One of the most popular UX research methods is Think Aloud (TA) usability testing. Having participants speak their thoughts while working on tasks helps researchers identify usability problems and potential fixes. But does the added burden of speaking while attempting a task make the experience harder and affect perceptions of the website or app being
All of us at MeasuringU® wish you a Happy New Year! In 2022, we posted 48 articles and welcomed several new clients to our MUIQ® UX testing platform, where we continue to add new features and reduce the friction in developing studies and analyzing results. We hosted our ninth UX Measurement Bootcamp—this time a blended
The Single Ease Question (SEQ®) is a single seven-point item that measures the perceived ease of task completion. It is commonly used in usability testing. Since its introduction in 2009 [PDF], some researchers have made variations in its design. Figure 1 shows the version that we currently use. In 2022, we decided to test some
Changing the number of response options in the survey might confuse participants. Over the years, we’ve heard variations on this concern articulated a number of different ways by clients and fellow researchers. Surveys and unmoderated UX studies commonly contain a mix of five-, seven-, and eleven-point scales. That leads some to express concern. Why are
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
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 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
If you took an intro to stats class (or if you know just enough to be dangerous), you probably recall two things: something about Mark Twain’s “lies, damned lies …,” and that your data needs to be normally distributed. Turns out both are only partly true. Mark Twain did write the famous quote, but he
When quantifying the user experience of a product, app, or experience, we recommend using a mix of study-level and task-based UX metrics. While it’s not always feasible to assess a task experience (because of challenges with budgets, timelines, or access to products and users), observing participants attempt tasks can help uncover usability problems, informing designers
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
