After many user research interviews, tests and pilot runs – the team at PeakXD in Australia has developed a program, in collaboration with the British Computing Society (BCS), that upon completion gives you a UX certification valid in over 200 countries. 

We sat down (or, video called, technically) with Tania Lang – one of the few instructors and writers of PeakXD’s 12-week Accelerator Program – to talk about the exciting new course.

What were the motivations to create a certified course?

It was just something that a lot of our customers were crying out for. It benchmarks professional’s skills to an international standard, and makes them stand out from other graduates. It’ll help their career progression – either by side-stepping or moving up, it attracts better-paying roles and future proofs them by staying current. 

We’d often hear, “Do I get a piece of paper at the end? Should I go back to university and do a three- year, two-year masters, or should I do some course? What piece of paper do I get at the end?” So, it’s largely around customer demand really wanting that piece of paper.

I actually interviewed some employers recently, and pretty much all of them said the piece of paper is nice to have, but the experience is more important. If someone comes to them with 10 years of experience but no piece of paper, that’s probably better than a piece of paper and no experience – but if you have a degree or a certification, that’s a nice extra. I wouldn’t say it compensates for lack of experience, but it brings them extra points, if you like. It’s not critical, but it’s nice.

How is it certified with the BCS?

For many years – 20 even – we’ve been talking about certification in the industry – but no one could ever agree on what that was or what that looked like.  What ended up happening was a lot of vendor certification. You’d do a course and get certified for that specific course – but that doesn’t really mean anything.

To me, I think it’s really important to try to build a certain standard and quality within the industry. The challenge in certification with UX has always been that the answer is not always just black and white – “Do you know this or not?” – The answer to something depends on so many things. It’s a little more challenging trying to do certification when the answer’s often “It depends.”

The British Computer Society have sat down with a team, including David Travis*, in the UK and worked out a syllabus that covers a lot of the basics. It’s foundational. So, this is not an advanced course, but it goes through all the foundations that we would expect a UX person to know. It’s focused more on approach and methodology rather than design principles, which are always changing.

Who is this course best for?

Our main target audience, our personas that we’ve created, are primarily people who have some experience in digital or IT, or marketing or psychology or research who want to sidestep their career into UX. They often have a lot of transferrable skills, but they don’t always have the confidence and realize the value of those skills. For example, if they’re a Business Analyst, they might be good at interviewing or stakeholder management – skills we highly value as UX people. The course is giving these people the tools and frameworks that they need to sidestep.

It’s also for people who may have just sidestepped or are starting out in UX roles, and they get that impostor syndrome. They really just don’t have the confidence, or the knowledge, and they’re making bad design decisions and bad research approaches because they don’t have that good, strong grounding. This course gives them those vital foundations to improve.

The PeakXD online UX Accelerator course is great. I love the artefacts and templates, and the step by step guidance throughout… It has practical examples and advice and working on a real business…
I feel like I am gaining practical knowledge which will help gain a career in UX.

– Tamsen M, Melbourne

How is the course structured?

You’re working on a real project, for a real client, in the program. So, it’s set up with 10 modules over 12 weeks, which includes 74 video tutorials – that’s approximately 60 hours to complete it. One of the things that I do in my face to face training is I tell a lot of stories… because you learn through storytelling. People have said “Oh, online won’t work because we’ve got so much value from the stories that you tell in training,” – so I’ve made sure all the stories I tell face-to-face are in the videos as well.

Each module runs for a week and have six to eight lessons in them. Participants can do them at any time… however, people aren’t always good at online learning. They’re not good at self-pacing. What we’ve done to combat this is rather than it being self-paced, is we have a specific intake date. Everyone in that intake works through the program together. Each week you watch videos, do an activity, and then have a live coaching call where they get feedback on the activities that they’ve submitted and also a chance to ask questions. At the end of the 12 weeks you take an exam (at one of the 5000 approved exam centres across 175 countries) which gives you your certification, and you also participate in a digital showcase.

It’s a global course, so what happens with the live coaching call for people in different time zones?

The live coaching call session is recorded, so if they are at three o’clock in the morning in the US, they can watch it the next day. They can also submit their questions prior to that to make sure, if they’ve got any questions, they still get addressed in that coaching call.

How do the real-world projects work?

One of the things we have designed in our program is the opportunity to work on a real project for a real client over 12 weeks and build up that project, real-world experience and also your portfolio at the same time.

We’re trying to replicate a project where participants are working collaboratively. It’s hard when it’s online, everyone’s remote, working individually. So, each week everyone uploads their content, their interview findings, etc. to a Google Drive, and then they can see each other’s work. Between all of them, they might to 10 or 15 interviews – they can then draw on everyone else’s interview findings as well as their own. That way we’re trying to get collaboration just like we would in an agency, where people go off and do interviews, and come back together. We’re trying to get as much collaboration happening as possible, like you would on a real project. That’s why we’re all working on the same project as well, not all different projects.

What kinds of projects do participants get to work on?

We’re trying to find charities or non-for-profit organizations, because part of our philosophy at PeakXD is to empower others to improve the world through human-centered design. We’re trying to find projects where we can do good.

For example, with our next project we’re working with an organization that supports wildlife rescuers – which is a very emotive. As the whole organization is based around supporting wildlife carers, they’re trying to map out the best approach to do that. First of all research; what do they need? And then what do they need digitally? What’s the digital solution to that? We haven’t worked out what the problem is yet, so the program will first of all work out the problem, and then work out what digital solution is… maybe a Facebook group, a website, a forum, an app… we don’t know yet, but that’s for the students to work out.

How does the course help participants connect to potential employers?

We do two things – a portfolio and a digital showcase.

