Survey book of the month, April 2011

All of us need to look out at our competitors, right? So I’ve been buying a selection of the various books on surveys that are aimed at the general market. Rather to my surprise, I’m making one of them my book of the month for April. It is:

Online Surveys for Dummies by Vivek Bhaskaran and Jennifer LeClaire (Wiley).

(more…)

Designing Media Queries: A Few Great Resources

On September 12, our next event, The Mobile UX Summit, is coming to your virtual office! We’ve asked Josh Clark, Brad Frost, Theresa Neil, Greg Nudelman, Jason CranfordTeague, and Mike Fisher for 27 tips and 2 case studies on designing mobile experiences. You’ll walk away with new mobile UX insight and skills, get some questions answered—and the session recordings are included with your registration.

This week we picked Brad Frost’s brain about media queries in Mobile Design.

Brad Frost: Here are some of my favorite resources in regard to designing media queries properly:

Determining Breakpoints in Responsive Design – Tim Kadlec’s book Implementing Responsive Design provides a treasure trove of helpful tips and information for wandering down the responsive road. He discusses how to determine breakpoints in responsive sites not by popular device widths, but rather by your content and design.

The EMs have it: Proportional Media Queries FTW! – Lyza Gardner exaplains why using relative units instead of pixels for media queries results in more accessible, future-friendly experiences.

There Is No Breakpoint – Ben Callahan explains why “What breakpoints should I use?” is a foolish question to ask.

Essential considerations for crafting quality media queries – Zoe Gillenwater provides a massive list of techniques, pros, and cons for many media query techniques.

Tweakpoints – Jeremy Keith explains how the crucial difference between major breakpoints and minor breakpoints.

Rosenfeld Media: Thanks Brad!

Sign up now to reserve your virtual seat at our Mobile UX Summit on September 12!

UX consciousness in business magazines

Last month, we published our research on the degree of “user experience consciousness” we found among the analyst firms. The results were quite interesting, so we’ve repeated our method to assess the UX consciousness of mainstream business publications. Here are the eight publications we chose, based on an informal poll of about ten colleagues who work at the intersection of business strategy and user experience:

1. Harvard Business Review
2. The Economist
3. Business Week
4. Fast Company
5. Business 2.0
6. Inc.
7. Entrepreneur
8. Strategy + Business

(more…)

20 User Research Questions Answered by Laura Klein & Steve Krug

I recently got to interview Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy, as the lunchtime entertainment during the User Research for Everyone conference. I always enjoy talking with Steve, which meant that we spent most of our time chatting and then ran out of time to answer all the questions submitted by the audience.

Sorry! To make up for that, Steve and I have answered some of those questions here. A few have been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.

Question: Our company ran an unmoderated usability test where we tasked users to try to find a bit of information via search. 95% of people didn’t type anything in the search box before clicking done. They just wanted the incentive. I looked through all the records of their sessions to see who seemed to put in a good faith effort and who didn’t. But that took a lot of time and effort. How can we get around this?

Laura: The first thing I thought when I read this question was, “You should be watching all the sessions.” That’s the value of usability testing–seeing people use your product. If you’re just making people use the product and then giving them a survey at the end, you won’t get very good feedback.

Most companies that help you do this sort of testing let you rate your participants. If you feel like the participants really aren’t fulfilling their end of the bargain and are just clicking through at random for the incentives, give them a 1-star rating and ask for your money back. Companies aren’t interested in recruiting bad testers for their panels.

In your case, I want to know why they didn’t search. Was it because they couldn’t find the search box? Or because they could find what they were looking for without searching? Did they understand the task? You’ll only understand their motivations for not completing the task if you actually watch the sessions you’re paying to have people run.

Steve: Well said, all of it! You’ll only understand their motivations if you watch what they do (and listen to them thinking aloud, of course). This is fundamental. It’s the reason why qualitative methods give you insight into why things happen, as opposed to quantitative methods that only tell you what happened.

Question: Roughly what % of companies do you believe actually conduct usability testing?

Laura: I have no idea, but it’s far too low. In my experience, it varies wildly based on industry. Even what people count as usability testing varies. For example, a lot of consumer packaged goods companies do lots of customer testing, but they’re not run in the same way that a software company might run it. A lot of companies say they usability test, but what they really mean is that they’ve run a few tests in the past once in awhile. Or they talked to that user only one time.

