Crafting a User Research Plan

Every piece of user research is part of an ongoing research program, even if that program is informal. However, making a program formal provides a number of advantages: It gives you a set of goals, a schedule that stretches limited user-research resources, and results when they’re needed most. It also helps you avoid unnecessary, redundant, or hurried research.

Kuniavsky, Mike. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods

Cultural Considerations and Applicability of Western Usability Guidelines in the Design of Chinese E-commerce Websites

The key to the success of e-businesses is to understand what entices people to buy things online and to provide them with the means to carry out these shopping transactions. E-business Web page designers must also have a sound understanding of the consumer behaviors in the targeted markets. Research to understand the psychology and expectations of online shoppers will not only help consumers and e-businesses but also the makers of the equipment and telecommunication infrastructure which supports these businesses. This paper discusses some of the issues in our research to i) understand what motivates Chinese consumers to buy online and ii) whether the Web usability guidelines derived in the West are appropriate for Chinese consumers.

Tham, Ming-Po, Guomei Zhou and Xiaolan Fu. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Usability>Localization>E Commerce

Culture in the Further Development of Universal Design

By now most readers of Design for All India have a healthy grasp of Universal Design. Many, perhaps most, have become highly competent in its application as is evident from the articles appearing in past volumes and today. Beyond technical mastery of the Seven Principles, knowledge of best-of-breed solutions, and familiarity with allied concepts such as Visitability, Adaptive Technology, or anthropometrics there is a cultural component to this design approach that is unquantifiably – but undeniably – transforming Universal Design. By systematically and thoroughly examining this cultural component in the coming decade we will discover the true nature of Universal Design to be social sustainability.

Rains, Scott. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Usability>Cultural Theory>Universal Usability

Default Thinking: Why Consumer Products Fail

Short Message Service (SMS), or texting, is a typical killer application. It is not only popular but profitable, bringing in significant revenue to network operators. There is even a strong after market selling RingTones, info alerts and crude interactive games. A great technological irony is that such a successful product is so under appreciated. For all of the frenzied SMS marketing discussion, the product has hardly changed over the last few years. Given its success, you would think the industry would put more effort into understanding the value SMS offers to consumers and then produce new services that extend this value.

Jenson, Scott. uiGarden (2005). Design>Usability>User Centered Design

Design for Emotion: Ready for the Next Decade?

The experience profile of a product can be described in terms of these experiential components. Once such an experience profile has been properly defined, it must be translated in all product properties the designer can affect. It has an effect on the sensorial aspects of the product, but also on the way it functions, it affects the way people operate the product and even the way the product is marketed. In sum, the profile has an impact on all aspects that together shape the human-product interaction.

Hekkert, Paul and Pieter Desmet. uiGarden (2007). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design>User Experience

Design for People with Disabilities in Japan

Design for people with disabilities sometimes works fine. However, without involving everyone, i.e., unless it will benefit everyone in the society, such design will remain as a kind of orphan technology and will eventually fail to be applied widely. The direction of design therefore should be universal/inclusive.

Kose, Satoshi. uiGarden (2008). Design>Accessibility>Regional>Japan

Design for the Dream Economy

After the eras of the Commodity Economy, the Manufacturing Economy, the Service Economy and the Information Economy, we have now entered the era of the Dream Economy. The key to success in the Dream Economy is an in-depth and holistic understanding of people. It's not only about meeting people's practical needs, but also about meeting their aspirations and providing a positive emotional experience.

Jordan, Pat. uiGarden (2007). Design>User Centered Design>User Experience

Design, Technology and Their Roles in Social Changes

Christina Li interviewd Nico Macdonald on aspects of design, technology and society. Nico offered his insights from his own experience of working in political compaign and design consultancies.

Li, Christina. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Technology>Design

Designing Usable Forms: The Three-Layer Model of the Form

Why do people say 'I’m not good with forms' or 'I don’t like forms' when a form is only a piece of paper, or a screen, with some printing on it? There must be something special about forms that inspires these comments.

Jarrett, Caroline. uiGarden (2005). Design>Document Design>Forms

Developing Your Site for Performance, Part I: 20 Tips for Client-Side Code Optimization

This three-part article outlines a common sense, cost-effective approach to Web site acceleration according to the two simple laws of Web performance: send as little data as possible; send it as infrequently as possible.

Powell, Thomas A. and Joe Lima. uiGarden (2004). Articles>Web Design>HTML

Developing Your Site for Performance, Part II: Optimal Cache Control

Focuses primarily on sending that data as infrequently as possible by means of better utilization of caching on the Web. Once you start to design your sites with an eye towards effective caching control, you will dramatically reduce page load times for your users - particularly your most loyal, repeat visitors - as well as lower your overall bandwidth consumption and free up your server resources.