In week 12 we go through building a portfolio. We encourage people to keep records, journals of everything they’re doing – what was challenging, what was the approach, what went well, what didn’t go well – that sort of stuff. When they go to do their portfolio, they build it based on that – because employers aren’t just interested in a bunch of artifacts, they want to see the approach, the challenges, all that sort of stuff.

The other thing we’re doing to help them get a job at the end of the program is what we call a digital showcase. After their course, they can upload their portfolio or link to a portfolio, and that’s going to be open to a small number of employers and UX recruiters who understand the UX space. It’s a way for recruiters to see that pool of graduates and their materials and portfolios.

It’s just a way to showcase digitally, rather than face to face. UX people aren’t always good at selling their own wares, and selling themselves, so this way it’s a little bit less intimidating, and also non-geographic as well.

Why would people choose this course over another out there?

Asides from the certification, we really wanted to try and create something as rigorous as possible but at a budget that people could actually afford. To do this we decided to go with group coaching, but we’re also giving individual feedback when participants upload activities. So they get the best of both individual feedback and collaborative working.

We’ve also set up an arrangement with study loans (for Australian residents), so that if people can’t afford an up-front fee, they can apply through study loans. It’s basically a $200 up-front fee, and the interest rate is pretty reasonable, and then they basically can pay that off over up to four years. So, they could pay it off in as little as $27 a week over four years. That’s nice to be able to offer that for those that can’t afford it upfront.

How have people responded to the course so far?

We had someone recently who had already done another vendor’s course who did our pilot with us – basically she would do the course as normal, but in exchange for her feedback on what to improve she got the course for free – and she said “I’m already finding this is better than the other course,” which was exciting to hear! We did a lot of work over last year putting this together and that was really encouraging that our first pilot was already hitting the mark.

Bonus!

Normally, PeakXD only offers 12-month access to their course modules, as they continually update the modules as new UX trends and foundations come out.

For UX Mastery readers they are kindly extending that 12 month ONLY access – to lifetime access to the video lessons for as long as their program is running (provided your account remains in good standing).

Use referral code UXMASTERY when registering to gain lifetime access.
Enrol now to be part of the October 21st intake.

*A previous version of this article mistakenly named only David Travis as a collaborator on this project with BCS, when it was, in fact, a whole team. You can read more about the certification here.

The post Interview with Tania Lang, Instructor of PeakXD’s Accelerator Program. appeared first on UX Mastery.

We don’t have eggnog or mistletoe or roast turkey, and we most definitely don’t have snow.

Nope – that magical time of year is marked in my memory as a time of sunshine, beaches, baches, bbqs, and my dad making disastrous present choices and setting himself on fire.

Hawk Christmas’s take the user experience one step further (or backwards, depending on how you look at it). They’re all about the laughter and family – the human experience.

I’ve always taken a certain kind of pride in being a thoughtful gift giver. I love spending hours making lists, poring over present ideas and indulging my online shopping habit with impunity.

I didn’t inherit that from my dad.

Dad is a great man. He’s fiercely loyal, has an amazing work ethic, a killer sense of humour, and is without a doubt the best golfer in the ladies team that he’s somehow wangled his way into.

But a great gift-giver he is not. Let me tell you about a few of his most notorious gifts.

The most traumatising of all my Christmas memories was the year I turned 6. Dad bought mum a wall-mounted rechargeable kitchen knife and assorted other utensils unit. His plan was to mount it on the wall, charged and ready to go for when it came time to carve the ham.

Somehow, I got roped into that plan.

We waited until mum was at a neighbour’s house having a traditional Christmas Eve gin and tonic and snuck home to execute the plan. It was very nearly more than the plan which was executed.

Unsure as to where the wires were situated behind our 1970s brown tiled splashback, Dad got me to stand beside him with a gumboot on each arm, ready to push him off the current should he drill through a wire and electrocute himself. I stood in a state of paralysed fear and watched him systematically destroy the splashback with a progression of inappropriate drill bits.

Fast forward 6 years to the summer that I turned 12. That was the Christmas that dad bought us kids a self-buttering-microwave-popcorn-popper. Microwaves were pretty new on the scene in those days, and the technology wasn’t great. Disregarding all warnings on the box, dad substituted margarine for butter and cranked up the microwave. We watched in shock as the entire contraption melted before our eyes, emitting a cloud of toxic gas which filled the house and took several days to clear.

That Christmas stands out as particularly memorable because when Dad reached over the dinner table to hand to me the gift, he got too close to one of mum’s special Christmas candles, and his polyester shirt caught on fire.

To carry on the ‘80s microwave theme, the year I turned 16, dad bought my mum a contraption for hard-boiling eggs. Mum pretended to love it did an admirable job of looking heartbroken as she re-gifted it to me when I left home to go to university. The night before my graduation I’d had a few celebratory beers and upon arriving home, needed a quick snack to soak up the booze before heading to bed. I popped an egg into the aforementioned contraption, shut the lid, cranked up the microwave and sat back for 2 minutes to wait. Upon opening the microwave door, the device exploded open, blowing burning hot egg yolk all over my face.

Fair to say, those graduation photos aren’t much to be proud of.

But without a doubt, my favourite dad present (and fire) was the year I turned 10. The night started with a spectacular display at the church carol service. True to form, dad got confused about the order of singing and rather than waiting for the third verse of the hymn to sing with the congregation, he belted out a momentous duet with the soloist.

This was punctuated by the fact that the paper guard around his prayer candle had caught on fire and was slowly burning his hand, filling the church with the smell of singed hair.

Then it was gift time. To this day it remains a mystery as to what he was thinking and where he got it from, but under cover of darkness, dad presented me with a full, adult sized windsurfer. It still sits slowly disintegrating in its never-been-used state behind a shed somewhere in suburban Auckland.

So, Dad doesn’t always get it right when it comes to Christmas presents, but it’s those memories of beaches, baches, bbqs, sunshine and time spent with family that are the real gifts.

