Uncovering usability problems is at the heart of usability testing. Problems and insights can be uncovered from observing participants live in a usability lab, using heuristic evaluations, or watching videos of participants. But if you change the person looking for the problems (the evaluator), do you get a different set of problems? The Evaluator Effect
User Experience is a fast growing and popular field. It’s been listed as one of the best professions offering some of the best jobs. It’s not surprising then that people are interested in learning how to both get into the field and advance their career within it. I spoke with a few attendees at the
It was another busy year on MeasuringU.com with 50 new articles, the release of the 2nd editions of two books, UX Bootcamps in Denver and Rome and talks in London and Chicago. In 2016, our articles were served up to over a million visitors. Thank You! We covered topics including: usability testing, measurement and research
The best-laid plans of researchers often go awry. No matter how carefully a research project is planned, things may still go wrong. There are many threats to the success of a customer research project. At both big and small companies, at agencies and on the client side, research projects can fail to live up to
Questionnaires are an effective way for gauging sentiments toward constructs like usability, loyalty, and the quality of the website user experience. A standardized questionnaire is one that has gone through psychometric validation. That means the items used in the questionnaire have been shown to: 1. Offer consistent responses (reliability) 2. Measure what they are intended
Observing just a few users interact with a product or website can tell you a wealth of information about what’s working and not working. But to loosely quote Lord Kelvin, when we can measure something and express it in numbers, we understand and manage it better. Measuring usability allows us to better understand how changes
You go to your doctor for a checkup. You’re feeling fine but as a matter of procedure, your doctor orders a battery of tests and scans to be sure all is well. She runs 30 tests in total. A few days later she calls and tells you one of the tests came back positive–an indication
Most of us take to the skies for business or a vacation (some more frequently than others). And who hasn’t had a nightmare travel experience with delays, cancellations or getting bumped? While there is much written about the airline travel experience, a lot of time is also spent researching and purchasing those airline tickets online.
Usability is a lot of things. It’s about making interfaces easy to learn. It’s about preventing errors and reducing the time to get things done. It’s even about making an experience more satisfying and delightful. There are a number of methods to improve the usability of an interface. While it’s hard to identify one overarching
We’ve put together a visual timeline of the 100 year history of usability that we detailed in an earlier blog. This detailed infographic covers many of the key events, publications and people that have shaped the profession. If you’re obsessed with usability like we are, you can also purchase a 52 inch full-color version and
