Planning your next vacation can be both exciting and overwhelming. Most travelers do their research and make reservations for flights, activities, and accommodations online. In particular, hotel websites offer the convenience of browsing, comparing, and booking hotels from anywhere. Hotel bookings and revenue have recovered from the depths of the pandemic. Yet with all this
Watching paint dry might be the definition of boring, but the process of picking a paint color and actually painting usually isn’t. Shopping for paint, however, can be frustrating. One early pain point is picking the right brand and color of paint. The process of selecting a paint often starts online at paint websites. Paint
The home improvement industry has experienced continued growth in the United States over the last several years, with market value projected to exceed $600 billion by 2025, according to Statista. Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced people into lockdowns in 2020, interest has increased in do-it-yourself (DIY) projects such as painting, remodeling, and landscaping, contributing to
While life can feel like a metaphorical roller coaster, in some cases, there is a literal roller coaster. In 2021, over 100 million people ventured to a theme park in North America. For many of these visitors, the experience started well before the thrill of the ride, when they bought tickets and researched details about
When people need office supplies, they’re unlikely to use Dunder Mifflin; instead, they’ll search online. But like the fictional paper supply company, many well-known office-supply brands (some with physical stores) have struggled to compete with Amazon and haven’t recovered from the impacts of COVID policies on in-person work. In 2019, Office Depot closed 50 stores,
What do people buy online? Behind clothing, consumer electronics are at the top of the list. Beyond smartphones, people purchase computers, TVs, tablets, gaming consoles, and a myriad of smartphone accessories. Before purchasing, roughly half of US consumers research details about consumer products online, including features, reviews, and prices. To understand the electronics researching and
In an earlier article, we examined a large dataset of rating scale data. After analyzing over 100,000 individual responses from 4,048 multipoint items across 25 studies, we reported the typical standard deviations for five-, seven-, and eleven-point items. We found that the average standard deviation tended to be around 25% of the maximum range of
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. After a TA session, many UX research teams also collect study-level metrics. Study-level metrics are typically asked only once in a study (unlike task-level
Smartphones are ubiquitous in modern life globally and in the US. Almost all Americans have smartphones (85%), with US sales expected to exceed 74 billion dollars. But people don’t just own them, they (we) use them—a lot! Average monthly data use worldwide is expected to increase from 19GB in 2023 to 46GB in 2028 (55GB
When working with UX metrics (e.g., rating scale data) you need to consider both the average and the variability of the responses. People have different experiences with interfaces, and sometimes they interpret items in rating scales differently. This variability is typically measured with the standard deviation. The standard deviation is a key ingredient in computing
