Topics
Topics
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
Sample Sizes for Comparing UX-Lite Scores
The UX-Lite® is a relatively new metric, but it is versatile, short, and increasingly popular for UX research. It measures perceived usability and usefulness with just two items. But if you’re using the UX-Lite to compare products or to see whether you’ve improved over time, what sample size do you need? Yes, the sample size
UX and NPS Benchmarks of Clothing Websites (2026)
It’s hard to beat the convenience of shopping for clothing online. You don’t have to worry about when the store will close or finding parking, and getting a price comparison with other stores is just a few clicks away. On websites, you can easily search for clothing using keywords, and it’s simple to see the
UX-Lite Sample Sizes for Comparison to a Benchmark
The UX-Lite® is a relatively new but increasingly popular metric for UX research. Its two items generate an overall score and subscale scores on ease and usefulness from 0 to 100. The UX-Lite predicts future product usage as well as or better than the original and longer Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The ease score also