They’re the things that I’ll carry with me forever – the laughs and the love. The human experience.

Looking for more #UXmas cheer? We’re counting down the days to Christmas with a digital advent calendar. Join in the fun at uxmas.com or follow along on Twitter @merryuxmas for a daily UXmas gift.

The post The Laughs (and Fires) of Childhood Christmases Past appeared first on UX Mastery.

If this sounds intimidating, it shouldn’t. The technique is straightforward; you just need to break it down into steps.

The first step is to decide whether this type of testing would be useful for you. Competitive testing can help you:

• See where your product falls short – and where it does well – so you can focus attention where it is most needed.
• Understand what your competition does well that you can incorporate or address in your product.
• Better understand why people choose your product, and why they choose your competitors’ products so you know whom you’re serving and how you can best help them (or find out your users are not who you thought they were).
• Make a case to stakeholders about work that must be done to make your product competitive – or, conversely, to show how well you perform in comparison to competitors.

The reason my fellow researcher and I decided to conduct a competitive study at iContact several years ago was to prove to our leadership that the message-creation tool was not competitive and needed an overhaul.

It worked. The tool, which had not been on the product roadmap, was made the top priority once stakeholders saw how poorly the current version of it fared against two competitors: Constant Contact and MailChimp.  

Building the case for our study

Our UX team had heard from the customer support team and read in online reviews that users had a lot of difficulty with several aspects of the message creation tool.

For example:

• It was difficult to upload and work with images.
• Customers often lost their work in the middle of creating messages.
• Finished messages that looked good to users looked completely different (read: bad) when they reached customers’ inboxes.;

These issues sounded critical, so we sought to better understand what was going on.

First, I conducted a competitive analysis, writing up how important features compared in iContact and its competitors. Second, I conducted an online survey to get quantitative data about the issues affecting customers and what they most wanted to see fixed. Finally, we conducted the competitive study.

Designing a study

If you think competitive testing could be useful to you, ask yourself a few questions:

• Which competitor products should I include? Is it possible to get access to them?
• What criteria do I want participants to have? If it makes sense for your study, it can work well to find participants who are not familiar with any of the products so they have no existing knowledge or biases. 
• What tasks should participants perform? It’s easiest to compare performance if participants perform the same tasks on all the products. Be sure to switch the order in which participants use the products to avoid bias effect. 
• What metrics should I capture during testing? The time spent on each task, whether participants were actually able to complete the tasks, and ease of use ratings are all good measures to track.

Conducting the study

When planning for the competitive study, we wanted participants who had experience sending email newsletters to audiences for their companies or volunteer organisations. Since we were recruiting through friends and family and Craigslist, we couldn’t be as specific as we liked about what tools they had used, but made sure they represented using a mix of our product, our competitors’ products, and email applications such as Outlook. We recruited 16 participants and gave them each a $100 gift card.

We selected five important tasks for an email marketing tool – including finding a template, editing an image and importing text from MS Word – and had each participant perform them in all three tools. (We did have to sign up for fake accounts in the two external tools)

The test took two hours per participant. We recorded the time it took each person to complete – or give up on – each task; which tasks they completed successfully; and their responses to a few rating questions – such as their satisfaction level with their completed messages and the ease of creating messages in each tool. One interesting finding was that our customers tended to choose us because we were least expensive, not because we were good.

Getting an actionable result

We analysed all the findings and wrote a report with the results of this study.  As we had suspected, it showed that iContact’s tool fared poorly. The presentation to the leadership team really drove home the fact that change was imperative.

We started by giving the leaders in attendance seven minutes to work on a specific message in iContact’s tool, to familiarise them with the (frustrating) experience.  After this exercise, they were engaged in the results and felt the users’ pain when we showed videos of participants suffering through losing messages after working so hard to create them.

Soon after our presentation, the leaders gave the go-ahead for a long-term effort to redesign the tool. This resulted in a much-improved interface that upon release immediately reduced customer service calls and increased conversions to iContact.

Your turn

As you’re coming up with ideas for researching your product, keep competitive testing in mind. It’s definitely doable and can give you great information about where you stand and how you should proceed with your designs.

The post Know what you’re up against with competitive testing appeared first on UX Mastery.

Observational research is a powerful research technique – one of the many popular qualitative methods used in the industry. The information gleaned from observational research helps you discover what your users think and experience, and how you can fix problems they face.

What is qualitative research?

Research observations fall under the umbrella of qualitative research, so let’s dive into definitions.

Qualitative research is exploratory, and it delves deep into the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of your participants. It gives us an opportunity to identify problems and uncover answers for questions we didn’t know we had by tapping into the minds of our research participants.

Qualitative research takes a number of different forms, such as interviews, focus groups, and usability testing, and many of these methods involve writing research observations. As you can see by these types of research methods, each one provides a forum for people to discuss a topic in depth to provide quality insights.

Some of the many benefits of using qualitative research are:

• It provides in-depth data that can help you make informed decisions (instead of just percentages and statistics that you get from quantitative data)
• It gives you information on how the product or item you’re testing actually fits into the lives of your users
• It’s powerful in small quantities. Unlike quantitative research, you don’t need lots of participants in order to get great results from it

What are research observations?

Researchers Catherine Marshall and Gretchen Rossman defined observations in their book “Designing Qualitative Research” as “the systematic description of events, behaviours, and artefacts in the social setting chosen for study”.

In the case of UX research, these are things that happen when you’re watching people perform certain tasks or when you ask them interview questions.

For example, when conducting a usability test, a research observation would be something the researcher sees or hears — something that provides insight into what the research participants are doing, thinking and feeling. This could be that it took 10 minutes for the participant to find the login screen of the website you’re testing, and the participant expressed frustration.