I’m curious why it matters to you? The important thing is that the percentage of those who test keeps going up!

Steve: 21.5% (in keeping with the notion that 64.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot). Laura’s right: whatever the actual number is, it’s far too low. It’s why I spend a lot of my time showing people how they can reduce the amount of time and effort required, and make sure they’re really doing a usability test (i.e., watching people try to use the “product” while listening to them think aloud). The good news is that even though the percentage is still way too low, it’s much higher than it was a few years ago. And it continues to grow.

Question: What’s the simplest user research we can do?

Laura: As Steve said during the session, and in greater detail in the interview I did with him for my new book Build Better Products (shameless plug–you can buy it now), the simplest form of user research to do is usability testing on competitive products. It’s a fantastic and useful method for getting feedback on products.

Cindy Alvarez also mentioned using this method in her talk. She pointed out that it’s a great way to get people excited about usability testing and start to learn the techniques without threatening to make anybody inside the organization look bad.

Steve: And there are other research methods that are reasonably simple:  like doing some user interviews. Interviews can be particularly simple if you do them remotely since you don’t even need to physically “get out of the building.” (Sidenote: the need to at least metaphorically get out of the building is one of the many terrific things the Lean UX movement—and Laura’s books, etc.—have introduced a lot of people to.) Interviews produce whole different kinds of insights than usability tests, but they both can be very rich.

Question: I am currently the UX strategist for a global law firm where I am tasked with designing tools for attorneys. My users are within reach, which is a great thing. But lawyers are pressured to fill all working hours during a working day with billable hours. I can’t figure out how to reach these users given their tight time constraints. Any ideas?

Laura: The easiest thing you can do is to compensate them for their time. Whenever you’re recruiting professionals, it’s important to recognize that their time is valuable and offer them something. It might not be money. It might be a donation to charity or a bottle of wine. But it has to be something that they think is valuable.

Also, try getting smaller chunks of their time. Asking for an hour is harder than asking them for a 15 minute call or screenshare. Offer times at lunch and before or after work. Try to do it remotely or go to them so that you’re not asking as much. Look for other types of lawyers:  some in-house counsel jobs have regular salaries, and those lawyers aren’t as likely to have to account for every second. If you’re just doing usability testing, you don’t necessarily need the exact lawyers that you work with to help. You might be able to use other lawyers to see if they understand the interface. That will give you a lot larger pool of possible participants.

Steve: All great. And what about working with management to get the time they spend testing categorized in some way that recognizes its value?

Apart from this corner case (billable hours), testing internal tools (or intranets) is often easy, because you know exactly where to find a large pool of actual users who have a pretty good incentive to help. Often the best subset is new hires, because while they’re actual users with domain knowledge, they’re not yet familiar with the internal tools.

Question: How important is it to do usability testing on a user’s own computer/device/environment? Compared to bringing them into an office?

Laura: It always depends on what you want to learn. When possible, I prefer remote to forcing people to come into your office, since it means you’re not being geographically biased in your participant sample. On the other hand, seeing their environment in person can give you a lot of insight into their context of use.

Steve: And of course remote has so many other advantages, like no travel time and expanding the recruiting pool from “people who live or work near you” to “almost everybody.”

Laura: I’d say that contextual learning (home visits, etc.) is a lot more important for user research as opposed to usability testing. If you’re just interested in seeing if people can perform certain tasks given a particular interface, I’d go with remote testing. If you’re really digging into the way people work or perform tasks in their natural environment, consider whether you need to be more immersed in that environment.

Steve: Only one caveat: if you’re bringing them in, you need to make some effort to ensure that your computer setup isn’t going to get in their way. The most common case is sitting people down at a laptop with a touchpad when they’re only comfortable with a mouse. The solution, of course, is to have both available. You may also run into issues with Mac vs. PC users, but only if the test tasks are going to involve interacting directly with the operating system. If you’re testing something in a Web browser for instance, it probably won’t matter.

Question: What user research would you recommend for non-homogeneous target groups? From users with basic knowledge to super-professionals?

Laura: I’d recommend focusing on a specific subset of people and making things better for that identifiable group. Often, when you try to make improvements “for everybody” you end up making things better for nobody. Understand who you think your changes/new features/improvements are for and what behavior you expect to change, and then usability test on that subset of your users.

