User Research
'Free pizza and coke! Just play our game for an hour’. Sounds like a good deal right? And pretty easy to organise, just pulling kids of the street. It can even be done in the pub, for mobile devices. Even this ‘free pizza’ recruitment is better than testing your game (or website, or application) with…
read moreIn the run up to Margaret Thatchers’ election victory in 1979, a poll was taken to estimate who would vote for her. Only 1 in 100 said yes. However, as revealed by the final results, 1 in 3 actually voted for her. The poll was inaccurate, and inappropriate for the task. Surveys are a common…
read moreRemote Research is a new book by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte, who have worked with the UX agency Bolt | Peters on a wide range of studies, with clients such as Wikipedia and Electronic Arts (I recommend watching the Why would you consider remote research? Written by advocates of remote research, the book highlights…
read moreJust under 40 years ago, the desktop metaphor was devised as a way to allow computer users to understand graphical interactions with their computer. Standard tasks, like using a calculator, or deleting files, were presented in a manner familiar to workers from a traditional office place, as an effort to build their experience of computing…
read moreJust a short update this week, sharing some thoughts on the recent Nielsen-Norman report on usability for the iPad. The recently published study was based research from a combination of both Jakob Nielsen admits that the study is not as thorough as a typical usability study. However has decided to share it anyway, due to…
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