User Research

"User research is the process by which designers can understand the relationship between a product and its end users. This relies on understanding who the end users are (usually the customers) and what aspect of this relationship is being explored. User research takes on many different forms and includes market research, product testing, ethnography, usability testing, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, group interviews and questionnaires. Techniques also include card sorting, thinking aloud, blind testing, thought showering, groupwork and competitive design."

In What is User Research?

User research

Crafting a User Research Plan: "Every piece of user research is part of an ongoing research program, even if that program is informal. However, making a program formal provides a number of advantages: It gives you a set of goals, a schedule that stretches limited user-research resources, and results when they're needed most. It also helps you avoid unnecessary, redundant, or hurried research."
User Research Smoke & Mirrors: "I see influential user interface studies based on ridiculously small samples or absurdly crafted test cases. I see praise heaped on supposedly powerful methodologies which at best have a passing resemblance to science."
User Research: Subjectivity and Objectivity in Practice: "In recent months, there has been an interesting dialogue on the IxD Discussion mailing list, in which some participants have questioned the need for and benefits of doing user research rather than relying on the experience and intuition of designers."
Making Use of Use Research: "Designing or redesigning a product often feels like a risky proposition, especially in today's business climate. Those responsible for defining the product offering and marketing want reliable, measurable data to define success both incrementally and overall."

Card sorting

What is Card Sorting: "Card Sorting is a technique for exploring how people group items, so that you can develop structures that maximize the probability of users being able to find items."
Lists of card sorting tools: "While writing the book, I again looked at all the card sorting software tools. Some I discounted at the outset, some I have been using to run a sample sort, looking at how they work and the type of output from them."
Card sorting: a definitive guide: "Card sorting is a technique that many information architects (and related professionals.) use as an input to the structure of a site or product. With so many of us using the technique, why would we need to write an article on it?"
Information design using card sorting: "At the beginning of any information design exercise, it is normal to be confronted by a very long list of potential subjects to include. The challenge is to organise this information in a way that is useful and meaningful for the users of the system."

Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysis: "Every industry has its own version of the competitive analysis and its function is clear: to line up your product with other products and show where yours falls short and where yours is superior. Each industry brings a different spin to this old favorite and user experience design has its own set of criteria by which to judge competitors."

Field studies

Field Studies: The Best Tool to Discover User Needs: "The most valuable asset of a successful design team is the information they have about their users. When teams have the right information, the job of designing a powerful, intuitive, easy-to-use interface becomes tremendously easier. When they don't, every little design decision becomes a struggle."
Field Research Fundamentals: An Interview with Kate Gomoll: "Kate Gomoll is a recognized expert in the area of Field Research and Usability Testing. UIE's Ashley McKee recently had the opportunity to talk with Kate about how she and her team at Gomoll Research & Design conduct field studies. Here is what Kate had to say about her experience."

Paper Prototyping

Paper Prototyping: Getting User Data Before You Code: "With a paper prototype, you can user test early design ideas at an extremely low cost. Doing so lets you fix usability problems before you waste money implementing something that doesn't work."
Looking Back on 16 Years of Paper Prototyping: "Despite amazing advances in prototyping technology, paper prototyping is still one of our favorite tools for gaining quick insights on new designs. As we look back at how we've used this technique over the last 16 years, we can see that it has adapted well to the new demands from today's design process."
Paper Prototyping: "As interfaces become ever more complex and development schedules seem to get shorter and shorter, you may find it useful to give up your user-interface modeling software for awhile in favor of something simpler. All you need is paper, pens, scissors, and your imagination."

Personas

An introduction to personas and how to create them: "Before embarking on any intranet or website design project,
it is important to understand the needs of your users. It is then possible to identify the features and functionality that will make the intranet or website a success, and how the design can support users with different goals and levels of skill."
Persona Creation and Usage Toolkit (PDF): "This toolkit provides resources for a variety of situations. Pick and choose what's appropriate for your's.
My goal is to enable you to use personas in several ways..."
Perfecting Your Personas: "It's easy to assemble a set of user characteristics and call it a persona, but it's not so easy to create personas that are truly effective design and communication tools. If you have begun to create your own personas, here are some tips to help you perfect them."
Making Personas Work for Your Web Site: An Interview with Steve Mulder: "Steve Mulder is Principal Consultant in the User Experience group at Molecular, an Internet consulting firm in Boston, and author of the book, The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. UIE's Jared M. Spool recently had the chance to talk with Steve after his UIE Virtual Seminar, The User is Always Right: Making Personas Work for Your Web Site, to answer some additional questions about personas."

Usability

Usability 101: Introduction to Usability: "How to define usability? How, when, and where can you improve it? Why should you care? This overview answers these basic questions."
Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing: "Through our own research at UIE, and in our ongoing discussions with expert usability practitioners, we've identified several proven techniques for getting stakeholders onboard."
Practical Usability Testing: "Usability testing should be an iterative practice, completed several times during the design and development life-cycle. The end result is an improved product and a better understanding of the users that we're designing for."
5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages: "A simple usability testing technique can help design teams quickly measure how a content page performs with users. We call it the 5-Second Test."