You could wait until you’ve prototyped something, then have the stakeholders watch usability testing with users, but the time that would take would likely be too much of an investment—especially given how early in the development cycle it is and how little there is to go on.

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The post Presumptive Design: Design Research Through the Looking Glass first appeared on UX Central.

Don’t confuse the five usability testing types with the interface type or the testing modes. Interface types are mobile (website or apps), desktop (software or website), or a physical device (like a thermostat).

Testing modes or methods are the ways to conduct a usability study on any interface type. There are three main testing methods; each has its strengths and weaknesses:

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The post 5 Types of Usability Tests first appeared on UX Central.

It is precisely for this reason that, while all UX designers ought to have an adequate understanding of UX design in its entirety, they often specialize in a particular part of the process.

User Experience Research and Information Architecture specialists are fundamentally linked by the importance of organizing data in a way that is easily accessible by users.

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The post Making UX Research Usable first appeared on UX Central.

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The post Conducting Contextual Enquiry (or Site Visits) first appeared on UX Central.

There’s also many ways to collect the measurements.

While the “right” methods and metrics you select depend on the industry and study goals, this list covers most of the online and offline customer experience.

It includes a cross section of the four types of analytics data to collect, with an emphasis on collecting customer attitudes via surveys.

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The post 32 Ways To Measure The Customer Experience first appeared on UX Central.

How do you feel when you’re pleasantly surprised by the quality of a hotel room, the service at a restaurant, or the features in a new app?

And how do you feel when it takes 20 minutes to pay your bill online (after calling customer service) when you expected it to take a couple clicks? Or that cleaning product you purchased off TV that doesn’t actually clean your clothes as promised?

Customer expectations are closely linked to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Understanding customer expectations helps diagnose problems and leads to higher satisfaction, repeat customers, and customer referrals.

While expectations are important to measure, the best way to measure them is debatable. In fact, there’s even disagreement on how to model the role of customer expectations on satisfaction. Before we talk about measurement, here are three popular approaches for how to model customer expectations:

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The post Measuring & Modeling Customer Expectations first appeared on UX Central.

Moderators of research studies have a tough job. They must not only facilitate sessions in such a way that the research goals are achieved, but also balance two challenges that are constantly at odds with each other: keeping the participant within the scope of the study, while allowing the participant to be in the driver’s seat in order to make the experience as realistic as possible.

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The post How To Moderate Effectively In Usability Research first appeared on UX Central.

If your job depends on getting a definite answer to this question, then you should start using the System Usability Scale.

The System Usability Scale (SUS) was invented by John Brooke who, in 1986, created this ‘quick and dirty’ usability scale to evaluate practically any kind of system.

The SUS has been tried and tested throughout almost 30 years of use, and has proven itself to be a dependable method of evaluating the usability of systems compared to industry standards.

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The post How To Use The System Usability Scale (SUS) To Evaluate The Usability Of Your Website first appeared on UX Central.

There are plenty of books, articles, and presentations about user-research techniques and deliverables, but they seldom discuss analysis—the process that transforms research data into deliverables. To some, it may even seem that you come out of research with a fully formed understanding of users and their tasks and immediately begin creating personas, diagrams, and presentations.

Clients and project teams are often anxious to see research findings, but rarely have any idea about what analysis involves or how long it should take. Perhaps analysis gets overlooked because it isn’t an observable event that gets scheduled like user research sessions, and it isn’t a tangible document like research deliverables. As a result, there is rarely enough time for analysis.

In this column, my goal is to illuminate what analysis involves, to provide a better perspective on the significance of analysis, and to stress the importance of providing the time necessary to do analysis right.

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The post Analysis Isn’t Cool first appeared on UX Central.

Why would you need to Measure Usability?

There are many reasons as to why someone would require to measure usability – the most common reason being the need to effectively communicate with the stakeholders of the system being evaluated. Other uses can be to satisfy the need for comparing the usability of two or more products and to quantify the severity of a usability problem.

Ultimately, the primary objective of usability metrics is to assist in producing a system or product that is neither under- nor over-engineered.

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The post Usability Metrics – A Guide To Quantify The Usability Of Any System first appeared on UX Central.