Steve: And I’d recommend beginning by focusing on the people who live on the “basic knowledge” end of the scale. If they find it usable, the people with more knowledge/experience will probably be able to figure it out. Remember, you’re not dumbing things down: you’re making things clear. Everyone appreciates clarity—even power users.

Laura:  If you are making a global product change, make sure you understand the different segments of your users and recruit participants from each segment. You’ll most likely want to run a few more sessions than you would otherwise, to make sure you don’t have just one of any group.

Question: What are some ways you’ve successfully distributed findings from usability testing—particularly when some of the most interesting findings aren’t relevant to the topic you were researching?

Laura: It depends on who the user is of the findings. I wrote a post on deliverables that might be helpful. Whenever you create a deliverable of any sort, treat the recipient of the deliverable as a user of a product. Present the findings in an appropriate way for that person.

In general, the best way to make people familiar with the findings is to invite them to help with analysis, but I understand that that’s not always realistic.

Question: We have a really distributed team. What are some good strategies for getting everyone to watch people use our software when it means asking everyone to watch two hours of video?

Laura: Does everybody need to watch all two hours of video, or could you cut a highlights reel? I’ve had better luck going through the videos and grouping responses or tasks together to make it easier for people to consume.

Another option is to schedule an online analysis session with stakeholders where you use a digital whiteboard like Murally to share insights. You can require stakeholders to watch the research ahead of time. Just givethem a deadline and a reason to encourage them to watch the videos.

Steve: If you don’t have the time to create a highlights reel, you can simply crop out the time-wasting parts. And then give the viewers a tool that lets them watch what’s left at faster-than-normal speed. I never watch a usability test video at less than 1.4x normal.

Question: If you only have three slots and test three different pieces of functionality, is there enough enough feedback to recommend changes?

Laura: It depends, unfortunately. There have been usability tests where I knew there were enormous problems after half a session. I still ran a few more sessions after that to confirm, but it was very clear. In general, you run the sessions you need to run to start to see patterns.

Question: For an overall junior team, is it fine to start out doing internal usability testing–despite its limitations due to things like bias–to get up to speed and gain confidence?

Laura: Sure. In fact, I really like the suggestion from one of the speakers that you run a pilot on a member of your own team (like the designer or PM) at the beginning of all usability testing, regardless of how senior your moderators are.

Just keep in mind that what you’re learning from internal people will likely be extremely biased. Use it as a training tool, but I wouldn’t take the results nearly as seriously as I would results from real or potential users.

Also, ask yourself whom you’re protecting by keeping your junior folks away from users. If you feel like they’re going to damage customer relationships, try getting them some one-on-one coaching or training. Then have them practice on friendly customers. If you’re worried that they’ll get bad results, they’re no more likely to get bad results from external participants than they are from internal ones.

Steve: Yes, pilot tests. It’s too bad we didn’t get to talk about pilot tests since they’re absolutely essential. If you don’t do a quick pilot test before you bring your participants in, you’re not doing it right.

Question: How strongly do you feel about having one person per session? I’m part of a team developing an internal tool for a large company. I’ve got access to users in-person (our employees) twice a month and my boss thinks it’s better to test or interview two or three people at a time.

Laura: I have very strong feelings about this. As I mentioned during the Q&A session, I’d want to know why my boss wanted to interview two or three people at a time. Is it for convenience? Or because they think you’ll get better results? Hopefully you can talk them out of it, because neither scenario is true. You’ll end up getting a lot of echoing and learn more about power dynamics in your company by interviewing multiple people at once.

If it’s a tool that people will use jointly, it can make a lot of sense to structure sessions in a way that helps you understand how that will happen.

Question: The big benefit of the model that you’re describing for usability testing comes from synchronous participation (and discussion afterwards.)  How do you apply this model in globally distributed teams?

Laura: Well, you can get huge benefits from usability testing when it’s just the researcher/designer/PM doing the research, finding problems, and fixing them. You don’t technically need everybody involved in that process.

The more people you have involved, the easier it will be to get the changes made. Especially if you’re in an environment where people tend to want to ship it, forget it, and move on to the next thing. Get creative—create things like video highlight rolls that you can share widely or snippets of information that are easy for people to digest.

