Creative Research tools are automated pieces of software that collect rich, authentic data with the goal of providing 3 I’s: Information, Insights and Inspiration.
Wizard of Oz Technique
The Wizard of Oz technique enables unimplemented technology to be evaluated by using a human to simulate the response of a system.
“Wizard of Oz”. UsabilityNet. 2006. http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/wizard.htm
Wireframes (High-End Prototypes)
Wireframes are often simple HTML pages (or other simulated pages) with a minimum of information and links that can be produced quickly with a site design program.
(Brinck, Gergle. Usability for the Web, p 241)
WebSAT
WebSAT is a definition of The Web Static Analyzer Tool
Web Analytics
“Web analytics, sometimes referred to as Web statistics or technographic research, are a form of quantitative analysis that uses concrete metrics to track user behavior online.” (Visocky O’Grady. A Designer’s Research Manual. p 50)
User Surveys
User surveys are a means of finding out how the software or web site is likely to be used by a specific set of users, and who these users are likely to be.
“User Surveys”. UsabilityNet. 2006. http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/surveys.htm
User Interviews
User Interviews provide directional design input in order to elicit the goals and needs of the user by focusing on how they perform their current tasks independent of the specific product being developed.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 75)
User Goal Analysis
User goals serve as a lens through which designers must consider the functions of a product.
(About Face 2.0 Alan Cooper p62, 2003)
User Experience Goals
Similar to ‘usability goals’, user experience goals are a set of goals to measure the experience a user has with an interactive product.
User Data Logging
The practice of recording user data to then analyze the results to help improve the software/hardware.
Use cases
Similar to scenarios, “use cases also focus on user goals, but the emphasis here is on a user-system interaction rather than the user’s task itself.”
Usability Reports
The usability report accounts for what happened during the test, and is a tool for guiding the design team.
(Brown. Communication Design, p 73)
Usability Goals
A set of goals to determine the usability of a product.
Triad Interviews
Three people who are either similar to each other or are different in a specific way, interviewed by a moderator following an outline or lightly scripted guide, usually for about an hour.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
Thinking Aloud
Thinking aloud (Nielsen, 1994), may be the single most valuable usability engineering method. It involves having a end user continuously thinking out loud while using the system.
Test Plan for Usability Testing
The Usability Test Plan describes the goals, method, and approach for usability test. The test plan includes several different components, from profiles of participants to an outline of a discussion with users.
A simplest test plan consists of a set of goals, a description of the logistics and methods and a set of questions to ask the participants.
(Communication Design, Dan Brown p49,p52 2006)
Task Analysis
Task analysis analyses what a user is required to do in terms of actions and/or cognitive processes to achieve a task. A detailed task analysis can be conducted to understand the current system and the information flows within it.
“Task Analysis”. UsabilityNet. 2006. http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/taskanalysis.htm
Surveys & Questionnaires
“Survey research is a tactic for collecting quantitative information by asking participants a set of questions in specific order. Questions are administered to a sample of individuals, representative of a larger population.”(Visocky O’Grady. A Designer’s Research Manual. p 48)
Super Group Interviews
Fifty to hundred or more people are gathered in a large auditorium to view ideas, products, designs or other exhibits presented on a large screen.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
Subjective Assessment (testing & post-release)
Subjective assessment tells the evaluator how the users feel about the software being tested. This is distinct from how efficiently or effectively they perform with the software. The usual method of assessment is to used a standardised opinion questionnaire to avoid criticisms of subjectivity.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding is a technique borrowed from film making and cartooning. Each step in an interaction, whether between the user and the system, multiple users or some combination thereof.
Contextual Design: Defining Customer-centered systems, Beyer & Holtblatt, 1998
Shadowing method
During a usability test, the tester has an expert user (in the task domain) sit next to him/her and explain the test user’s behavior to the tester.
