User experience research has a wide variety of methods. From one perspective, it’s good because there’s usually a method for whatever research question you need to answer. On the other hand, it’s hard to keep track of all these methods. Some methods, such as usability testing, are commonly used and have been around for decades.
The Think Aloud (TA) method is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of usability testing. The method involves having participants speak their thoughts as they attempt tasks on an interface. Think Aloud as a method for understanding human attitudes and behavior has been around for over a century. While we often think of the Think
Over the past few months, we’ve conducted several studies with different versions of the seven-point Single Ease Question (SEQ®), a popular task-level metric for perceived ease-of-use. As we’ve seen with other research on rating scales, response means tend to be rather stable despite often salient changes to formatting. In our earlier SEQ research, we found
The wide range of UX methods is one of the things that makes UX such an interesting field. Some methods, like usability testing, have been around for decades. Others are more recent additions, and some seem to be just slight variations on other existing methods. We’ve been tracking and analyzing the methods UX professionals reported
We use the seven-point Single Ease Question (SEQ®) frequently in our practice, as do many other UX researchers. One reason for its popularity is the body of research that started in the mid-2000s with the comparison of the SEQ to other similar short measures of perceived ease-of-use, the generation of a normative SEQ database, and
The Think Aloud method (TA) is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of usability testing. The method involves having participants speak their thoughts as they attempt tasks on an interface. We often think of the TA method as a single method, but there are substantial variations in how it’s implemented. In an earlier article, we
The seven-point Single Ease Question (SEQ®) has become a standard in assessing post-task perceptions of ease. Since the SEQ’s inception, we have collected data from thousands of task experiences to generate a normalized database of scores. We have also established its strong correlation to task completion and task time. Over the years, some researchers have
The seven-point Single Ease Question (SEQ®) has become a standard in assessing post-task perceptions of ease. We developed the SEQ over a decade ago after our research showed it performed comparably to or better than other single-item measures. It is an extension of an earlier five-point version that Tedesco and Tullis (2006 [PDF]) found performed best
How often do you use your phone? How about a streaming service you subscribe to, like Hulu or Netflix? What about software, like Microsoft Excel? In an earlier article, we discussed the importance of measuring prior experience. Prior experience is a strong predictor of UX metrics. People who are familiar with a product and use
Can an experience be useful without meeting your needs? The UX-Lite™ is a new questionnaire that evolved from the SUS and the UMUX-Lite. It has only two items, one measuring perceived Ease and one measuring perceived Usefulness, as shown in Figure 1. Because the verbal complexity of the original Usefulness item stands in stark contrast