Steve: It’s true: you don’t technically need everyone involved in the debrief process. But I think it’s worth bending over backwards to get as many people involved as you can (hence my “make it a spectator sport” maxim). Having more people involved does increase your chances of having durable buy-in and getting the changes made. But you’re also filtering the problem through more minds with different perspectives and valuable bits of information about where the bodies are buried. I also think that the process of observing and debriefing makes people better at their jobs, something I think of as “informing their design intelligence.”

For globally distributed teams, maybe some people watch the recorded sessions at a more convenient hour, then come together the next day for a full-group debriefing session.

Question: Are your users who you think they are?

Laura: Sometimes?

Question: Laura, what are the three most common questions you get about research?

Laura:

1. How do I recruit people?
2. How do I answer this particular question?
3. How do I convince people that research is valuable?

Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily in those exact words. I was happy to see that those were big themes in our research before the conference, since now I can point people to a bunch of experts answering those questions.

Question: In a publishing environment, the editor is considered the authority on editorial content. What’s the best way to disavow editors of the notion that their editorial power also carries into UX of that editorial content?

Laura: Ha! You could literally replace “editors” with any other professional who is an expert in their thing – lawyers, doctors, scientists, etc.

Be open to what they’re recommending. Remember, they do have more domain expertise than you do. Understand why they want what they want. It may be that there’s a third solution that takes their concerns into account better than what you’re proposing.

And never underestimate the power of testing—either usability or a/b. If you’re advocating for one solution and your stakeholder is advocating for another, you’re going to have to devise a test that will definitively show which one of you is correct. This is literally what a/b testing is great for if you have enough users. If you don’t, then having a neutral party run usability tests on two different variations of a prototype can also be very eye opening.

Question: What do you think about pinging other UX professionals for usability and testing of prototypes other UX pro’s are working on?

Laura: I’m not a fan of asking other UX folks to do usability testing of prototypes, unless, it’s a product for other designers. You’re typically much better off testing on a few of your real users or potential users rather than asking someone who does this for a living.

Remember, UX designers aren’t magic. We don’t automatically know what problems real people will have and instinctively know how to fix these problems. If we did, we wouldn’t need to usability test! UX designers have the curse of knowledge. We don’t look at a product the same way other people look at it. If it’s a product for a specific group of people, designers can lack the domain expertise to give you decent feedback about what might be confusing.

That said, after you’ve run usability tests with your target market, other UX designers can often be very helpful in suggesting other ways to approach the problems you’ve identified. They may have seen other users have similar problems and have ideas about what worked to fix those problems.

But you still have to test with users.

Question: What’s the approach for testing content heavy, inspirational websites? Think TED.com.

Laura: Same approach for everything else–figure out what you’re actually testing and then come up with something that will help you learn what you need to know. Are you trying to test whether the website is usable? Inspirational? Understandable? Useful? Those are all very different types of experiments that you want to run.

The type of product is not what determines how you test. You test based on what you want to learn.

Question: I’m wondering if we’re too biased to effectively help others.

Laura: Depends on what you mean by “we” and “help.” Humans are extremely biased. It’s kinda our thing. There are ways to acknowledge and counter that bias to some degree, although I don’t think that most of us will ever even come close to getting rid of it entirely.

In general, the more time you spend listening to others and the less time you spend thinking about you and how you would do things, the less biased you’ll be.

Question: I often hear “I would have designed it differently.”

Laura: Yeah. We all do!

The best follow up is, “I see. Why would you do it that way? What problem would that solve for you?”

Frankly, I don’t care if they want a big red button to push that says “push me” on it. I want to know why they think that button will help them. Think of solution requests as a jumping off point to understand what their problem is.

Steve: We in the usability racket like to say “users aren’t designers.” And the truth is, they aren’t. Every once in awhile (once in a great while, actually), a test participant will make a terrific suggestion. You know when this has happened, because everyone in the observation room slaps their forehead simultaneously and says “Why didn’t we think of that?”  But 98% of the time, design suggestions from participants aren’t great. I always recommend listening politely while they make the suggestion so they know you’re paying attention to them. Then at the end, after they’re finished with the tasks and you’ve moved on to open-ended probing, you can remind them of their idea and ask them to explain how it would work. In my experience, they’ll almost always end up by saying some variant of “But actually, I probably wouldn’t use [the new version] because [reason]. It’s better the way it is.”