Scenarios
Scenarios are paradoxically concrete but, rough, tangible but flexible, they implicitly encourage “what-if?” thinking among all parties. They permit the articulation of design possibilities without undermining innovation. Scenarios compel attention to the use that will be made of the design product. They can describe situations at many levels of detail, for many different purposes, helping to coordinate various aspects of the design project.
(Carrol. Making Use: Scenario-based Design of Human-Computer Interaction)
Retrospective Testing
Additional “testing” after-the-fact. After a user testing session has been conducted and videotaped, retrospective testing is reviewing the tape with the user to ask additional questions and get further clarification.
Requirements Meeting
A workshop attended by users and developers who identify usability requirements that can be tested later in the development process.
“Requirements Meeting”. UsabilityNet. 2006. http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/requirements.htm
Remote Testing
Remote usability testing is used when tester(s) are separated in space and/or time from the participants. This means that the tester(s) cannot observe the testing process directly and that the participants are usually not in a formal usability laboratory.
Psychographics
Psychographics is a quantitative tactic used to measure subjective beliefs, opinions, and interests.
(Visocky O’Grady. A Designer’s Research Manual, p 47)
Pilot Test
Before any actual evaluation sessions are conducted you should run a pilot test as a way of evaluating your evaluation session and to help to ensure that it will work.
(Stone, Jarret, Woodroffe, Minocha. User Interface Design and Evaluation p503)
Photo Placement
Photo placement can be simply indicated by using a square with lines extending across opposite angles.
(Brinck, Gergle. Usability for the Web, p 226)
Photo Ethnography
A person is given a camera and asked to capture images of his or her life and describe them with the accompanying notes.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 27)
Persona's
Personas are user models that are presented as specific individual humans. They are not actual people, but are synthesized directly from observations of real people.
(Cooper. About Face 2.0, pp 55-74 X)
Personas are archetypical users with specific goals and needs based on real market and design research.
(Laurel. Design Research, MIT Press, 2003. p 75)
Performance testing
Performance testing is a rigorous usability evaluation of a working system under realistic conditions to identify usability problems and to compare measures such as success rate, task time and user satisfaction with requirements.
“Performance Testing”. UsabilityNet. 2006. http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/testing.htm
Party Group Interviews
A group of people who all know each other gather together in one person’s home and spend 2 to 3 hours conversing with each other and the moderator on a chosen topic.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
Participatory Design
Participatory Design can be broadly defined as a movement to improve the relationship between technology and people. Participatory Design was created by the Scandinavian Collective Resources group, which created a process for inserting workers into processes for the design and management of their own workplaces.
Forlizzi, Jody. “The Product Ecology:
Understanding Social Product Use and Supporting Design Culture” International Journal of Design. 2008. http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/220/143
Paper Prototyping
A paper prototype is made up of interface elements sketched on different pieces of paper so that various application states and screens can be shown without redrawing the interface each time.
(Designing the Obvious, Robert Hoekman jr., p43)
Online Probes
Design probes are tools for understanding human phenomena and exploring new design
opportunities. Probes can for example be diaries with questions and tasks for every day.
N?kki, Virtanen. Utilising social media tools in user-centred design.
Online Discussion Groups
Online discussion groups attempts to conduct various interview techniques virtually.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
One on One Interviews
One person interviewed by a researcher who’s is following a tightly scripted guide or a loose outline. Duration my range from 20 minutes to 1 or more hours.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
Observational Research
Observational research is the systematic process of viewing and recording human behavior and cultural phenomena without questioning, communicating with, or interacting with the group being studied.
(Visocky O’Grady. A Designer’s Research Manual, p 34)
Mockups (Paper)
Paper mockups are slightly higher-quality (although still fairly rough in comparison to the end product), rapidly rendered representations of your major design decisions.
(Brinck, Gergle. Usability for the Web, p 218)
Mockups (General)
Mockups are primarily single-page, static representations of the design space.
(Brinck, Gergle. Usability for the Web, p 16)
Mockups (Digital)
Digital mockups are a higher-quality rapidly rendered representations of major design decisions.
