When surveys don't work for User Experience insights

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on December 17, 2018 - 7:46pm
usability survey

Summary: Surveys are often over-used or mis-placed as a research technique that many teams rely on to figure out usability and user experience problems. Understand the limits and opportunities of the tool and instead either don't lean on it too heavily or use it as an adjunct to reach a wider audience--as part of a qualitative user research project (user interviews). 

When Surveys Fail You

Surveys are great, except when they are not. Surveys are often used as a way to gather usability feedback. This makes sense, after all questions like: Do users use your site or app? Do they find it valuable? What do they want? are perfectly reasonable questions to ask your users. So what is the problem with surveys for user experience questions?

First, be clear that surveys are a market research tool. That means they are not entirely appropriate as a usability or user research tool. Why?

Stop doing ego-centered design and do this instead

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on August 21, 2018 - 5:11pm
man designing at desk

Summary: If your best intentions are not on meeting business and user goals, you should take a hard look in the mirror and re-callibrate. Ego-centered design means you think you are the user, and that means your design will be lacking in empathy. Instead practice User-Centered Design. 

What is ego-centered design?

It's the hardest thing for a designer, developer or manager to admit. We often make a call without evidence (beyond a hunch). But even the best UX Designers do not trust their hunches until they have listenend and observed their users. Note: It's a learnable skill.

Ego-centered design means design decisions are lacking user validation. Many a dozen design revisions were done (you know who you are) without any idea of the audience, their tasks or the business objectives driving the priority. Commonly understood definitions of ego-centered design include:

Accessibility focus: How to design so blind users are not left out of VR

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on August 15, 2018 - 2:33pm
Blind user walking down stairs

Summary: Designing for VR must include users with disabilities. If you are working on AR or VR content, the accessibility of your app or piece should be on your radar from design time through to implementation.

Designing for blind users in VR requires the use of spatial audio using tested 3D sound techniques. At Experience Dynamics we work on a lot of R&D projects that we end up publishing results to the wider UX/ HCI community. One of these projects is a Disability & VR project called SoundSpace. 

We include this case study/ demo (VIDEO) included below of how sound can aid navigation, information finding and social VR.

Recruiting Fake Users: Avoid them like the plague (if you want to be successful)

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on August 10, 2018 - 3:55pm
fake users- man with masks

Summary: UX efforts should improve their quality of data and informed decision-making by making sure feedback is coming from the right users. 

Let's talk about fake users

Fake users are the wrong people who will provide you biased, tainted or innacurate and imprecise feedback. Precision is everything if you want to be successful with UX. Getting the right users, priceless. 

At Experience Dynamics we learned this from doing it the other way (Hint: Your UX Agency does it this way most likely, ask them). Like many, we used to have a Market Research firm recruit for us, now we do it all meticulously in-house. 

Market research firms provide recruiting (focus groups are happening all the time). But it's also very common to have user no-shows, luke-warm relevant feedback or someone that feels like a badly hired actor. We have not experienced any of that for many years-- that's when you know you are doing it right. 

It's time to think about time in your UX Design

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on July 18, 2018 - 11:12pm
clock on table

Summary: Time is an important design variable to understand. Time or temporal aspects of tasks hide metaphors, flows or triggers that you can bring into your design. Designs that miss out on the time aspect of Interaction Design face a poor or failed user experience. 

Examples of Time in Design

1. Pizza ordering: Domino's uses the time tracker as a way to manage expecations. 

dominos delivery tracker

2. Ticket-ordering: TicketMaster and others use the countdown timer to secure the purchase (and refresh inventory). 

TicketMaster countdown UI

How compliant is 'good enough' for Web Accessibility?

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on July 6, 2018 - 1:39pm
accessibility compliance keyboard

Summary: Accessibility compliance is governed by laws (Section 508 of the ADA in the US and the soon to be ratified European Accessibility Act). Web developers look to WCAG 2.0 of the W3 standards organization and typically aim at "AA" compliance. This article explores quality from an accessibility standpoint and points to areas of better compliance that go beyond the "getting by" approach. 

How your team defines "user research" can hurt your UX

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on July 5, 2018 - 8:18am
man at whiteboard looking frustrated

Summary: 'User research' has become a catch-all phrase to mean user testing in many organizations. User research has two main activities: usability testing and field studies. Defining your design research with only a validation exercise (testing) misses the essential discovery of user needs, pain points and desires that Ethnographic Field Studies provide. User research should always mean more than just user testing!

How are you defining user research?

Many organizations we work with and UX designers we provide training for, tell us they do 'user research'. Once we dig deeper, we find they are defining user research as user testing. This means only half of UX insights are actually making it to your team.  

The two main types of user research your team needs access to:

The importance of Storytelling for Presence in AR UX

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on May 28, 2018 - 4:56pm
woman explores Augmented Reality object

Summary: Storytelling is instrumental to delivering good UX in augmented or virtual environments. Storytelling evokes emotion, captures attention, guides and directs user interaction. One of it's primary functions is to deepen the usability goal called "presence" (the feeling of being there). 

Why is storytelling in AR so important?

Storytelling is critical for moving past "boring" in AR. Without good storytelling your user experience can stagnate or lead to poor engagement, confusion or helpless exploration. And storytelling is not just about transmitting content to your user... In AR, as with VR, story keeps 3D UX interaction on track. It provides experiential structure: users are pulled in or pushed out, moving toward or away from events or areas of the environment (physical or augmented)-- by design. 

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