Question: Is there a point of diminishing returns with too little user research? That is, is there a fear that a little learning can be a dangerous thing, leading to a false sense of UX security?

Laura: Sure.Talking to one person and then immediately diving in and solving all of their problems can certainly cause problems. If that person is an outlier. You don’t necessarily want to design your product around exactly one user. On the other hand, you can also spend an awful lot of time trying to “prove” yourself right.

I wrote a blog post on Predictive Personas that is probably applicable here. You can use this for usability testing just as easily as for predicting who will use your product. The idea is to run some sessions, try to spot patterns, predict what you’re going to see next, and then see if your predictions hold. Once you’re making predictions accurately, you’ll have a good idea of the recurring problems in your product and can more confidently start fixing them.

---

Laura Klein is a Lean UX and Research expert in Silicon Valley who teaches companies how to get to know their users and build products people will love. She’s a Rosenfeld Media expert and author of Build Better Products, and UX for Lean Startups (O’Reilly). Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her blog and podcast at Users Know.

Steve Krug is best known as the author of Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability and Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. Steve spends most of his time teaching usability workshops and consulting. Follow him on Twitter.

Buy on-demand access to the User Research For Everyone program.

Experience the Future of Research at Advancing Research 2024

Don’t miss the chance to join researchers from around the world at Advancing Research 2024! Advancing Research brings together the best minds in UX research, and this year those minds will be together at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City—the first time this conference has been in-person since its inception four years ago!

What topics will Advancing Research 2024 cover?

Our research-driven program, carefully crafted by experts, includes two days of sessions led by pioneers in the field centered around what’s top-of-mind for UX researchers in 2024. And this year, the Rosenfeld community got to participate in part of its planning!

Back in August, we held a series of six public, free workshops covering many of the most important topics facing UX researchers today—partnering with AI, emerging methods advancing UX research, creating actionable insight in the face of politics and silos, making UX research leadership more effective, learning from other research practices, and what UX research “maturity” looks like. These six topics were discussed and debated by UX research experts and that laid the foundation for the program our curation team has since created! In fact, you may recognize a few familiar faces in our speaker lineup! Interested in getting a sneak preview of some of our speakers and their talks? You can watch the recordings of these community workshops here.

Watch our community workshop series

Who will be speaking at the Advancing Research 2024 conference?

Meet our featured speakers—Neil Barrie, Steve Portigal, Victor Udoewa, and Tricia Wang. These four will be opening and closing out each day of the conference with conversations about product and culture, inclusion in UX, advancing the field of UX research, and collaborating with AI.

Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang, a social scientist, consultant, and thought leader, is on a relentless quest to ensure technology serves humanity, fostering social impact at the intersection of data and humanity. Renowned for helping companies unearth pivotal customer behavior insights to unlock growth, Tricia co-founded Sudden Compass and has advised industry giants like Google, Spotify, and P&G. As an acclaimed speaker, Tricia’s enlightening keynotes and her TED Talk delve into AI, data, and their societal, economic, and personal impacts. Currently penning a book on how humans can be more human in the age of AI, Tricia is documenting an emerging skillset amongst those who work well with AI.

See Tricia at her talk, Redefining Research: Welcome to A New Paradigm with AI.

Victor Udoewa

Having started his career in the design and development of computational tools for scientific applications, Victor shifted his focus to the social impact space and Information and Communications Technologies for Development, both community and international development. He is a practitioner and advocate of participatory design, a meta-methodology he’s used in service and system design for governments, multilateral institutions, nonprofits, for-profits, and communities, to facilitate skill-building and improved employment opportunities for community members. Bitten by the “civic-innovation bug” he is now focused on creating or improving government products and services for citizens, immigrants, and refugees.

Victor has a particular love for design, learning, and design education. He advocates bringing practices such as positive deviance, pluriversal methods, and systems practice into civic design. He helps leads an equity-centered meetup group and Justice by Design as part of his work to decolonize design. Outside of work you can find Victor teaching salsa, singing with his a cappella group, volunteering as a health trauma and crisis counselor, or (mostly) hanging out with his family.

