Researching UX: User Research

Emma Howell, James Lang

Description

How well do you really know your users? With properly conducted user research, you can discover what really makes your audience tick. This practical guide will show you, step-by-step, how to gain proper insight about your users so that you can base design decisions on solid evidence. You'll not only learn the different methodologies that you can employ in user research, but also gain insight into important set-up activities, such as recruiting users and equipping your lab, and acquire analysis skills so that you can make the most of the data you've gathered. And finally, you'll learn how to communicate findings and deploy evidence, to boost your design rationale and persuade skeptical colleagues.

• Design your research
• Cost justify user research
• Recruit and incentivise users
• Discover how to run your research sessions
• Analyze your results
• Reporting on results and acting in your findings

Sujets

• Web Design
• Computers
• Informatique

Informations

• Publié par: SitePoint
• Date de parution: 26 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781492064275
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Researching UX: User Research
by James Lang and Emma Howell
Copyright © 2017 SitePoint Pty. Ltd. Product Manager: Simon Mackie Series Editor: Joe Leech English Editor: Katie Monk Technical Editor: Kate Towsey Cover Designer: Alex Walker
Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Notice of Liability
The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors and SitePoint Pty. Ltd., nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages to be caused either directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book, or by the software or hardware products described herein.
Trademark Notice
Rather than indicating every occurrence of a trademarked name as such, this book uses the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no intention of infringement of the trademark.

Published by SitePoint Pty. Ltd.
48 Cambridge Street Collingwood VIC Australia 3066 Web: www.sitepoint.com Email: [e-mail]
ISBN 978-0-9953826-3-3 (print)
ISBN 978-0-9953827-9-4 (ebook) Printed and bound in the United States of America

About James Lang
James has worked in research for 20 years, for organizations including Google, British Airways, the BBC, eBay and the Alzheimer’s Society. He is currently Head of Research at cxpartners.
About Emma Howell
Emma Howell is a User Experience Consultant at cxpartners. She has been a research specialist for 10 years, beginning her career in academia before moving into UX. Emma loves designing products and services that are intuitive and enjoyable to use.
About SitePoint
SitePoint specializes in publishing fun, practical, and easy-to-understand content for web professionals. Visit http://www.sitepoint.com/ to access our blogs, books, newsletters, articles, and community forums. You’ll find a stack of information on JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, mobile development, design, and more.