(Brinck, Gergle. Usability for the Web, p 218)
Mini Focus Group Interviews
A gathering of 6 to 8 consumers who are led in a tightly scripted discussion by a trained moderator, usually for 1 to 2 hours.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
Mindmap (Idea Generation)
Mindmapping is a technique that helps people trigger inactive parts of their brains by sketching structures from complex information and the organizing of ideas (It can also be seen as a visualization technique).
(Bots et al. Idee?n voor creativiteit. p 55)
Measurement
User performance is almost always measured by having a group of test users perform a predefined set of test tasks while collecting time and error data.
Marketing Mix (Four P's)
Also known as the “Four P’s”; product, price, promotion, place are “a set of controllable tactical marketing tools that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market. The marketing mix consists of everything the firm can do to influence the demand for its product.” (Kotler. Principles of Marketing. p 33)
Market Segmentation
“Dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers with different needs, characteristics or behaviour who might require separate products or marketing mixes.” (Kotler. Principles of Marketing, p 31)
Market Positioning
“Arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive and desirable place relative to competing products in the minds of target consumers. Formulating competitive positioning for a product and a detailer marketing mix.” (Kotler. Principles of Marketing, p 31)
Low-Fidelity Prototypes
Low fidelity prototypes are generally paper based and include sketches, screen mockups and storyboards.
(Stone, Jarret, Woodroffe, Minocha. User Interface Design and Evaluation p115)
Logging actual use
Logging involves having the computer automatically collect statisctics about the detailed use of the system.
Literature Review
“A literature review is a comprehensive investigation of all documents, publications, articles, and books regarding a specific area of study. This first step in the research process can also include a client’s corporate communications, as well as those of their competitors.” (Visocky O’Grady. A Designer’s Research Manual. p 24)
Interface Design Patterns
Interface design patterns are solutions to frequently-occurring problems and situation in the design of interfaces. The end users and the implementation teams conceptualise the interfaces in terms of interface design patterns.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
High-fidelity Prototypes, which are based on software, provide a functional version of the system that users can interact with.
(Stone, Jarret, Woodroffe, Minocha. User Interface Design and Evaluation p120)
Heuristic evaluation
Heuristic evaluation is a form of usability inspection where usability specialists judge whether each element of a user interface follows a list of established usability heuristics. Expert evaluation is similar, but does not use specific heuristics.
GOMS Model
The GOMS Model represents the procedural knowledge required to operate a system in terms of the user Goals, basic actions or Operators, Methods, which are sequences of operators that will accomplish goals, and Selection rules, which determine which method to apply to accomplish a goal.
Forcing Functions
“A forcing function is a constraint where the user ‘is forced’ to complete a task based on a limited, paired down set of features or controls.” (Spillers. Forcing Functions)
Forced Association (Idea Generation)
A technique for idea generation in which you associate things with each other.
For example:
Water
Blue
Sky
Airplane
Fly
Focus Groups
Focus Groups are a social science tool used prevalently to conduct market research. Focus groups are discussions with a limited number of participants, led by a moderator.
(A Designer’s Research Manual, Visocky O’Grady, p640, 2006)
Flowchart (tasks)
A task-flow diagram (flowchart) is a flowchart that details how a user will compete all the tasks in an application from beginning to end.
(Designing the Obvious, Robert Hoekman jr., p43)
Field Ethnography
A person or group of people are observed by a researcher while they go about their normal lives. The duration of these observations can range from 1 hour to several days or weeks
(Laurel. Design Research, p 27)
Expert Review
A expert usability review provides an immediate tactical analysis of the user experience of your Web site, Web application, GUI application, or Intranet.
Experience Prototyping
Experience Prototyping is a form of prototyping that allows shareholders on a design team to understand existing and future conditions through engagement with prototypes.