Powell, Thomas A. and Joe Lima. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Dimensions of Usability: Defining the Conversation, Driving the Process

Have you ever wondered if your colleagues or clients really understand usability? Too often, standards or guidelines substitute for really engaging our business, technical and design colleagues in a discussion of what usability means. By looking at usability from five dimensions, we can create a consensus around usability goals and use that definition to provide the basis for planning user centered design activities.

Quesenbery, Whitney. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

Early and Often: How to Avoid the Design Revision Death Spiral

One lesson we've learned over the past several years here at Cooper is that on the vast majority of our projects, intimate client collaboration is a critical ingredient for success. This is a lesson that we have sometimes learned the hard way; collaboration can be messy, unpredictable and has often forced us to compromise what we thought was a supremely clear and elegant vision.

Cronin, Dave. uiGarden (2007). Design>Web Design>Redesign>Collaboration

Easy, Intuitive and Metaphor, and Other Meaningless Words

A vital skill for designers is to notice fine detail in the other designs which form part of the technological ecosystem in which their design will live. For example, on Mac OS there are now two different styles of text entry fields for forms. One has square corners, and is used for general data entry. The other has rounded ends, and is used for entering searches. I was recently outraged to find a piece of software which used the rounded style for data entry. This kind of design vandalism muddies the rules which users would otherwise learn, and devalues all software on the platform.

Bagnall, Peter. uiGarden (2007). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction

Emotional Factors for Mobile Business Success

How do emotion, meaning and identity shape the design and rapid adoption of mobile devices and services? China is a wonderful place to study this topic.

Braiterman, Jared and Yue Yu. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Emotions>China

Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines

'Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.' This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites. But...

Spool, Jared M. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Standards>Web Design

Evolving User Interface Standards

Every software development team either hires a UI specialist or consults an expert to design the next best killer application. As more and more users log onto the net, user base tends to grow and new technologies evolve, web developers and designers are left with very little time to cope up with new techniques in user interface. Thus a new wave of User Interface issues has occurred in the software development life cycle.

Sarjapur, Harsha. uiGarden (2006). Design>User Interface>Standards

Experience-Enabling Design: An Approach to ELearning Design (I)

This paper draws inspiration from diverse media to understand what constitutes experience. In doing so, it seeks directions for building experience into design of elearning products.

Krishnan, L. Ravi and Venkatesh Rajamanickam. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Experience-Enabling Design: An Approach to ELearning Design (II)

Layout decisions like the course structure, navigation, media, etc., affect the experience of the product. For a learner, the ease and intuitive way of getting in, moving around and exiting are the experience factors. How do we bridge this gap between layout and experience?

Krishnan, L. Ravi and Venkatesh Rajamanickam. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Ferraris and Fiestas

Ferrari or Fiesta, which do you prefer if price is not a consideration? What does go through our minds as we make such comparisons actually? Russell Beale presents us with his thoughts in user-centred design.

Beale, Russell. uiGarden (2005). Articles>User Centered Design

Five Rules for Communication between Machines and People

The Human Research Institute has conducted extensive studies of the proper form of Machine-Human Interaction (MHI). Most of our work has been summarized in our technical report series and was presented at the last global MHI symposium. This report summarizes the key findings in nontechnical language, intended for wider distribution than just the specialized designer machines.

Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Research

Fonts, Image, Interface Layout Solution under High Resolution

For an application to work well under a high resolution display environment, there are four major elements to consider: Text, Fonts, Image (Picture, Icon and Mouse Cursors), and Layout.

Liu, Steven. uiGarden (2006). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction

Four Countries, Four Futures: Tom Klinkowstein's Horizon Projects Workshops

For the past year and half, Tom Klinkowstein has conducted workshops, called Horizon Projects, with design students in four countries using a methodology adapted from John Anderson, a NASA scientist. The workshops lasted from 1/2 a day in New York, to two days in Istanbul, Turkey, three days In Shanghai, China and five days in Mumbai, India.

Klinkowstein, Tom. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Case Studies

Fun Systematically

This position paper looks at two examples where the study of fun is at very least systematic, and quite possibly scientific. In the first, Virtual Crackers, a systematic process of 'deconstructing experience'; identifies the individual aspects of an experience (pulling crackers), which are then used to reconstruct a new experience in a new medium (the web).

Dix, Alan. uiGarden (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Human Computer Interaction

The Gap Between 25 Seconds and 5 Seconds

If designers took the perspective of users in the design of air conditioners, perhaps the wait for the cold air would not have been 25 seconds, unless you really think that 25 seconds of waiting time is fun for users.

Jiong, Zhou. uiGarden (2007). Articles>User Interface>User Experience