Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research

by School of Information Goodman Ph.D., Mike Kuniavsky

Overview

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research aims to bridge the gap between what digital companies think they know about their users and the actual user experience. Individuals engaged in digital product and service development often fail to conduct user research. The book presents concepts and techniques to provide an understanding of how people experience products and services. The techniques are drawn from the worlds of human-computer interaction, marketing, and social sciences. The book is organized into three parts. Part I discusses the benefits of end-user research and the ways it fits into the development of useful, desirable, and successful products. Part II presents techniques for understanding people's needs, desires, and abilities. Part III explains the communication and application of research results. It suggests ways to sell companies and explains how user-centered design can make companies more efficient and profitable. This book is meant for people involved with their products' user experience, including program managers, designers, marketing managers, information architects, programmers, consultants, and investors. - Explains how to create usable products that are still original, creative, and unique - A valuable resource for designers, developers, project managers - anyone in a position where their work comes in direct contact with the end user - Provides a real-world perspective on research and provides advice about how user research can be done cheaply, quickly and how results can be presented persuasively - Gives readers the tools and confidence to perform user research on their own designs and tune their software user experience to the unique needs of their product and its users

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780123848703
Publisher:	Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Series:	Interactive Technologies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	608
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Elizabeth Goodman has taught user experience research and tangible interaction design at the University of California, Berkeley and site-specific art practice at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has also worked with exploratory research and design teams at Intel, Fuji-Xerox, and Yahoo and speaks widely on the design of mobile and pervasive computing systems at conferences, schools, and businesses. She received her PhD from the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley in fall 2013. During graduate school, her scholarly research on interaction design practice was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and an Intel PhD FellowshipMike Kuniavsky is a user experience designer, researcher and author. A twenty-year veteran of digital product development, Mike is a consultant and the co-founder of several user experience centered companies: ThingM manufactures products for ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things; Adaptive Path is a well-known design consultancy. He is also the founder and organizer of Sketching in Hardware, an annual summit on the future of tools for digital product user experience design for leading technology developers, designers and educators. Mike frequently writes and speaks on digital product and service design, and works with product development groups in both large companies and startups. His most recent book is Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design.

Table of Contents

Part I: Why Research is Good and How It Fits Into Product Development1. Typhoon: A Fable2. Do a Usability Test Now!3. Balancing Needs Through Iterative Development4. The User ExperiencePart II: User Experience Research Techniques5. The Research Plan6. Universal tools: Recruiting and Interviewing7. User Profiles8. Contextual Inquiry, Task Analysis, Card Sorting9. Focus Groups10. Usability Tests11. Surveys12. Ongoing Relationship13. Log Files and Customer Support14. Competitive Research15. Others' Hard Work: Published Information and Consultants16. Emerging TechniquesPart III: Communicating Results17. Reports and Presentations18. Creating a User-Centered Corporate CultureAppendicesA. The Budget Research LabB. Common Survey QuestionsC. Observer Instructions

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A practitioner's guide to user research that help users understand what customers want from their products

Editorial Reviews

"The no-nonsense approach includes guidelines, tables for estimating costs, and plenty of detailed practical advice. Simply written, well-structured and highly informative. Don't leave home without it."—Gerry Gaffney, Founder and Director, Information & Design

From the Publisher