The UX Life Chose Me Newsletter #36
October 2023
Hello! 👋🏻
This month my thoughts are on how to get people to really watch what’s happening in a usability test.
Articles include some great methods to try, and some things to think about, while our book of the month looks at Truth.
The events are both on my wish list, although the likelihood of me getting to Chicago for one of them is very unlikely.
As always I hope you find it useful and there is something here that can help you improve your research practice.
Enjoy
Penny
From the Editors Keyboard
Last week I was running a set of tests on a new product to see if everything was working as expected now we’ve gone live.
As there were two parts to the product I organised two sets of tests over two days to look at each in turn.
We haven’t done that much usability testing in the last couple of months, so it was a good refresher for my apprentices on how it works and what to look out for.
The first day of testing went well. All the participants said they found the new product straight-forward to use and didn’t have any problems. I didn’t say at the time but they did have problems, however as they all got to the end everyone felt they had completed the task and everything was good.
At the end of the day I asked my apprentices what they thought.
They both agreed that the new product was great and everyone was happy. Oh dear. Have they learnt nothing in the 9 months that they’ve been with me?
I started to point out the issues everyone had had. Oh. I reminded them they needed to watch what the participants were doing, not listen too hard to what they said. Oh.
The next day we had another set of tests. This part of the product didn’t work so well and had many bugs, but most participants still said it was good.
I wasn’t very hopeful when I had my catch up call with the apprentices at the end of the day.
What did they think about today’s testing? And they started listing out the bugs and issues they had seen!
Hooray! Having those two days of testing right next to each other had shown them much better what I was looking for, than me just telling them to watch what the participants did!
But it does leave me wondering if my stakeholders really understand what I mean when I tell them the same thing.
Do I need to do more to communicate this to my stakeholders? Or should I hope they will make the connection when I run through my report with them and they see all the errors, bugs and issues I’ve collected? Is it worth my time to get into this sort of education piece when they are very unlikely to be running their own research any time soon?
How do you educate your stakeholders? And how do you decide just how much knowledge they really need?
Interesting Stuff
Find Your Hidden UX Research Impact
Eli Goldberg, September 2023, 6 min read
I don’t know about you, but I am always looking at ways to improve the impact of my research. This is such a simple thing to do but could have real impact on your work. I’m now digging into my repository to see if I have access to this data!
Avoid Crappy And Misleading Desk Research
Debbie Levitt, August 2023, 6 min read
Desk research can be an important part of our research toolbox but Debbie makes some good points of what we need to watch out for when doing so.
Is UX Research A Vanity Metric?
Janelle Ward, July 2023, 8 min read
Janelle asked some very pointed questions in this article as she wonders why so many UX Researchers lost their jobs in recent restructures.
Using List Experiments To Research Sensitive Topics
Chris Liu, February 2023, 7 min read
I’ve not come across this method before but it builds on A/B testing and sounds really interesting. I’m still trying to work out how I can fit it into my own work; let me know if you try it.
How Quick Wins Can Betray You
Soyeon Lee, September 2023, 11 min read
I love this article so much! I love the idea of all those transcripts I’ve spent years typing up being like the sweeping the floor the Kung Fu apprentice has to do before they are ready for the full on training.
60 Cards To Discover Cognitive Biases
Stephanie Walter
These look super helpful, especially if you run workshops and need people to think about their own or others biases.
How Teams Remember
Giles T, June 2023, 10 min read
I love this piece. I think it might be because we’re always being told how our reports go to repositories to die and here is someone saying it’s actually important to keep records and remember stuff.
Book of the Month
This months book is on my wishlist, Truth by Hector Macdonald. He writes about “how these so-called ‘competing truths’ are used both constructively and misleadingly by businesses, media, politicians, advertisers, and even regular people having regular conversations. He shows how understanding competing truths makes us better at navigating the world and more influential within it.” Important things to understand as creators of some of those same truths.
Events
EPIC2023
EPIC, 22–25 October 2023
This years theme is Friction. Join them in Chicago to learn how to embrace and be the friction.
ReOps Conference 2023
Re+Ops, 16 November 2023
Apparently the only international event for ReOps, this is a virtual event with more details coming soon.
And Finally
Why it’s so hard to take a break
Liz Fosslien
I love Liz’s diagrams, they all make such good sense. How many times were you told off for gazing out of the window at school, even if maybe you were gathering your thoughts or ‘resting’ your brain after a hard maths session? It can’t have been just me….
Seen something out in the wild you think other UX Researchers would be interested in or a new research related book perhaps? Send me the link and maybe I’ll include it in my next newsletter.
