Topics
Topics

Can AI Detect Usability Problems Like Researchers?
AI can “watch” videos. It can even generate a list of problems. In some cases, these problem lists seem to be reasonably consistent (reliable). But consistency is not accuracy. Are these real problems or just sophisticated AI slop generated consistently by autocorrect for video? How can we know? One way to find out is to

How Reliable Is AI at Finding UI Problems?
It looks like AI can “watch” videos. And if AI can watch videos, it can likely extract UI problems. That suggests it has the potential to support UX research. So maybe AI can “watch” a video and detect some problems. But if you run the same video through AI multiple times, do you get the

Can AI Detect Usability Problems?
You may have become numb to the overhyped headlines about AI. But it’d be wrong to dismiss the impact AI can have on our industry, not only because of job displacement, but also of helping us do our jobs more effectively (hopefully). To separate the hype and hysteria, we at MeasuringU think about AI’s impact

A Review of Experiments with Synthetic Users
One of the hardest parts of conducting user and market research is recruiting participants. It takes time, costs money, and on top of that, there are no-shows and fraudsters. Now imagine being able to conduct UX research without the hassle of recruiting the “U.” Enter the idea of AI-generated synthetic users that offer the promise

Credible vs. Confidence Intervals: Different Meanings but Similar Decisions
We’ve written a lot about confidence intervals for the last two decades. We especially encourage them for small sample studies. Some of you even bought into our recommendation and use them yourselves (a decision we continue to support). But maybe you’ve heard about Bayesian credible intervals and wonder if you should be using them instead.

Bayes’ Law in UX Research:
The Power and Perils of Priors
“That confirms what I expected.” The same data, two different conclusions. A 90% completion rate from 20 participants on a usability test of a checkout flow. Is that completion rate better than the historical average of 78%? One researcher says yes, definitely. Another says no, it’s in line with the historical average. Both are using

How to Use Banner Tables to Present Survey Results
Surveys are a common way to measure attitudes, behaviors, and intentions related to products and services. But large surveys can include dozens of questions and multiple demographic segments, which can mean hundreds of potential comparisons. How do you present all those results in a way stakeholders can quickly scan? You can use a slide deck

Assistant, Analyst, and User:
How We’re Examining AI in UX
It seems like AI is almost everywhere. For many people, it is. From the moment we wake up, AI increasingly shapes our daily experiences. Music playlists are generated automatically. Our computers prompt us to use AI assistants. Internet searches are now often preceded by AI-generated summaries. Call a doctor’s office after hours. and an AI

Bayes’ Law in UX Research:
From Urns to Users
“Follow the data. Update your beliefs.” We like the idea of applying iterative Bayesian thinking to how we test hypotheses and conduct UX research. The idea is simple, but modern Bayesian math can be opaque and hard to understand. We have questions about how well Bayesian analysis works relative to frequentist analysis. We are also

Why You Should Not Compute Medians for Individual Rating Scales
Say you collect rating scale data from dozens of users across ten apps. To analyze the data, you compute medians because you learned that rating scale data isn’t interval or ratio data. The medians of all ten apps end up the same. They’re all 4! If you rely on the medians, you’d conclude the apps

An Intro to Bayesian Thinking for UX Research:
Updating Beliefs with Data
“That design will never work.” You may have had that thought before you even ran your first participant in a usability test. If you’ve seen enough users struggle and conducted enough usability tests, then you probably have some idea about how well or poorly a task attempt may go for prototypes or even commercially available

An Introduction to Effect Sizes
The completion rate jumped from 20% to 80%. That’s a large effect size. If it had gone from 20% to 21%? Much smaller effect. It’s easy to get caught up in the mechanics of significance testing and p-values. But even before those tools existed, researchers were measuring effect sizes. Effect sizes remain fundamental to understanding