An Introduction to Applied User Research

The GOAL of user research is to drive successful Decision Making

User Research Can:

• Identify gaps in knowledge
• Inform strategic goals
• Uncover how people work
• Identify unknown needs

User Research CANNOT:

• Guarantee whether a product will be successful
• Tell you whether people will use the product
• Know all the answers
• Tell you what question to ask

What Decision Will You Inform?

Ethnographic Studies

Ethnographic Studies

• Watch people work
• Provides insight into the workflow and environment
• Informs Personas, User Journeys
• Answers questions about opportunity and discovery

Interviews

Interviews

• Guided conversation with users
• Clarifies understanding of products, motivations, workflows
• Informs Personas, User Journeys, Acceptance Criteria
• Answers questions about perception, confirms/denies understanding

Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry

• Interview and observation on a narrow area of interest
• Clarifies understanding of products, motivations, workflows, controlling for self-report
• Informs User Journeys, Acceptance Criteria
• Answers questions about workflow, confirms/denies understanding

Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysis

• Looks at how competitors use interactive elements, IA, and/or visual cues
• Provide insight into comparatively desirable and undesirable interactions
• Produces a list of positive and negative interactions in competing product and recommendation on what to use/not use
• Answers questions about relative workflow choices, supported contexts

Card Sort

Card Sort

• Users group potential navigational elements to provide buckets of functionality
• Provide insight into language and workflow of target users
• Recommends how to structure navigational elements
• Answers questions about language and natural groupings, by persona and role

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation

• Evaluation of workflows using established usability heuristics
• Identifies common usability issues in an interface
• Answers questions about the usability of the interface

Usability Heuristics

• Visibility of system status
• Match between system and real world
• User control and freedom (undo/redo, exits)
• Consistency and standards
• Error prevention
• Recognition over recall
• Flexibility and efficiency of use (accelerators)
• Minimalist design
• Diagnosis and recovery from errors

Pluralistic Walkthrough

Pluralistic Walkthrough

• In person or remote walkthroughs of a paper prototype with a representative user to test ideas and workflows
• Provide insight into proposed workflows to determine applicability and desirability as well as match to context
• Validated acceptance criteria, early iteration feedback
• Answer questions about workflow match, desirability

Cognitive Walkthrough

Cognitive Walkthrough

• Expert walk throughs of hypothetical user tasks. The context/intent of the product is taken into account.
• Provides high-level feedback on overall navigation, content of the product
• Answers questions about completeness, edge case handling, match to workflow

Rapid Iterative Testing

Rapid Iterative Testing

• A designer, researcher, and user conduct discrete usability sessions together. Between sessions, designers incorporate feedback from previous sessions.
• Provides fast feedback on discrete features and workflows
• Answers questions about targeted areas in the interface

Usability Testing

Usability Testing

• A test conducted to examine whether users can accomplish a given set of tasks with the product.
• Provides data on whether a task can be accomplished, how long the task takes, number of errors and assists encountered as well as recommended fixes
• Answers questions about targeted areas in the interface

A/B Testing

A/B Testing

• Compares two versions of the same interface for the same task and determines which is easier/more desirable. Requires significant number of participants to be valid.
• Provides data on the relative performance of two different designs that vary in small, quantifiable ways.
• Answers questions about specific areas of the interface

User Research is AWESOME!