As a user experience consultant, a fair amount of time at the beginning of a project reading any existing user research reports. These reports help understand the user research history of the project (i.e. the user research done in the past, the outcome and what, if anything was identified for further exploration). For small and relatively simple projects these reports are fairly easy to thread together. But for large and more complex projects that involve multiple user experience professionals conducting user experience activities in parallel, tracing the user research history just six months after the project is complicated and can sometimes be challenging.
Here are the six data points that the author recommends including in a user research report to help build a user research history for the project.
User Research Reports: Six Data Points to Create a ‘User Research History’
When researchers ask for a nationally representative (”nat. rep.”) sample, they mean that the population of interest is the entire population of the country in question and that the sample should reflect this in its structure. At its best then the nat. rep. sample will ‘look like’ the population irrespective of how it is viewed. The numbers of men vs. women will match the national proportions, the percentage in each age group or each region will exactly match the population etc. On non-demographic measures (such as product ownership or psychographics) the sample should match the population.
What is National Representative Sample?
The rise of emerging markets has fundamentally altered the global marketplace. Actually, it has created a global marketplace, a vast, wired network of manufacturers, programmers, and designers who can be anywhere. But consumers and users are always local. And when it comes to developing successful products and services for these users, there is an almost infinite number of ways to get it wrong.
Less than half of companies competing in emerging markets have been very successful in meeting their goals, according to one recent study. Bringing a new product to an emerging and possibly untapped market is seductive. But operational investments to enter the market are steep, and failure to launch can be very, very costly.
The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari—Mistakes in Cross-Cultural Design (PDF, 1.3 mb)
Cooper created an interaction design methodology known as Goal-Directed Design. Their methodology identifies the goals and behaviors of users and directly translates them into the design. UIE’s Christine Perfetti recently had the chance to talk with Kim Goodwin , VP Design & General Manager at Cooper (www.cooper.com), about Goal-Directed Design and personas.
Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin
Many people are collecting the wrong kind of user feedback - feedback that should not be believed or does not say what they think it says. These are smart people, but they harbor some misconceptions about collecting user feedback. These misconceptions lead to poor feedback collection practices which leads to bad data which leads to poor planning decisions. All too often, having bad data can be worse than having no data at all.
Collecting User Feedback: You’re doing it wrong
.
How to get your firm added
If you want to get your firm listed below, send in complete details using the submission form.
Your firm’s name, physical address, phone number, email address and website are the details that are required, without which it won’t get added.
Participant Recruitment Firms in India
Participant Recruitment Firms in Delhi
- iSERVE Market Research Services- innovative research services (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Address: # 101, D-211, Laxman Singh Complex- I, Opp. Community Centre, Munirka, New Delhi- 110067
Ph: 41359431
Mobile: 9810522661
Website: www.irsindia.com
Participant Recruitment Firms in USA
- Matrix research- http://www.matrix-r.com/
- Schlesinger Associates.com- www.schlesingerassociates.com
- Usability Works- (for recruiting as well as design research)
453A Chestnut St, San Francisco, CA 94133
Ph: 415.392.0776
Email: dana at usabilityworks dot net
Website: www.usabilityworks.net
Participant Recruitment Firms that cover multiple countries
IMRB International- Across 26 offices in 12 countries – Algeria, Amsterdam, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, South Korea, UAE-Dubai and UK.
Corporate ethnography isn’t just for innovation anymore. It’s central to gaining a full understanding of your customers and the business itself. The ethnographic work at my company, Intel, and other firms now informs functions such as strategy and long-range planning.
Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy
Summary
Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases.
When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods
.
Here is a nice primer created by Cheskin (consulting and research) and AIGA (formerly the ‘American Institute of Graphic Arts, now called simply ‘the professional association for design’)
This document explains what ethnography is in simple terms how it leads to better and successful design.
Besides the above, the elegant visual design and layout of the document makes reading and understanding easy and a pleasure and as well.
.