Hang around me long enough and you’ll hear me say this: Outsourcing your user research work is like outsourcing your vacation. It gets the job done, but probably won’t have the effects you were seeking. I usually say this when someone is asking me to do their user research for them. This is something we [...]

Over at the Boxes and Arrows LinkedIn discussion group, Carrie asked: What is a good success rate for a usability test task? We just conducted user testing on a site map. So we have success rate percentages for each task. They range from 9% – 51% success (in up to 3 tries). Obviously there are [...]

You’re going to want your entire team to see our next UIE Virtual Seminar on Thursday, July 21, UX Design when Time, Money, and Support is Limited with Cennydd Bowles. In this 90-minute online seminar, Cennydd will show you: Ways to tailor your UX design process to the culture of your organization How to conduct [...]

30 years ago, I conducted my first usability study. The lab we had— the first ever built for this purpose— was the size of a janitor’s closet (because it was a converted janitor’s closet) and was packed with more than $20,000 of video equipment (because that’s what a simple camera and editing system cost then). [...]

We tell our clients this constantly: the organizations who are most successful are the ones who are on intimate terms with how and why their customers use their product. But how? To answer that question, we invited our friend Steve Portigal to host a UIE Virtual Seminar recently on the topic of interviewing. In this podcast we revisit the topic and answer several remaining questions from his seminar.

UIEtips 3/7/06: Interview-Based Tasks: Learning from Leonardo DiCaprio

Interview-based tasks are a radical usability testing technique, designed to counter problems that arise when assumptions are made about how users solve their own problems.

The topic of our next UIE Virtual Seminar is so important, and no one talks about it. On Thursday, January 28, Steve Portigal will deliver his talk: Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets: Making Sure You Don’t Leave Key Information Behind. (Oh, and by the way, our last event sold out, so you’ll want to Register your [...]

In our next UIE Virtual Seminar, Recruiting for Usability Testing on Wednesday, September 30, usability testing expert Dana Chisnell shows you how to maximize your time and money on the right participants to get the right results.   User experience research lives or dies by the appropriateness of the participants in the study. UX researchers just [...]

UIEtips 4/24/07: Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing UIE’s Christine Perfetti discusses the 5 best techniques for convincing management and key stakeholders of the benefits of incorporating usability testing into the formal design process.

Have you looked at your site with Javascript disabled? Robert Nyman does just that with the Nokia and SonyEricsson UK sites and finds some surprising results. It’s quite a good write up. Very much worth a read followed by the obvious next step: checking your own site out the same way. [Hat tip to NortyPig]