There are various kinds of observations you can note down in your research. A paper from Michael Angrosino, citing research from Oswald Werner and Mark Schoepfle, identifies three different kinds of observational research processes.

1. Descriptive observation: The researcher observes and notes down everything that occurs. This can produce a lot of data — some of which may be relevant and some irrelevant to your study. An example of a descriptive observation is noting down the sounds going on in the background when a user testing session is being held.
2. Focused observation: The researcher will only analyse material that’s relevant to what the researchers are studying. For example, the facial expressions a participant makes when trying to perform a specific task, or tracking the gaze of a participant.
3. Selective observation: The researcher looks at specific activities. For example, the way each participant navigates the menu on the homepage.

Interestingly, authors Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw penned similar thoughts in their book “Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes”. According to the authors, writing field notes (which are research observations) “is not a matter of passively copying down ‘facts’ about ‘what happened’. Rather, these descriptive accounts select and emphasise different features and actions while ignoring and marginalising others.”

Research observations, once collected, allow you to drill down deeper into the behaviours of your users. Observational research can also help you to verify or explain other kinds of research you have collected or are collecting, such as a Treejack study or other methods of remote user testing. Remember, what your users may say in a study might not be what they’re actually thinking or feeling. Observational research will help you get over that hurdle.

Tips for writing better research observations

When it comes time for you to begin your research and note down your observations, keep these tips front of mind.

1. Write your research observations at the time of your research session. If you’re unable to do this, make sure you jot them down as soon as the session is over. They’ll be much fresher in your mind then!
2. If you’re part of a research team, don’t discuss the session with your teammates until you’ve compiled all your observations. You might find yourself incorrectly recalling things that happened during the session. However, make sure you go through your observations with the rest of your team when you’re all done writing up your notes. This will help you spot trends in your data.
3. Always record the audio in your sessions. If you can, use video as well so you can capture facial expressions, body movements and things going on in the background.
4. While you’re recording your session, write down timestamps for anything important. For example, you might note down the timestamps for the different parts of the site you discussed with your participant.
5. Include smaller details in your observations. Sometimes, the littler things can have a big effect. For example, a participant using a mouse without a mouse pad could have contributed to their frustration at trying to navigate your site.
6. Don’t neglect the big things either. Conducting research can be exciting. So exciting, in fact, you might just forget a few key details like jotting down your participant’s name and role in the research session. Templates and generic forms can be handy for jogging your memory.
7. Once you’ve finished taking your notes, import them into Reframer for a headstart with sensemaking. Alternatively, take Reframer with you and jot down observations as you go.

You might be about to embark on a qualitative research project for the first time, or a seasoned veteran. Either way, I hope you’ll be able to record better observations using Optimal Workshop’s qualitative research tool Reframer.

Whether you’re researching alone or as part of a team, just remember that preparation, detail, and organisation are key to helping you get great research results. Happy testing!

The post How to write effective research observations appeared first on UX Mastery.

While most websites and software products should be easy enough for anyone to use, the best feedback comes from actual or representative users. Finding the right participants. however, can be a frustrating logistical challenge.

Creating effective participant screeners really helps smooth out the process.

What’s a screener and why do I need one?

A screener is just what it sounds like – a list of questions intended to identify your target users and weed out those who aren’t suitable for your study.

The first step in creating an effective screener is to take a step back and identify the types of people who will be using your product and who you want feedback from. If you already have personas, great! Pick your target persona and start there. If you don’t, here’s my invitation to go ahead and create them.

Depending on resources and the type of work you’re doing, you may choose to either:

• Use a screener in real time and talk directly to people, or
• Set up a remote survey tool with survey questions.

Either way, here are my best practice tips on how to write participant screeners and find the right people for your research.

Question focus

Even if you don’t have formal personas, take the time to identify the top few behaviours, contexts, motivations and attitudes of the type of people you are designing for and want feedback from. Focus your screener questions on those elements.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re creating a travel-booking application. The way a parent books a family vacation is different from the way an assistant books last-minute business trips.

You may be interested in hearing from both types of users, but make sure you have enough of each type of user and know that context before you move forward. You may even want to ask them different questions or observe them in different contexts. Key questions here relate to who they book travel for and for what purpose.

Notice that I didn’t mention demographics. A person’s age range and gender won’t tell you how they use your travel app. In fact, the same person could act as different persona types in different contexts.

Take a 35-year-old mother. She could spend months researching perfect vacation hotels and screening for deals at home, but book the first direct flight she sees for a last-minute work meeting. Her priorities and behaviour could vary greatly depending on her context.

You may also consider whether someone is an existing or potential user, their technical skills, or if they have experience with a competitor. This behaviour may not be directly related to persona characteristics, but provides valuable additional insight for your research analysis.

Finally, add questions that eliminate any conflicts of interest, such as accidentally testing an employee of a specific company or ‘professional usability testers’ who attempt to join as many studies as possible for compensation.

Question order

Ask elimination questions at the very beginning to avoid wasting people’s time.

If you know that you’re targeting last-minute business travellers, put the question that identifies that user type at the very beginning. Then, order the questions from highest to lowest priority. Don’t worry about whether they ‘flow together’, unless there is a specific follow-up question to a previous answer. That way, you can be efficient and ask as few questions as possible to eliminate inappropriate candidates.

Keep in mind that the most effective screeners are the shortest. There is no ideal number of questions, as the granularity of necessary participants depends on the study goals. That being said, don’t use screeners to gather general information that you could easily ascertain during the research process. You’ll want to ask again to verify anyway, and longer screeners make it more likely that a potential participant will drop out.

Ask precise, easily-answered questions

The remaining best practices here are actually true for any survey questions, but I’m mentioning them because they’re especially important in screening participants.

Ask precise questions with clear answers. For instance, if you want to know how often someone uses an app, use numbers of hours instead of vague terms like, ‘sometimes’ or ‘frequently’.

