A (Short) Comprehensive Guide to UX Research (March 8, 2020)

(I was supposed to put this entry on for February 5 when we read about this for week two or three, but forgot so I'm putting it on now.)

The online reading material this week was Christopher Murphy’s “A Comprehensive Guide to UX Research” and talks about the research phase of UX design, but goes into a deeper in-depth analysis than the class textbook chapter than we read as part of our class reading for this week. Murphy introduces a number of research methods in the article that are designed to help introductory UX designers at this stage, or if they are designers that need a refresher course as they haven’t had to do it for a while.

Murphy stresses at from right off the bat, that “it’s critical to undertake user research right at the beginning of [the] project.” In other words, start with a clearly defined goal and work backward off that.

I copied some pictures from the article that I may find really helpful as we get into the projects with our assigned groups, as well as from the second half of the course (hopefully).

The research method can be done by either: qualitative and quantitative, or behavioral and attitudinal (or a person could end up taking both approaches.)

The author discusses here qualitative research methods, which are the following
    Interviews - a great way to get to users’ needs as it requires empathy and social skills in order to conduct them. They can lead to discoveries about the user that a person never knew.
    Contextual inquiry - an interview where users are observed and questioned in their own environment, to try to determine their approach towards specific tasks.
    Card sorting - involves writing words or phrases onto separate cards then asking your research participants to organize them.

He also discusses three methods of quantitative research
    Surveys and questionnaires - a powerful tool for gathering a high number of opinions; however they are void of any social interaction
    Analytics - persuasive tool that is useful for testing assumptions, although it can be a little overwhelming.
    A/B testing - a controlled experiment with two variables and the participant choses the best method

He also discusses triangulation in which a person can use more than one research method in order to achieve a greater result. The chart that the author provides paints a clear picture (and easier to understand) of how this method is accomplished.

That’s all for the summary of reading material this week. Next week is where we get down to work.

Our group discussed certain project ideas for our website-based problem to solve. We need to come up with one idea by next week, but for now it consists of mainly the DVC site, rearranging the icons one the DVC InSite webpage as it’s difficult to read, fixing the Canvas button so it actually takes a person directly to the canvas page, and eliminating the unnecessary whitespace in Wikipedia pages (pictures below)

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