Come watch Victor at his session, Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion.

Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher who helps organizations to build more mature user research practices. Based outside of San Francisco, he is principal of Portigal Consulting, and the author of two books: Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries and Interviewing Users.

He’s also the host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast, where he interviews people who lead user research in their organizations. Steve is an accomplished presenter who speaks about culture, innovation, and design at companies and conferences across the globe.

Meet Steve at his session, Looking Back…to Look Ahead.

Neil Barrie

Neil Barrie is an industry thought leader with papers and pieces published in Fast Company, Guardian and Forbes.

Led brand strategy development for the likes of Airbnb, Netflix, Pinterest, Disney, Depop and N26.

(Ad)venturing background at Zag, the ventures arm of BBH partnering with finance, media and entertainment disruptors.

Commercially Creative: during both his years as CSO of Chiat Day LA the agency achieved the joint highest global Effie ranking, sits on the IPA’s Executive Leadership Group and mentor at Techstars Berlin.

Failed Rock Star: graced the stages of London, Paris and Leicester.

See Neil at his talk, Widening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture.

 

We don’t just have these amazing featured speakers opening and closing out each day of the conference—we have even more fantastic speakers sharing their talks all day March 25 and 26.

View full speaker lineup

What does the conference schedule look like?

We’re so glad you asked. You can browse our full program in detail here, and view our schedule at a glance below.

View program

Will there be in-person workshops at Advancing Research 2024?

We’re thrilled to be offering in-person workshops on March 27! Join us for a day full of hands-on learning from experts in the UX research space. Archana J. Shah and Subhasree Chatterjee, Nick Fine, and Steve Portigal will be leading workshops covering topics such as Artificial Intelligence, holistic insights through quantitative research methods, and techniques for user interviews.

Join Archana Shah and Subhasree Chatterjee for their workshop at Advancing Research 2024: Quantitative Methods for Qualitative UX Researchers

Many UX researchers often rely on familiar qualitative methods such as interviews and usability testing, overlooking the potential benefits of combining these with quantitative methods through triangulation. Depending solely on one set of tools can result in blind spots, limiting researchers’ ability to provide comprehensive insights. This workshop aims to address these challenges by offering insights into:

• When and how to apply quant methods for generative and evaluative research.
• How to supplement qual with quant and triangulate different data sources and methodologies to build a holistic story.
• The power of collaboration between researchers and data scientists, and how it can help drive a more data-driven culture across the organization.

Archana J. Shah is a Principal UX Researcher at LexisNexis Legal & Professional in Raleigh, NC, bringing over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. With a commitment to research advocacy, she excels in triangulating insights from various data sources, contributing to impactful changes and informing product development.

Subhasree Chatterjee is a Data Analytics Manager at LexisNexis Legal & Professional in Raleigh, NC, USA. She has more than 10 years of experience working in Data Analytics field generating actionable, interpretative, and implementable insights for different business problems. In her current role, she is leading a team of Product Analysts integrated with multiple product teams to drive data driven decisions across North America. She is a big proponent of combining qualitative and quantitative data to guide decisions in every stage of product development.

Workshop details 

Learn from Nick Fine at Advancing Research 2024 with his workshop, Using AI to Support User Research

AI is changing the world, and UX is currently in a period of flux where everything is changing within the context of an unsure AI future. Researchers have many questions that this workshop will answer:

• How can you use AI to increase your value to your organization?
• How can you defend against being replaced by AI?
• What are the pitfalls and dangers of using AI to support User Research?
• How can you use AI safely to take some of the heavy lifting without major risk?

Dr. Nick Fine is an award-winning user experience researcher and designer with over twenty years of experience. He is the creator and founder of UX Psychology, advocating for behavioural design, and is also a science advocate and educator. Learn from Nick at #AR2024, both at his talk and his workshop.

Workshop details 

Don’t miss Steve Portigal’s workshop at Advancing Research 2024, Interviewing Users: Uncovering Compelling Insights

Interviewing is undeniably one of the most valuable and commonly used user research tools. Yet it’s often not used well, because:

• It’s based on skills we think we have (talking and even listening)
• It’s not taught or reflected on, and
• People tend to “wing it” rather than develop their skills.