Make the answers distinct so there’s no confusion. If you’re asking about age ranges, you could say that you are looking for 19 and under, 20-29, 30-39, and so on, rather than 0-20, 20-30, 30-40 etc. It seems simple, but the overlap can be very confusing and potentially lead you to incorrectly grouping people.

It’s also important to include ‘other’, ‘none of the above’, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘not applicable’ options. This way, candidates don’t feel compelled to pick the closest thing or something random and end up in your study when they should be disqualified or screened out.  

But don’t make it too easy

You never want to be leading or obvious about the kind of people you want to participate in your study.

By virtue of the fact that people are taking your screener, you know they want to take part in your study. And it’s human nature to try to conform to what you know someone is looking for. So don’t be too obvious about what you’re looking for in a participant.

Here’s an example. If you want to talk to someone who has purchased a phone in the last month, don’t ask them that! Instead, ask which of a long list of items they’ve purchased in the last month, with ‘phone’ as just one of many multiple choice options. That way, they won’t know which option you’re looking for.

You can also ask multiple-elimination and acceptance questions to obscure your desired answers. For instance, if you want to talk to people who spend more than 20 hours per week on something, the instinct is usually to create ranges with ’21 or more’ as the only answer that moves forward.

However, if you break up the options to something like: 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35 and 36 or more, you have 4 answer options that get eliminated and 4 that move forward.

Multiple eliminations and acceptances make it harder to tell which is the ‘desired’ answer. I also avoid yes/no questions as much as possible, because it’s easier to obscure your true purpose with open-ended or multiple choice questions.

If possible, I like to add at least one open-ended question to a screener to see how a participant responds. Shy, quiet types are often the most uncomfortable in research settings and the hardest to glean insights from, so I like to look for someone who is willing to express their opinions, whether written or verbal.

Remember: this is your first impression

Finally, remember that a screener is often the first interaction a user has with the research process at your company or client, and you want to ensure it’s a positive one. 

Provide a warm, open introduction setting the context of the screener and the study. You don’t want people to assume that they’ll get to participate in a study just for being screened, but you do want them to feel comfortable answering questions and motivated to move through.

Provide context and clear expectations about next steps if they pass the screening: how does scheduling work, how long will they need to spend and where do the sessions take place, compensation, etc. You’ll never be able to answer every question upfront or please everyone, but you can ensure that the highest number of candidates actually show up to your sessions if you give them information upfront.

There are many moving parts to consider when putting together a UX study to ensure it’s successful. Writing a screener is one of the first, vital steps. It takes practice to make clear, efficient screeners, but it’s necessary so you can be sure your target users are represented in your studies.

The post How to write participant screeners for better UX research results appeared first on UX Mastery.

As we’ve mentioned before, the academic path—while not the only option—is a legitimate path to follow, whether you complete a tertiary degree at a Bachelors, Masters, Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma level.

Unfortunately, User Experience as a discipline is not yet well-established in many universities, although it is increasing in credibility. However, there are quite a few other related fields that you can study at a tertiary level: Interaction Design, HCI, Product Design, Information Architecture, Digital Design, Interactive Arts, and others …

Enter our comprehensive list of UX Degrees.

Our UX Degrees resource is a global list of tertiary education degrees currently being offered in these fields. You can enter keywords into the text field to filter courses, or sort by country, city, institution, or course name.

• View the big list of UX Degrees

Let us know if you are aware of any others—we are keen to keep this list as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible!

The post 6 Degrees of User Experience (Actually, More Than 70…) appeared first on UX Mastery.

This is the second in our series of reviews of online UX courses. Read some of our other reviews or browse the full list of online UX courses.

Course Information

• Course Name: User Experience: The Ultimate Guide to Usability
• Author: Dr David Travis
• Hosted by: udemy
• Length: 53 lectures + bonus material (approx 7.5 hours of video content)
• Intended Audience: web designers, newcomers to the field of usability, intermediate UX designers
• What You’ll Learn: A comprehensive “soup-to-nuts” introduction to user-centred design, and the techniques for achieving good usability in the design of software, including contextual inquiry, user testing, paper prototyping, card sorting, personas, scenarios and more.
• What You Won’t Learn: Techniques not directly related to usability aren’t covered, like how to perform competitor analysis or collaborative sketching.
• Assumed Knowledge: Basic familiarity with web design projects would be an advantage.
• Price at time of review: US $199 (Save 20% by subscribing to the UX Mastery newsletter)

Review

A few weeks ago we reviewed Amir Khella’s online course, Design Your User Experience In 7 Simple Steps. Khella’s approach to UX was well suited to folks working on a startup—perhaps for themselves—and who had a technical background. However, it was lacking in the people side of things, and didn’t cover any of the tried-and-tested UX techniques like those listed in our UX Techniques Bank.

This course takes a different approach: it’s a comprehensive walkthrough of the field of usability. Dr David Travis is both an experienced practitioner and a gifted educator, and this course really does live up to its “ultimate guide” title. Dr Travis covers a ton of UX techniques in depth, and explains them in a friendly, humorous fashion. We’ve talked about possibly creating our own courses here on UX Mastery—well, if we were to ever tackle such a thing, the bar just got set very high.

The Presenter

Dr. David Travis is the Managing Director of Userfocus, an independent consultancy in the UK that specialises in user experience. He has worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience since 1989—that’s nearly 25 years of experience. David also holds a BSc and a PhD in Psychology, and he is a Chartered Psychologist. He’s written scientific papers and published a few books on the topic. This is a guy who knows what he’s doing.

And it shows through in the video lectures. Rather than lose touch with beginners in the field, as so often happens with ‘experts’, Dr Travis has also been teaching in-person workshops on user experience for years, and it’s the content from these workshops that informs this online course. His tone is friendly but authoritative; there is humour peppered throughout the course, and the examples are often entertaining but always educational.

