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Bad research doesn’t stink
Introduction Why does UX research face the prospect of democratization, while other product functions do not? This question is just the type of problem we as researchers should tackle. By knowing the answer, it unlocks some strategy for how to contend with the threat or opportunity of research democratization. Research democratization Unless you’ve been quietly…
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Can longer task times for users be a good thing?
When is a task time supposed to be longer, rather than shorter, for an optimal user experience? The answer to this question comes down to what user activities we define as “tasks”. The article proposes a way of categorizing user activities that enables us to define if time-spent in an activity should be optimally shorter…
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Cognitive testing for surveys (Part 1)
You’re a UX researcher creating a survey. You’ve done qualitative research so you know the areas you want to measure quantitatively. You’ve aligned your stakeholders so everyone is informed of the potential outcomes and impact. Do you program it and launch it now? Depending on the survey’s goals and complexity, you should consider doing cognitive…
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Why “strategic” research needs a redefinition
tl;dr Strategy/tactics definitions conflate generative/evaluative research with large/small scope research. Evaluative work can be impactful at a strategic level when it appropriately covers the scope of a system. Generative work can be tactical when it’s constrained to be too focused within existing product offerings. Background It’s a common conversation lately in UX that teams need…
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What does a quantitative UX researcher do?
I often get asked the question, what does a quantitative UX researcher actually do? There’s no single, correct answer. Rather than discussing educational backgrounds, tools, or methods, this post outlines the thinking behind the types of projects I’ve typically done as a quantitative UX researcher (UXR). A note on defining the role of quantitative UXR:…
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Analytics are leaving out user intent
And UX benchmarking can help Note: this article was originally published in UX Collective on Medium.com. tl;dr —With log-based analytics alone, we can’t see users that want to start a task but cannot find it. This leads us to overcount success rates. With behavioral UX benchmarking, we understand a user’s intent so we know how…
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The Single Usability Metric (SUM) — A completion rate conundrum
Note: this was originally published in UX Collective on Medium.com and is now published more formally in the proceedings for Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. TL;DR — In the SUM benchmarking method, the calculation of completion rates creates a bias for completion rates which artificially inflates all ‘good’ scores and marks some ‘poor’…