Category: Business
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 5: Non-Scientific User Research isn’t a Bad Thing
(This is Part 5 — the final part. Please read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 first.) I would certainly agree that more rigorous methodologies can’t hurt in our field. But at the same time, I think that we need to be a little more honest about the value…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 4: Research as Bullshit
(This is Part 4. Please read Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3 first.) Okay, in this post I’m going to get a little down and dirty. I’ll show some examples of research which do not seem to really enable a design team to learn more about their users, nor convince stakeholders about correct…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 3: Research as a Political Tool
(This is Part 3. Please read Part 1 and Part 2 first.) Explaining it to the boss. Next time you read an article about a user research success story, ask yourself if the conclusions of that research weren’t just common sense (or at least common sense to good UI designers) to begin with. Ask yourself…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Interlude: Data Interpreted Badly
Here’s a great and succint case study of how user research data can be easily misinterpreted, and a great example about why we should always be suspicious of statistics. The marketing blog at FutureLab (which I do recommend) has a short post today entitled “Study Shows Fear of MySpace Predators is Overblown“. The research paper…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 2: Research as a Design Tool
(This is Part 2. Please read Part 1 first.) An eyetracking “heatmap” showing in red where users’ eyes were pointing for the longest time during a page-view. There is a limit, I think, to what a so-called “empirical” user interface test can tell you. At some point, the results must be interpreted in order to…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 1: Design vs. Science
Research-based design is a noble and widely-admired approach to building good products, especially in the web design field. Like a great many other user experience design firms, at Behavior we conduct research whenever possible, to whatever degree our clients’ budgets and timelines will allow. Our projects frequently involve usability testing (both lab-based and informal), card-sorting…
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Be Evil?
What if Sergei Brin and Larry Page were actually evil? What if they were in reality sinister villains planning to take over the world, like Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom? If so, they’re certainly going about it with great efficiency, controlling all of the instruments we use to function in the information age: web search,…
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The View From the Other Side of the Microscope
Photo by Liz Danzico The AIGA is currently in the throes of a major web site redesign. Liz Danzico, the AIGA’s Experience Strategy Director, invited me and about 7 other design industry types to attend a card-sorting exercise to help their design team understand how the AIGA’s users think about the types of content and…
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Why do Executives use Blackberrys?
Who’s the boss? The only people I ever see actually using Blackberrys tend to be high-level executives. Why is this? It’s simple: Because they can get away with it. Only the boss can sit in a conference room twiddling around with a Blackberry, their attention a thousand miles away, while everyone else is working on…
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Dell Rips off Large Businesses
On the left is a nicely-configured Dell Latitude D620 laptop as you’d see it in Dell’s Medium & Large Business store. On the right is the exact same computer if configured in the Small Business store: Not only does the Small Business store offer a significantly lower price to begin with, but they also automatically…