Target Audience

This course is primarily targeted at newcomers to user experience. There’s no real assumed knowledge, so it would be suitable for visual designers, project managers, content producers, product managers or marketers—anyone with an interest in usability. Because it’s so comprehensive (the term “soup to nuts” comes to mind), I imagine this course could also be useful for more experienced practitioners who are looking for a refresher, or want to validate some aspect of how they go about implementing a certain technique.

Stream or Download

I mentioned in my last review that I am a fan of the udemy in-browser experience. The option to download videos is handy, although there’s no easy way to download all of them in one hit—possibly to discourage piracy? This time round, I installed the udemy app, and watched some of the video lectures on my iPad, which worked great!

Why I Hate This Course

There’s one big reason why I hate this course—and that’s because I wish I’d created it myself! This really is online education at its best: the content is comprehensive, well-structured, and up-to-date, and it’s delivered by an instructor who is likeable, funny, and uses interesting examples. There are case studies and pop quizzes along the way to help you validate your learning, and the video and audio quality is high. Really, you can’t go wrong. If you’re after an online course that teaches you how to do user-centred design, and equips you with the tools and templates to go change the world (or at least your own organisation) then this is the course for you.

Pros

• Well structured, well-paced content from a knowledgable presenter.
• Comprehensive walk-through of the user-centred design process, including coverage of all of the major usability tools and techniques
• Real-world cases studies and occasional humour keeps things interesting
• Pop quizzes through-out help to validate your understanding of the content
• Comes with downloadable templates and worksheets you can apply on your own projects
• “Refresher course” is available by email after completing the course
• Includes a range of material to suit a range of learning styles, including video, short books, and even comics.

Cons

• Some people may find the content a little slow at times. Personally, I liked the “gently, gently” pace, and the anecdotal stories helped to reinforce the content for me.
• There’s no play-along-at-home example woven throughout this course. That said, there are a handful of standalone activities and pop quizzes, so you still have ample opportunity to test and apply your knowledge.
• 7.5 hours is a fair investment of your time. While for many this will be a positive thing (value for money!), others may find the sheer volume of information overwhelming. However, there’s no fluff here—if you want to get a solid handle on this stuff, you’ve got no choice but to knuckle down and work through the entire course. If you’re interested in the topic, the time will fly past!

Summary

Overall, User Experience: The Ultimate Guide to Usability is a cracking course. Dr Travis has pulled together a range of content that he’s refined during his years of consulting and teaching in-person workshops, and the result is a mammoth goldmine of useful online UX training. Whether you’re after a solid introduction to user-centred design, or you’re already working as a UX designer and looking for a refresher, you’re likely to find it in this course. The content is comprehensive, up-to-date, and polished. This course really is quite a remarkable achievement, and comes highly recommended.

• Content (how useful, up to date, practical, and comprehensive): 10/10
• Delivery (presentation style, pace, clarity, authority): 10/10
• Production (video quality, audio quality, editing): 9/10
• User Interface (reliable infrastructure, usable interface, convenient): 9/10
• Overall rating: 10/10

Take this course.

The User Experience: The Ultimate Guide to Usability course is hosted at udemy.

The post Review: <em>User Experience: The Ultimate Guide To Usability</em> appeared first on UX Mastery.

Unlike most conferences, rather than calling for papers and speakers Web Directions has an editorial approach — organisers John and Maxine put together programs based on current trends in the industry, and seek out speakers who are working in those areas to give inspiring, entertaining and practical presentations.

This year had some hard questions about where we direct our energies as designers and problem-solvers, with many high-powered minds suggesting that something far beyond simple commercial gains is where we should be looking. As gatekeepers to a digital renaissance we have the responsibility to grease the rails and guide the world towards its potential.

Ten takeaways that had a particular impact on me this year were:

1. Cameron Adams’ opening titles are always an inspiring way to begin the conference – showing the capabilities of the technologies to be discussed gets things off to an impressive start! A behind-the-scenes view has been posted on YouTube.
2. Josh Clark’s opening keynote “Beyond mobile: where no geek has gone before” (sketchnotes) reminded me that UX design must encompass more than just the visuals – touch and other senses play a part in interaction and understanding too – we do have 10-16 other sensory capacities that help us experience the world. Also check out our interview with Josh about designing ‘tapworthy’ apps.
3. Mark Boulton’s talk on “Adapting to responsive design” (read more) explained how the move to adaptive websites implies so much more than just making a ‘stretchy’ site – an honest embrace of this approach should work back into content needs and content management, workflow and project management, and beyond. We should releasing our grip on control and work in a way that is flexible. In essence, adopting responsive web design practices needs to begin in the the boardroom, rather than being left until the developer’s desk.
4. Sara Wachter-Boettcher spoke on “Content strategy for the future” (sketchnotes) and noted the potential for content to be re-used (Create Once Publish Everywhere) if we respect it as more than one big text blockand start giving it shape and form – which she explained as WYSIWYG or WYSIWTF?Most of us will have experienced that abandoning clients to their own content can potentially be disastrous. Working with them, and resisting the urge to simply ‘sell’ them a solution will allow us to invest more deeply in the process. We can aim to do less, facilitate more and ‘teach them to fish’. Tying the ‘content’ roles to the business goals & vision will also empower them to more gracefully adjust with change. 
5. Ben Hammersley (and his moustache) stepped off a long-haul flight from London and straight into presenting an enthralling 60 minute presentation “The Flower, The Field and The Stack” (sketchnotes) for the day one closing keynote – without any slides. After congraulating us for being a population of cyborgs unable to divorce ourselves from our smartphones, he urged us that now is the best possible time to change the world. As the first generation to live with a mindset affected by Moore’s Law and with an enormous, expressive toolkit of fun stuff, we have a duty to be a cultural translator for governments, policy-makers and old-people who make decisions.
6. Tom Coates’ opening keynote for day two “An animating spark” (sketchnotes) made the mundane facinating. Mundane computing – computing experiences for people’s day-to-day lives – doesn’t have to be extreme. The Minority Report-style interfaces of the movies and fridges with built in computers aren’t helping this – the way we think about our future is betraying our future. It doesn’t matter if the benefit is minor as long as the cost is less. We need to design things with taste, simplicity and clarity.
7. Avis Mulhall’s down-to-earth testimonial in “Passion and Purpose” (sketchnotes) was a vulnerable but real-life departure from the design, business and tech-focussed lineup. It was the kind of confronting reset I think we all need from time to time to make sure we don’t forget the important things, and this was valuable in itself – but Avis also provided valuable insights from her experiences with social entrepreneurship, including a reminder that the existing not-for-profit model is broken, and a suggestion that there’s no need to separate doing good from making money. In practice, using a social enterprise model may well have greater potential for impact on world issues.  See more at thinkactchange.org
8. Heather Champ’s “How to grow and sustain a passionate community” (sketchnotes) shared some best practices from her time at Flickr. The thing that really rang strongly from her examples was that the choices you make early in your new site’s life will effect the kind of community you grow for years to come.
9. Josh Clark’s second talk “Buttons are a Hack” (sketchnotes) was an unexpected bonus. It’s not a new talk, but many of us were hearing it for the first time. In it, Josh mentioned that buttons are weak replacements for manipulating content directly and that gestures are the keyboard shortcuts of touch. 
10. Jon Kolko’s “Means to an End” (sketchnotes) brought us back to old-skool design – where craftsmanship was about quality, designing with rigour and not necessarily speed. Jon explained that when we have a mastery of digital messages it can amplify our reach. He then challenged us all about where we’ve chosen to direct this power. If design itself has no subject matter, selecting a subject and solving its problem will have political consequences, and we should use this responsibility carefully.

