Methods & Tools

How to get the results you want in surveys & polls (funny)

An old YouTube clip from Yes Minister (an early 1980s BBC political comedy), which shows how leading questions and tone setting can get you any results you want – if you’re willing to stoop that low. Via Nikos Karaoulanis.

Reviewing WhatUsersDo.com: a UK-based remote unmoderated qualitative usability testing platform

WhatUsersDo.com is a UK-based remote, unmoderated, qualitative usability testing platform, somewhat similar to usertesting.com. You pay £25-£30 per participant, and for each one you get back a 20 minute screen recording with audio of them thinking aloud during the tasks. … Continue reading

What do you use for portable wall space?

Image credit: Daylight Design The trouble with being a User Experience specialist is the amount of wall space you need. In an ideal world, you’d set up a war room for each project, where all your materials can stay permanently … Continue reading

“What You Need to Know About Eye Tracking” (new!)

Here are the slides from my recent presentation at UXLX’10 at Lisbon. This is a substantially revised version of the talk I gave at Barcamp Brighton in September ’09. Many, many thanks to Aaron Young & Rebecca Gill of Bunnyfoot … Continue reading

Quick tip: make your own iPhone usability testing sled for £5

iPhones are wonderful things for many reasons, but you can’t run screen-recording or screen-sharing software in the background during research sessions. Even if you could, it would make the device run like treacle and you’d miss out on getting footage … Continue reading

Spare a thought for the ‘experimenter effect’ in user research

Do you ever think about the impact of the experimenter effect (or Hawthorne effect) when you’re running face to face user research? Here’s a quick test. First, go and check your Analytics package to see how many users check your … Continue reading

At last, a sketchy Axure widget library

The default widget library supplied with Axure occupies an uncomfortable middle ground – it looks like it’s just badly designed high fidelity, rather than intentionally lo-fi. This sketchy Axure widget library by Kevin Wick gets around the problem by giving … Continue reading

Pidoco – prototying and remote, moderated user testing – combined!

I have to admit I only tried Pidoco° very briefly at UX Brighton last week, but I was impressed with what I saw. They’ve integrated an Axure-style prototyping tool with a remote, moderated usability testing tool, and the price is … Continue reading

Help, we’re drowning in wireframing apps!

Back in the 1990s, when wireframing was a niche activity, you were pretty much limited to Visio or Illustrator. Nowadays there are a huge number of alternatives. If you want an online app, you can choose from Balsamiq, Just in … Continue reading

The problem with interviewing kids

At UX Brighton last night GiGi Demming (Head of User Testing at SCEE in London) gave a talk on gameplay research involving kids. She neatly summed up one of the problems with interviewing kids – the “I like turtles effect”: … Continue reading