Blogs

It seems like there are endless ways to ask questions of participants in surveys. Variety in question types can be both a blessing and a curse. Having many ways to ask questions provides better options to the researcher to assess the opinion of the respondent. But the wrong type of question can fail to capture what’s intended, confuse respondents, or even lead to incorrect decisions.

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A benchmark study tells you where a website, app, or product falls relative to some meaningful comparison. This comparison can be to an earlier version, the competition, or industry standard. Benchmark studies are often called summative evaluations as the emphasis is less on finding problems and more on quantitatively assessing the current experience. To quantify, you need metrics and UX benchmark studies can have quite

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Mobile technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. To help keep up, we pulled together relevant insights about the mobile user experience and mobile usage in general. This is an updated article to the 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2013 articles based on published data and our own mobile UX research. Cellphones are ubiquitous. A Pew Research report suggests that 95% of Americans own a cellphone; around

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For most people, going to the doctor isn’t fun. Is the doctor in your network? How much will the visit cost? What if a CT scan is ordered? And when the bill comes, what the heck does EOB mean? What does or doesn’t your insurance cover? A visit to your health insurance website should help, but you probably don’t remember your password and when you

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Usability testing is expensive. At least that has been the perception. But the idea that usability is a nice-to-have ideal that only big companies such as IBM or Microsoft can afford has fortunately evolved. While technology has improved and gotten cheaper, it’s the technique that’s become more accessible and accepted. The discount-usability movement helped emphasize the effectiveness of low-cost, smaller sample sizes to find and fix usability

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The System Usability Scale has been around for decades and is used by hundreds of organizations globally. The 10-item SUS questionnaire is a measure of a user’s perception of the usability of a “system.” A system can be just about anything a human interacts with: software apps (business and consumer), hardware, mobile devices, mobile apps, websites, or voice user interfaces. The SUS questionnaire is scored

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What are the admission requirements? What courses are available this semester? How much exactly does it cost to attend? Where do I park for the football game? University websites are the information hubs for prospective and current students, parents, and faculty, who usually come to the site with a specific goal in mind. With such diverse audiences, these websites need to be accessible enough for

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Usability tests don’t have to be expensive or require a lot of technology. The real value is not in the equipment or technology but in the technique. Usability testing is not a focus group. Nor is usability testing a product demo. You shouldn’t lead participants through a product as if it were a demo and ask them if they “like” something. Uncovering problems users encounter

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The SUPR-Q (Standardized User Experience Percentile Rank Questionnaire) is a standardized questionnaire that measures the quality of the website user experience. It’s an 8-item instrument that’s gone through multiple rounds of psychometric validation and is used by hundreds of organizations around the world. Here’s a list of 10 essential things to know about the SUPR-Q. 1. It’s derived from research and refined across studies. Instead

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You don’t need a dedicated usability lab to conduct a usability test. But if you or your organization conducts more than the occasional usability test, which it probably should (another topic in itself), you may want to consider setting up a dedicated usability lab. Having a dedicated space for testing is a hallmark of organizations with high UX maturity. Organizations rated as mature in UX

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