Results may be inaccurate or reveal nothing new, suggesting the wrong design or business responses, or they may miss the crucial nuance that points to innovative breakthrough opportunities.

In this highly interactive workshop, you will learn crucial techniques for successful user research, and have the opportunity to practice and reflect in a supportive environment.

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher who helps organizations to build more mature user research practices. Based outside of San Francisco, he is principal of Portigal Consulting, and the author of two books: Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries and Interviewing Users.

Workshop details 

Our workshops are designed with you in mind. They combine the cutting edge expertise of some of the world’s leading UX experts with the same high quality that people love about Rosenfeld Media’s UX books and conferences. And at Advancing Research 2024, we’re excited to have an excellent selection of workshops to choose from. Complement your conference ticket with a workshop. In fact, we have bundle tickets!

Did you know that when you bundle a conference and a workshop, you save $100? Maximize your learning this year by registering for both, and leave #AR2024 feeling invigorated and inspired.

Bundle and save $100 

We hope you join us at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City this March 25-27, 2024 for the first ever in-person Advancing Research conference and workshops! Start your year with the groundbreaking conference made by researchers for researchers.

Don’t wait to register—early bird pricing is ending soon! Get your tickets now through February 6 to save up to $300!

 

See you soon!

— The Advancing Research team

An Interview with Service Design authors Andy Polaine and Lavrans Løvlie

We’re thrilled to report that Service Design: From Insight to Implementation, went on sale just moments ago! Written by service design educator Andy Polaine, and Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason – both founding partners at live | work, Service Design is very much a practical book. But it also provides a Big Picture of service design, putting this emerging and increasingly critical field in perspective for designers of all stripes.

We got the chance to sit down and ask Andy and Lavrans to give us some insider tips on their experience in the field of Service Design. Here’s what they had to say:

Rosenfeld Media: What are a few things you’d wished you’d known before you got into the field?

Andy Polaine: I wish I knew more about the way MBAs think in order to be able to relate what we do to management in a language they are used to working with. I wish I had known more about working with qualitative field research, particularly the results and how to make sense of them. Synthesis is something that most people learn on the fly, but it’s an essential skill.

RM: So, we need to be better at “MBA-speak”?

AP: Well, designers of all flavors are often loud about championing the user/customer and we focus all our empathy big guns on them. But we’re pretty awful about turning that lens back on our clients and understanding what their issues, beliefs and motivations are. It’s easy to bang on about human-centered design if you’re not the one having to explain why you spent money on it to a board or shareholders who live their lives in spreadsheets.

RM: Could you point out some common mistakes in Service Design so we can avoid them?

AP: Don’t get caught at either end of the telescope. It’s easy to get totally bound up in the details of one particular touchpoint, especially if it has some kind of sexy, new technology attached to it and forget the simple stuff and the overview of how participants in the service move through the entire service ecosystem. At the same time, it’s easy to get caught up in a great, big concept idea and ignore the fact that the details make all the difference.

RM: How about a Service Design horror story?

AP: I once killed someone with a Post-It note. No, not really. But, due to a cancellation and a switch of interviewees, I once ended up interviewing a bunch of lawyers at an oil exploration company about their views on hydrogen fuel cell cars and future transport trends. Naturally, they were a little hostile to the idea. In any case, they refused to sign any release forms, would not let me record anything and refused the interviewee fee (who would have thought lawyers would turn down money?). I insisted I make notes, at least, but had to wrap it up pretty swiftly. This was in 2007 and the place was decked out like an office in Dallas from the 80s.

Lavrans Løvlie: The label was born in the 90’s in academia in Europe, mostly connected to sustainable product design. As far as we know we were the first company in the world to turn it into a commercial proposition. During the early 00’s London was a hub for new design thinking, and benefited from a perfect storm of young designers eager to challenge the industry, a political climate that funded research projects via the UK design council, and customers that were eager to push the boundaries of using design to drive innovation.

During those years we worked systematically to collaborate with other design companies to build a market, define a shared set of language and methods in the industry, publish, teach and research with academic institutions, and to educate the market. By the second half of the 00’s the core thinking of the field was relatively solid, and we have seen hundreds of companies develop Service Design propositions, and clients across the globe put the thinking into practice

RM: So, why do services need design?

