Definitive Guide
Card sorting is a simple user-centered technique for obtaining insight into the structure of a site. But is it really so simple? This definitive guide to card sorting includes detailed instructions on how to execute and analyze a sort, plus helpful hints to improve your sorts. It is the first in a series of articles about card sorting.
Maurer, Donna and Todd Warfel. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting
#28271
Card Sorting: An Inexpensive and Practical Usability Technique 
Card sorting is often inexpensive, quick, and easy. Learn when to use this method and how to perform a card sort of your own within your company.
Kaufman, Joshua. Intercom (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting
#24468
Card Sorting: How Many Users to Test
Testing ever-more users in card sorting has diminishing returns, but you should still use three times more participants than you would in traditional usability tests.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting
#29928
Card Sorting: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
Card sorting is a simple and effective method with which most of us are familiar. There are already some excellent resources on how to run a card sort and why you should do card sorting. This article, on the other hand, is a frank discussion of the lessons I've learned from running numerous card sorts over the years. By sharing these lessons learned along the way, I hope to enable others to dodge similar potholes when they venture down the card sorting path.
Ng, Sam. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting
#21279
Card-Based Classification Evaluation
We hear and talk a lot about card sorting in various forms, and how it can be used as input on a hierarchy or classification system (or a taxonomy, if you like more technical words). We hear that we should test our hierarchies, but we don’t talk about how.
Maurer, Donna. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting
#29473
Caution: Stereotypes Under Construction
Words of warning about the creation of personas and the practice of user profiling. Even if one calls it the development of an archetype or ideal type, it is still a stereotype.
Triplett, Janea. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
#20042
In het boek zijn vanaf pagina 375 in appendix A een aantal checklists opgenomen die kunnen dienen als controle bij het ontwerp van uw eigen gebruikersvriendelijke pagina's. U kunt deze checklists hier downloaden.
van Rijswijk, Oskar. HandboekUsability.nl. (Dutch) Resources>Usability>Methods>Forms
#28102
Contrasts the unique aspects of expert reviews and usability testing. The usability goals they address are different. Know when to use which one, and when to use both.
Straub, Kathleen. Usability Professionals Association (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods>Testing
#25068
Once in a while a client will tilt their head and look at me with one of those smiles. “You want to do expert review and then also usability testing?” they say. “Is this one of those consulting tricks? Why would I need to do both?” It’s a fair question. To the casual observer, usability testing and expert review probably look very similar.
Straub, Kathleen. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods
#30436
Clustering for Usability Participant Selection 
User satisfaction and usefulness are measured using usability studies that involve real customers. Given the nature of software development and delivery, having to conduct usability studies can become a costly expense in the overall budget. A major part of this expense is the participant costs. Under this condition, it is desirable to reduce the number of participants without sacrificing the quality of the experiment. If a company could use a smaller participant pool and get the same results as the entire pool; this would result in significant savings. Given a participant pool of size N, is there a subset of N that would yield the same results as the entire population? This research addresses this question using a data-mining clustering tool called Applications Quest.
Gilbert, Juan E., Andrea Williams, and Cheryl D. Seals. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>Usability>Testing>Methods
#18626
Cognitive walkthrough is a review technique where expert evaluators construct task scenarios from a specification or early prototype and then role play the part of a user working with that interface--'walking through' the interface. They act as if the interface was actually built and they (in the role of a typical user) was working through the tasks. Each step the user would take is scrutinized: impasses where the interface blocks the 'user' from completing the task indicate that the interface is missing something. Convoluted, circuitous paths through function sequences indicate that the interface needs a new function that simplifies the task and collapses the function sequence.
#30405
The habit of collecting, analyzing, designing, and innovating in this fashion is making me a more systematic and disciplined web designer. Through analyzing the best design patterns and techniques used by today's web design community, I'm able to more critically assess my own designs, and create new solutions to common interface challenges.
Smith, Matthew. Digital Web Magazine (2007). Design>Web Design>Methods
#30691
A Column Sponsored by the ABC Teaching Committee 
If you asked your students whether they'd rather listen to a lecture, take notes from PowerPoint slides, or work with classmates on a project, most would probably opt for the project. Although definitions vary, active learning strategies are classroom techniques that engage students with the subject they're studying by discussing it, writing about it, applying it in some meaningful context, or otherwise working it into the fabric of their own experience and prior knowledge. They become active creators of knowledge rather than passive recipients of information.
Worley, Rebecca B. Business Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Education>Methods
#14514
Complexities Of Usability Testing
Usability testing has proven itself in improving product usability, but actually planning, doing testing, and interpreting results are not always straightforward. Interpretation of the results of usability testing, changes to improves usability, and general inferences to be drawn from specific tests are extremely difficult to make with accuracy. After working through the practicalities and politics of usability testing itself you must then draw conclusions and support them People who have done a lot of testing will find these problems familiar.
Ridgway, Lenore S. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>Usability>Methods>Testing
#28671
Though many business strategies and publications continue to trumpet the power of simplicity in the design of digital products, for lots of companies and product teams, simplicity doesn't come easy.
Wroblewski, Luke. UXmatters (2006). Design>Usability>Methods>Minimalism
#20291
Conducting Mail, Telephone, and Online Surveys: 1998
While surveys appear surprisingly easy to plan and conduct, they are fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. That said, technical communicators can use surveys as a tool to enhance their understanding of audiences, assess the effectiveness of their communication products, and determine the value of technical communications to their company--if they follow wellestablished social science and communication science methodologies. This workshop will provide you with the foundations you need for developing, conducting, and managing surveys; analyzing the data, interpreting surveys and reporting your results.
Zimmerman, Donald E. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys
#20750
Conducting Mail, Telephone, and Online Surveys: 1999
While surveys appear surprisingly easy to plan and conduct, they are fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. That said, technical communicators can use surveys as a tool to enhance their understanding of audiences, assess the effectiveness of their communication products, and determine the value of technical communication to their company--if they follow well-established social science and communication science methodologies. This workshop will provide you with the foundations you need for developing, conducting, and managing surveys; analyzing the data, interpreting surveys and reporting your results.
Zimmerman, Donald E. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys
#14401
Conducting Surveys Over the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web presents a new medium for conducting user surveys. Using this new medium requires that survey designers pay attention not only to the time honored rules for survey construction and administration, but to new rules stemming from the new web-based technology. This paper will present suggestions and ideas for conducting web-based surveys that are based on actual survey experiences.
Gould, Emilie W., Mark Gurevich and Peter D. Pagerey. STC Proceedings (1998). Presentations>Usability>Methods
#29464
Conflict Styles and Technical Communicators
More than most people, technical communicators are aware that if communication is not effective, conflicts can arise. Find out more about the Thomas-Kilmann conflict mode instrument (TKI) and how to identify your predominant conflict style.
Glick-Smith, Judith L. Intercom (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Methods
