UIEtips 9/11/07: 5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site’s Content Pages It’s hard enough creating usable designs when there is ample time and plenty of resources, but what do you do when that’s just not an option for your design team? One of the most common reasons designs fail users is because the design team didn’t have [...]

This week, Christine and Jared discuss the genesis and value of five-second usability tests.

Jared M. Spool recently had the chance to talk with Steve Mulder about how to create effective personas based on user research as well as valuable tips for convincing your organization to adopt personas into the design process.

We’re big fans of the KJ Technique, a method that helps teams rank the important issues for a focus question, such as “What are the most important usability problems we need to fix in this version of the design?” or “Which user populations are most important to our business?” In the method, teams brainstorm on [...]

UIEtips 8/21/07: Five Survival Techniques for Creating Usable Products At User Interface Engineering, we’ve spent two decades researching the usability and design techniques employed by both successful and unsuccessful development teams. We’ve focused our research agenda on identifying the key techniques successful teams utilize to consistently produce usable products on time and within budget. Because [...]

Using player cards as visual reminders of your personas and the people you met during field studies is a great way to help keep your users at the forefront of your design team’s thoughts. Here’s a rough guide on how to create them.

Ashley McKee points out a series of articles by Leisa Reichelt that discuss accepting the unscientific qualities of qualitative research, and using qualitative research as a flexible way to gather rich and insightful information about your intended audience.

Ashley McKee shares an interview builder.au conducted with Larry Constantine, Chief Scientist at Constantine & Lockwood, and speaker at this year’s UI12 Conference.

UIEtips 6/05/07: Field Research Fundamentals: An Interview with Kate Gomoll UIE’s Ashley McKee has conducted an excellent interview with Kate Gomoll, a recognized Field Research expert. In the interview, Kate shares how she and her team at Gomoll Research & Design conduct field studies.

iRise, who produces a product development tool that many of our clients find extremely helpful, is trying to make their tool even more helpful. Peter Indelicato, Senior Product Manager for iRise, is looking for folks to participate in some site visits.