LL: Because design serves society, and our biggest challenges in the developed world isn’t any more about satisfying material needs through products. Over the last century have gone from seeking a better standard of living to seeking better quality of life. In simple terms, the world does not need new chairs, but we need banks that work for citizens, health services that provide better for people, transport solutions that don’t threaten the environment, public services that truly serve citizens needs and communication services that enable us to keep in touch with people we care about. All the great challenges in our developed world is in the service space – and new solutions need design to keep the human at the heart of development.

RM: We’ll ask you what we asked Andy: What are some common mistakes in Service Design?

LL: The reason many Service Design projects fail to reach the real world of the market is that designers struggle to understand how difficult it is to implement change. Services cross channels, and impact not only on customers, but on technology, staff, organization, culture, and processes. In short, they affect organizations in broad and complex ways. A humble approach to the challenges that clients face in making concepts real is needed in order to help them reach people with new services.

RM: Thanks guys!

Again, the book is on sale March 13 – today! You can also win an ebook version thanks to a contest sponsored by our friends at Readmill – just follow them at @Readmill. Finally, Andy, Ben and Lavrans will present a free webcast on Service Design through our partner, O’Reilly Media, tomorrow (March 14)!

Happy birthday to us!

It’s hard for me to believe that Rosenfeld Media turns 12 today. To celebrate, I thought about ordering brownies from Zingerman’s (my favorite bakery in the world). But hey, it’s more fun to share your birthday with friends.

Here are two sweet ways to celebrate the day from wherever you are…

Enter to win a free library pack. Yup, that’s literally the complete set of Rosenfeld Media ebooks (over 30 books) for your personal or team library. Here’s how:

1. Tweet your answer to this question:  What one book do you wish someone would write for you, right now?
2. Tag @RosenfeldMedia and add hashtag #Happy12thRM

3. Tweet it out before midnight PST today, October 31st
4. We’ll announce the results on hashtag #Happy12thRM

Get 12% off all books in our stores today. Use the Happy12thRM code to stock up on classic design and UX titles, learn how to select the right technologies for your team, or boost your business and leadership skills.

We’re so thankful for your support over the years. And hope our books, trainings, conferences continue to help you grow and succeed.

Our books are now Kindle-friendly

From the moment we started publishing, we offered digital editions of our books. At first, if you purchased directly from us, we included a screen-optimized PDF that you could download and use immediately. Then we started offering printer-optimized PDFs for people who’d prefer to print our books themselves, rather than pay and wait for a paperback to be shipped. Earlier this year we started offering ePub editions for use on iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. And now, at your request, we’re pleased to provide Kindle-compliant MOBI versions of each of our books.
(more…)

Service outage affecting Rosenfeld Media’s site

Update, July 16, 2:30pm ET: All aspects of our purchasing process, including downloads and confirmations, now seem to be working properly. Please let me know (lou [at] rosenfeldmedia.com) if you find anything amiss; many thanks for your patience!

Update, July 15, 11:30am ET: Downloading seems to be working again, so you should be able to order successfully from our store. However, there still seems to be one more glitch: transaction confirmation emails aren’t being sent consistently. You will still see a confirmation page on the site once you complete your purchase, just not an email version of the same. Please email me (lou [at] rosenfeldmedia.com) if you need a PDF of a confirmation emailed to you. And thanks for your patience!

—–

It’s a long story: our hosting service performed an “upgrade” performed on our dedicated server Saturday morning, followed by all sorts of problems. And today, they performed a reversion to our original set up, followed by… all sorts of problems.

We’re working on it, but if you wish to purchase a Rosenfeld Media book right away: as much as it pains me to say this, please buy it via Amazon.com for now. If you only want our books in digital format (unavailable via Amazon), or still prefer to purchase from us directly, please email me (lou [at] rosenfeldmedia.com) and I’ll send you an email as soon as we’re back up and running. (We’ll run an update here too.)

Until then, all good vibes, wishes, and prayers would be appreciated…

Survey book of the month, August 2011

If you love looking at wonderful information design, you’ll enjoy this book of the month:

Looking back: a century of Dutch statistics by CBS Statistics Netherlands

It’s in English and it’s free as a .pdf download, or you can pay a small fee for a printed copy.

So far this year I’ve chosen survey books that are about information, either key concepts or practical how-to. This month’s book is about inspiration.

(more…)