But as important as the content of the talks is, Web Directions is also about connecting with peers — catching up with old friends and making some new ones, sharing know-how and expertise, or finding an expert. Web Directions South had some great social events on in the evenings where it was good to down some beverages and up some conversations. Matt and I had a great time, and hope to see you there next year!

Take a look at the Web Directions blog and resources site to see slides and hear podcasts from previous events, and don’t forget to check out Matt’s brilliant sketchnotes.

The post 10 Nuggets of UX Wisdom from Web Directions South 2012 appeared first on UX Mastery.

My first foray into user-centred design was limited by an inflexible design process and the project budget was already a concern for my client, but I still wanted to try some of the user-centred design methods I’d read about – user research and testing the design. If I could only pick one, which would it be?

By definition user-centred design (UCD) is characterised as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use a product (using interviews, workshops, analytics, and task analysis, etc), but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users (testing impressions, functionality, usability, accessibility, performance, etc).

Does one of these take priority? Is it better to learn the needs and set the goals upfront, or iteratively refine the end-result with testing?

It depends.

The scope required for these two broad UCD approaches and the things you’re looking to get from them will depend on the characteristics of your project:

• What the product is
• How big the project is, both in workload and cost investment
• Whether the project is a new design or a re-build
• Whether you’re using off-the-shelf components or building from scratch
• Your ability to influence the project brief or the choices used for the solution
• What skills or experience you or your team are most lacking
• How much time you have before interface design needs to start
• How well you know the users and business, and their respective needs
• What your design and development process is

You’re probably already doing some UCD practices, so look for how you can build on these or fill in the gaps between them. So, how do we pin down these juicy bits?

Working out where the value is

Designing for a good user experience has implications that go far beyond usability, visual design and physical affordance. As UX designers, we orchestrate a complex series of interactions. We follow an objective process that helps identify the sweet spot between user needs and the business or internal goals of the project, and launch from there to design something delightful.

That makes it a powerful tool for adding value, so it’s essential to know which is the pointy end of the technique we’re wielding.

When UX techniques are applied well, they can:

• Be used to confirm or inform things we already know something about – a green light for a certain direction, or a small course correction
• Provide insights across the whole product, so the user comes away with a better net experience
• Plug holes or uncertainties in our team’s experience or skill set
• Provide an objective process when there is a lot of money or reputation riding on the outcome

On the other hand, if we accelerate in the wrong direction we’re going to make a bit of a mess. We should avoid UX techniques where they:

• Repeat exactly what we already know, without adding something extra
• Are very time intensive or expensive in relation to what we’ll get from them
• Give us feedback about the things we have most control over
• Are only going to give us quantitative information without knowing why it is important or how to interpret it
• Distract us from focussing on the core issues of our project
• Cause us to rely on assumptions or use inaccurate data
• Are inordinately focussed on a single aspect of our project

Hopefully you can see where the relative benefits of either user research or user testing will be good for your project. Let’s look at how they might be applied.

Some possible approaches:

Some methods rely on input from others. If you plan on skipping these pre-requisites you need to be careful with using assumptions instead of the real data.

User testing is a useful way to correct any errors along the way, but your project can also benefit by knowing the goals you’re aiming for and getting solid user inputs before you’ve committed time or money to a design. Similarly, using only one method will result in a one-dimensional view of the problem.  One is arguably better than none – as long as you choose something that is going to add value for the project.