(Buchenau, M., & Fulton Suri, J. Experience prototyping. In Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Designing Interactive Systems pp. 424-433)
Ethnofuturism
This is a very young but rapidly growing variation that marries digital ethnography focused on daily activities and small details of cultural significance with a futures perspective that looks at the major trends influencing and changing culture as a whole.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 27)
Essential Use Cases
“Essential use cases represent abstractions from scenarios, i.e., they represent a more general case than a scenario embodies, and try to avoid the assumptions of a traditional use case.”
(Preece. Interaction Design. p 230)
Dyad Interviews
Two friends interviewed as a pair by a moderator following an outline or lightly scripted guide.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 25)
Digital Ethnography
A more recent variation on traditional ethnography, using digital tools to speed up the the process without compromising the quality of the work.
(Laurel. Design Research, p 27)
Diagnostic evaluation
User based evaluation of a working system, where the primary objective is to identify usability problems.
Design rationale
A Design Rationale is important during iterative development and during development of any future releases of the product.
Design Comics
“Design comics are a type of storyboarding used in product and web site design. Design comics include product consumers or other characters in an illustrated story that shows how the users interact with the product.”(Wikipedia “Design Comics”)
Demographic Research
A classification according to a set of demographic and geographic variables such as age, race, education, income and location.
(About Face 2.0 Alan Cooper p53, 2003)
Cultural Probes
Cultural Probes were developed as a design-oriented way to acquire inspirational glimpses of communities targeted for design. (Boehner, Vertesi, Sengers & Dourish, 2007; Gaver, Dunne & Pacenti, 1999).
Critical Incident Technique Analysis
The Critical Incident Technique is an open-ended retrospective technique of finding out what users feel and identify the critical features of the software that is being evaluated. It is more flexible than a questionnaire or survey and is recommended in situations where the only alternative is to develop a questionnaire or survey from the start.
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual inquiry involves collecting detailed information about customer work practice by observing and talking with the user about the work while s/he works, in the normal context of the work. The researcher ought to stay on the background and let the user lead the situation as much as possible. This means that the researcher tries to form a partnership with customer i.e. learning (but not doing) as an apprentice while the customer is the master of the work. This helps the researcher to understand the customer’s work. The goal is to understand how and why something is done or why something is not done. (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998)
Contextual Design
Contextual Design is a user-centered design process developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt (1998). It incorporates ethnographic methods for gathering insights relevant to the product, field studies, rationalizing workflows, system and designing human-computer interfaces. In practice this means that researchers aggregate data from customers in the field, where people are living and applying these findings into a final product.
Consistency Inspections
Consistency inspections ensure consistency across multiple products from the same development effort.
Competitor Analysis
“Competitor analysis is the process of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s competitors.” (Visocky O’Grady. A Designer’s Research Manual. p 22)
Coaching Method
This technique can be used for usability test, where the participants are allowed to ask any system-related questions to an expert coach who will answer to the best of his or her ability. Usually the facilitator serves as the coach.
Co-discovery Learning
During a usability test, two test users attempt to perform tasks together while being observed. They are to help each other in the same manner as they would if they were working together to accomplish a common goal using the product. They are encouraged to explain what they are thinking about while working on the tasks.
Card Sorting
The card sorting technique is a very useful approach to understand what natural categories people have for the domain. It is especially appropriate when the designer is not a domain expert and needs the insight of the users or when several alternative organisations are possible. (Brinck, 2003, p. 138)
Affinity diagramming
Affinity diagramming is used to sort large amounts of data into logical groups. Existing items and/or new items identified by individuals are written on sticky notes which are sorted into categories as a workshop activity. Affinity diagramming can be used to:
- analyse findings from field studies
- identify and group user functions as part of design
- analyse findings from a usability evaluation
Acceptance Tests
“For large implementation projects, the customer or manager usually sets objective and measurable goals for hardware and software performance. Acceptance tests are a set of test cases specified for the software, with possible response-time requirements for the hardware/software combination.” (Shneiderman, 2005, p. 162)