Week 4 - User Experience Research

Fresh off the heels of a week devoted to understanding the psychology and culture of a user, I dived a bit further into UX research (sometimes referred to as design research). Understanding the importance of user experience research and how it can ultimately improve my understanding of my audiences' needs, goals, motivations, and behavior will holistically prevent me from designing for one user -- myself. User research provides insight on who the users are, how and why they intend to use the product/service, and what they need the design to do. 

According to Joel Marsh, there are three (3) basic types of question that can be answered by a user: 

1) open questions, or questions that allow the user to elaborate on their thoughts, ideas, or opinions 

2) leading questions, or questions that instruct the user to answer a specific idea, thought or feature highlighted in the questions, and 

3) closed/direct question or questions that can be answered with only binary options (yes/no, good/bad, smile/frown, etc.)

Constructing the ideal blend between these questions allows you to discover areas of interest or concern for the user in an effort to explore alternative solutions that cater to the user's needs. These questions should remain consistent from user-to-user so that the information retrieved is unbiased across each medium of research (interviews, card sorting, surveys, etc.) 

In addition, Marsh revisited the topic of user-profiles (often referred to as user personas), and how it allows designers to describe the goals, expectations, motivations, and behavior of real people derived, in part, from data collected from research. When working on personas for my project last week, I had to keep in mind that I was not designing a service to support the current behavior of the user: if that was the case, there would be no need to generate a solution to an already working fix. Instead, Marsh emphasized that UX designers are trying to nudge those users toward an "ideal" version of themselves by giving them an optimal solution that hones in on their needs. 

PROJECT UPDATE: 

Derived from last week's sketch concepts or "paper wireframe", this week I successfully completed my first draft of a low fidelity wireframe which captures the basic content and visuals of the registration application. 

This lo-fi wireframe will be used to help map out the structure of the interface, its screens, and the basic information architecture. 

Lo-fi Wireframe Artboards (3 of 10)

In addition, I created my first micro-usability test plan which contains a necessary consent form, logging sheeting, user test script, a post-test questionnaire that will be used when conducting user tests next week with several users and my lo-fi wireframe. 

As I prepare next week’s task, I have been constructing a list of potential test users to reach out to who closely align with the user personas I created last week. I plan to also invite a few unconventional users as well who I believe will provide insight into areas that I may have missed.