James: To my mum and dad, Sally and Joseph, for giving me their curiosity, patience and kindness.
Emma: For raising an analytical and inquisitive creature, my fabulous parents Pauline and Leigh. My gyaldem: twerking and tequila makes deadlines feel less painful. Laura-Lea: you’ve been amazingly encouraging and patient. Thank you.
Preface
Foreword
I was on stage at UX Manchester and I made a flippant comment about how all focus groups were a waste of time when it came to researching the user experience. When questions came at the end of my talk, a hand shot up. “I don’t agree with your comment about focus groups. They have their uses. All research methods have their strengths and weaknesses.” That hand belonged to James Lang. He came and found me afterwards and we debated the merits of user research methods. At the end of the conversation, I asked if he was looking for a job.
Emma brings 10 years of formal research experience in psychology, cognition, medicine, biology and, of course, user experience. Emma and James are two of the best researchers I’ve ever worked with. I’ve learned so much from working with them on many UX research projects over the years.
This book represents Emma and James’s many years of research experience. Their practical advice on how to run an insightful, successful research project is the key to making your digital products even better.
Series editor Joe Leech ( @mrjoe ) Bristol, UK, August 2017. PS. I was right about focus groups – see Chapter 2.
If You Feel Unsure, Then Read On
You’re beginning a user research project. You want it to go well. You want it to be interesting, to learn something new and to generate ideas. Most importantly, you want your project to make a difference. This book will show you how to achieve all of that.
This book is about the craft, the technique and the processes involved in running a design research project. Whether you’re in discovery or evaluation mode, whether your project is agile or waterfall, research is at the heart of user-centered design. Because it’s so central, we believe that research should be an activity that the whole team gets to participate in and feel ownership of.
At the same time, design research can sometimes seem a daunting, confusing world unto itself. With its own codes and jargon, it can feel like the domain of specialists, forbidden to outsiders who haven’t been trained in the rules. If you’ve ever felt out of your depth on a research project, been unsure what to do next, or wondered whether you’re “doing it wrong”, then this book is for you.
What We’ll Cover in this Book
Over the next nine chapters, we’ll pass through the stages of a qualitative design research project. The primary focus is on the practicalities: our intention is to share a step-by-step guide so you know what do to at each point… especially if you’re stuck! Alongside that, though, we’ve provided a rationale, not least because being able to understand and justify your approach is pretty useful in itself.
The structure of the book follows the sequence of a research project:
The research cycle
Design
Chapter 1 shows how to scope and kick off your project, involving stakeholders to ensure you’re working to the right objectives.
Chapter 2 walks through the process of choosing a methodology, and the different considerations which play a part in your decision.
Setup
Chapter 3 covers the different methods for recruiting people to take part in your research, and how to ensure you get the right participants.
Chapter 4 outlines the role of a discussion guide (aka session plan, aka script) and shows you how to piece it together part-by part.
Chapter 5 looks at the runup to your research sessions, and the preparation involved with lab-based, remote and contextual studies.
Fieldwork
Chapter 6 shows you how to manage a research session, and how to be successful in the roles of observer, note-taker or moderator.
Chapter 7 focuses on the detail of interviewing, exploring the anatomy of questions and the role of observation.
Analysis
Chapter 8 lays out a system of analysis, describing each of the main phases and showing you which activities to deploy to achieve your specific purpose.
Impact
Chapter 9 shows how to bring the project to a successful conclusion, using deliverables and engagement techniques to maximise the impact of your work.
Unless you’re completely new to research, you’re probably more familiar with some of these aspects of the process than others. You should be able to dip into the book as required, rather than reading from front to back, with a couple of exceptions: If you want to know how to run research sessions, it’s a good idea to look at Chapters 4, 6 and 7. If you’re interested in how to ensure your projects have maximum impact, the information you need is in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 9.
The Gist of the Book
As we’ve already mentioned, this book is more interested in the practicalities of research than the theory. That said, if you read on you’ll see several ideas surface repeatedly. Let’s introduce them:
Research is a team sport . We believe research projects are most effective when the whole team’s involved, not when one or two specialists are tasked with going away to ‘do research’ and come back with an answer. Working as a team - sharing the hypothesising, interviewing and analysis - brings the designers, developers, content owners and others much closer to the actual user experience, rather than having it fed back to them via a report or presentation. It’s a better, more rewarding experience for everyone, but more importantly it makes the research more likely to have an impact. You may not always be able to get the whole team involved throughout, but we’ll share the workarounds you can use to achieve nearly the same result.
When you’re making decisions about your project, think about the end point and work backwards . Whether it’s to generate new ideas, build empathy for users, understand a problem better, or inform decision-making, your project has an end goal. In most cases, this’ll be a combination of overt, stated objectives and more obscure aims that you’ll have to figure out from talking to stakeholders. Don’t lose sight of the end goal, because it should inform your decisions at every point. For example, if your end point is to build empathy with users among disengaged stakeholders, then that will inform your choice of methodology and sample, the types of data you collect, and the approach you use to analyse and report it. It’ll also determine the way you involve stakeholders throughout the project. We’ll show you why you need to stay aware of those choices and consciously direct your approach with the end goal in mind, rather than just hoping for the best.
Successful research is about driving design decisions through engagement, not delivering documents. To be most effective, research projects are about enabling the people who make decisions about things to experience the lives of the people who use those things. If you can give stakeholders an in-person connection with their users, you'll enhance and enrich their work, and they'll thank you for it. You'll also help them make better decisions more easily, and therefore do better work, and they'll love you for that. Good and easy decisions don't often come from reading research reports, often because there's no human experience connected with the recommendations and they're therefore not followed. Also, it's easy to put a report away and ignore it,