Five Sketches™

I’m conducting ethnographic research into how usability analysts regard usability research.
How will I conduct this research?
I’m conducting a form of community-based participatory research, so members of the community—the research subjects—will help me set the questions or lines of inquiry and will influence the research methods. This is appropriate since I’m researching people who research—people […]

Here are three techniques for eliciting more feedback on your designs:

show users some alternatives, so more than one design.
show users a low-fidelity rather than high-fidelity rendering.
ask users to sketch their feedback.

To iterate and improve the design, you need honest feedback.  Let’s look at how and why each of these techniques might work.
Showing alternative designs signals that the design process […]

User-centred design (UCD) advocated involving users in the design process. Have you wondered what form that user involvement could take, and which forms lead to the most successful outcomes?
I recently came across data that Mark Keil published a while ago. He surveyed software companies and correlated project outcomes with the type of user access that designers and developers had.

Type […]

Currently, I’m conducting research on usability analysis and on how Morae software might influence that. My research gaze is rather academic, in that I’m especially interested in the epistemology of usability analysis.
One of my self-imposed challenges is to make my research relevant to usability practitioners. I’m a practitioner and CUA myself, and I have little time for […]