Neither user research nor user testing are single techniques in themselves. They each cover a range of techniques; some that can be applied relatively quickly and cheaply. Here are 10 UCD techniques that can add value to your project in under 1 hour each:

1. Guerilla usability testing – head down to the local pub or cafe, or set up an online user test using Loop11, UserTesting.com, TryMyUI, IntuitionHQ or one of the many others.
2. Talk to some real users – spend some time on the support phones, visit forums, add a live chat tool like Olark or SnapEngage to your site, find the weak points in yours or a competitors system, but don’t create a whinge session. Capture their needs – don’t just build a product that you think will solve their problem.
3. Interview users by email – users don’t always mean what they say or say what they need, and often prefer to make themselves sound good when writing. However, you’ll get some interesting insights, and won’t have to transcribe any audio.
4. Benchmark your competition – create a spreadsheet and track 10 aspects of your 3 main competitors while looking for opportunities. Good for appropriating ideas and learning what users might expect from your site or app, but be very careful of making the same mistakes your competitors are.
5. Add Google Analytics and/or ClickHeat to an existing website and look for where users are having difficulty. Fix it up, rinse and repeat over time.
6. Coffee meetings / lunch-room chat – have an informal meeting over a hot beverage to get input from stakeholders. Good for politically charged situations, learning about the organisation, and building relationships.
7. Create a Wufoo survey or add Get Satisfaction to your site and post it out to social networks.
8. Find some web standards and best-practices to read up on, and do an heuristic analysis of your existing site or app
9. Use secondary research from Forrester, Nielsen, NN/g or your national bureau of statistics to back up your user comments.
10. Create a design concept wall – stick some A3-size design work on the wall of a hallway and ask your colleagues or your clients co-workers for feedback. This helps socialise the designs, and gets lots more perspective.

With my first user-centred design project I realised that doing three small things would be better than doing one large thing – it allowed me to triangulate for a clearer picture, balance out risks and manage the project throughout the design process.

Introducing UCD practices doesn’t have to mean added expenses or delays to your project. I’m not encouraging you to underfund and overstress your UX process – I think it needs good time and money to do well – but applying UCD doesn’t need to be ‘all or nothing’. If you’re wavering, my ultimate piece of advice would be to just jump in and have a go. It’s easier than you probably think!

How have you integrated a user-centred design approach into your smaller projects? Which did you find was the most important UX technique?

The post A Time-poor, Small-budget Approach to UX appeared first on UX Mastery.

These are difficult questions to answer, because if you ask 5 different people you’re going to get 5 different answers.

In the following video I’m not only going to explain what UX Design is, but also why I believe you should find out more about it, regardless of your job.

UX stands for User Experience. And when we say “user experience”, we’re referring to:

• what,
• when,
• where,
• why, and
• how

someone uses a product—as well as who that person is. So: what, when, where, why, how, and who—these cover the user experience of a product, which is pretty much everything that affects a user’s interaction with that product.

As you can imagine, A UX Designer, who is someone who designs those interactions, is constantly asking a ton of questions. If you’re someone who naturally questions things, UX Design could be a great career move for you, because it’s the answers to these questions that shape a product’s design.

Of course it’s not all about the user’s needs—UX Designers need to take into account a business’s needs as well. It’s no use having a product that people love, if it doesn’t help a business achieve its goals—that’s not a product, that’s a side project. A UX Designer aims for that sweet spot where user needs and business needs overlap.

How do they do this, other than by asking lots of questions?

Well, a UX Designer follows what’s called a user-centred design process. We use a set of tools and techniques to take the user’s needs into account at every stage of the product’s lifecycle. I say product, because these techniques apply to web apps, mobile apps, desktop apps, or even physical products.

OK, that’s all well and good—but why should you care?

I’m going to give you four reasons why I believe this stuff matters so much and you should learn more about it. Note this list doesn’t include the obvious one, which is the fact that paying attention to UX results in you building a product that’s awesome instead of one that people hate using (hopefully that’s a given).

The reasons why I think you should learn more about UX are:

1. You’re probably doing some of this already. One thing I’ve learned is that when you understand how it is that you do what you do, you become infinitely better at it. Like the fable about the centipede who, when asked how it was that he walked, couldn’t give an answer. But when he picked himself up, and examined and flexed each of his hundred legs, he danced the most beautiful dance in the world.
2. User-centred design is a process, which means it’s practically scientific. It’s like taking the scientific method—using analysis and measurement—and applying it to humans and their behaviour. And that’s fascinating to me, this notion that designers are artistic geniuses with a penchant for cutting off their own ear—it’s nonsense. This is a science! Quasi-science. Which leads me to the third reason that UX matter.
3. It’s not that hard. Especially for people who are already technically inclined. I don’t want to go putting myself out of a job here, but you know what? This stuff is not rocket surgery, to borrow from Steve Krug. Anyone can learn the basics of user testing and card sorting and writing scenarios and creating wireframes. It’s actually very straightforward. Which is a good segue to the fourth reason you should care about UX, and that’s that …
4. It’s fun! This stuff is fascinating! A career as a UX Designer is interesting, it’s challenging, it’s rewarding, it pays well, and there’s a very low barrier to entry. A lot of people feel uncomfortable calling themselves a “designer”, because they’re no good at choosing a typeface or a colour palette. Get over it! UX Design is the design behind the visuals. Visual design is just one small part of it. It’s an important part, but some of the best UX Designers I know actually aren’t that great at visual design, but they’re really good at those other areas that are so important.

And that’s pretty much it! So while you might hear terms like information architect, user interface designer, interaction designer, user researcher, or whatever, essentially these are all people with different backgrounds—they might specialise in marketing or technology, or maybe their strengths are in user research, social media or come from a customer support background. Either way, they’re all asking a ton of questions and following a quasi-scientific process to do the design behind the visuals. And they’re having a blast doing it.

That’s what I’d like to leave you with—that if this stuff interests you, you may very well be well placed to have a promising career as a UX designer.

We started UXMastery.com to help newcomers to UX Design learn how to get better. I hope you’ll stick around!

Keen to get started? Check out our ebook, Get Started in UX: the complete guide to launching a career in user experience design.

Related

The post What is UX Design, and Why Should you Care? appeared first on UX Mastery.