Visualising UX research
I’ve never seen clients stand around a written report gesturing at various pages discussing their implications… but when this happens with a drawing, I really feel like my job is done. A written report can be restrictive when working with rich, emotive material, so I often use visuals to communicate insights and what they mean [...]
Getting a Grip. Prodesign Magazine showcases my approach to UX
This month I’m featured in Prodesign mag. The article harks back to my days designing surfboards and the moment I became ‘hooked on usability’ during a project for Sony Playstation. Read the Prodesign article ‘Getting a grip’ here as a PDF. It turns out this is the last issue of this magazine after 16 years. [...]
End to end customer experience for Swiftpoint
All too often, I’m working on one aspect of a product while valuable insights emerge relating to other areas of the broader customer experience. Classic example: A website usability study generates feedback around physical product, brand, delivery, billing or in-store interactions. In theory this offers double or triple whammy for the sponsor of the project. [...]
10 tips for usability studies with children
Children are some of the most demanding and discerning users of interactive products, making them difficult to design for and challenging to moderate in a usability or UX research situation. Whilst they can’t always articulate their thoughts and you can’t rely on what they say, with a careful approach you can generate incredibly useful design [...]
UX research. Making every minute count
Facilitating ‘face to face’ interviews with your clients’ customers is central to UX research. It’s also one of the most difficult of all UX skills to develop. Valuable insights can be generated and captured during each session but you’re often having to cover a lot of ground in the time allocated. After hundreds of these [...]
Skype takes the hassle out of remote usability
Remote research brings cultural relevance to usability findings, providing the kinds of insights which can only be gained by being there…virtually at least. I recently ran some remote website usability sessions for a Kiwi startup whose main customer is in the U.S.A. … sure, ‘isolation breeds innovation’ and all that, but when your customers are [...]
Keeping it ‘old school’ with Diary Studies
I’m always looking for better ways to understand customer behaviour and the experiences customers have in their own context, out in the wild. There are some interesting ‘digital ethnography’ tools on the market, using web and mobile channels to capture, collate and filter all this stuff as it occurs in the field. http://www.myservicefellow.com http://www.thethinkingshed.co.uk http://www.7daysinmylife.com [...]
User Centred Design, for the long haul.
During a 9 month project with IDEO, Air New Zealand took a user centred approach to improve seating design for their long haul services. They built full scale prototypes of cabin interiors to carry out design research, evaluating seating and service concepts with real passengers. The project began in 2007 with a goal of understanding [...]
Picture, or thousand words?
Outcomes of UX research projects can be difficult to put in a nutshell, and a bullet pointed list sometimes just does not cut it. As well as the usual deliverables emerging from a brief, I sometimes add a rich picture as a visual summary. These often originate from doodles generated while I’m trying to figure [...]
Prototype, Test, Rinse & repeat
The value of iteration. Switched-on digital agencies understand the value of user testing with early stage website mockups; ironing out sticking points and identifying opportunities to improve interaction design early, before committing to code. During a day of back-to-back user interviews, ‘quick wins’, like changing a navigation item can be made in seconds and validated [...]