UX Research Research Articles

Challenges and Opportunities for Tool Adoption in Industrial UX Research Collaborations

UX research practitioners analyze qualitative data to comprehend users' needs and synthesize design implications for software systems. Collaborating with multiple stakeholders is inevitable for these professionals and adds additional pressure to their already laborious data analysis tasks. In this paper, we investigate how these practitioners' multi-stakeholder collaboration affects their data analysis practices. Specifically, we investigate the challenges qualitative UX research (QUXR) practitioners face, limitations of the current qualitative data analysis (QDA) support tools they use, and design implications for future QDA tools to address the limitations. Through semi-structured interviews combined with diagramming activities with thirteen industry QUXR practitioners, we have revealed that collaboration becomes a bigger challenge than data analysis and that it often leads to (1) preferring simple tools despite the QDA specialized tools' beneficial features and (2) wanting to triangulate their work to convince stakeholders. Finally, we have synthesized these results and suggest design implications for QDA support tools.

Which UX Research method or technique should I take? Assisting software startup professionals in making their choices

Which UX Research method or technique should I take? Assisting software startup professionals in making their choices

Measuring the Perceived Clutter of Websites

Perceived clutter is a potentially important but understudied construct in UX research. In this paper we described the development and assessment of a standardized questionnaire for reliable and valid measurement of perceived clutter of websites. Starting with an initial set of 16 items and two hypothesized factors, a series of exploratory analyses led to a final set of five items, two for the hypothesized construct of Content Clutter (too much irrelevant content like ads and videos) and three for the hypothesized construct of Design Clutter (poor design of relevant information like too much text, an unpleasant layout, or too much visual noise). Confirmatory analyses using an independent dataset showed excellent fit statistics for CFA of the five-item questionnaire and good fit for an SEM of the connections between clutter and other UX constructs. Researchers should exercise caution about generalizing results to other contexts and interfaces, but UX practitioners should be able to use this perceived clutter of websites (PCW) questionnaire when assessing consumer websites.

Applying the Jobs-to-be-done Framework to understand Hoteliers' Needs on Accommodation Platforms

When building products, it is important to understand the target audience. User-centric design is the process of building products or services based on the wants, needs and challenges of users. Online accommodation platforms such as online travel agencies (OTAs) and accommodation price comparison platforms have hoteliers as users. Through hoteliers, hotel properties and prices are displayed on their platforms. These online accommodation platforms are important business partners for hoteliers and bring advantages such as increased exposure, higher occupancy rates and lower marketing costs. Understanding the needs of hoteliers is important to online accommodation platforms to inform their Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) products. These insights can help create tailored user experiences and solutions that cater to the distinct needs of independent hotels. Increasingly, organisations are including UX research in their software design and development process. UX research is the systematic investigation of users and their requirements, to add context and insight into the process of designing the user experience. One framework to understand why people adopt products and services is the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework. It defines user needs and what they really seek to accomplish as a job in each circumstance. This study presents the application of the JTBD framework for understanding independent hoteliers needs on accommodation comparison platforms in the context of creating visibility and generating bookings. The framework and its benefits are described, along with a variety of different industry cases where the JTBD framework has successfully been applied. The focus of this study lays on the research methodology, process, challenges and impact of applying the JTBD framework in the B2B area in the online travel industry. A foundational research project was conducted from January to May 2023 where the research goal consisted of identifying a series of needs and pain points from hoteliers that represent business opportunities while also providing a benefit for travellers. Recruited hoteliers consisted of convenience and random sampling of customers and non-customers. To answer those questions, JTBD qualitative interviews with independent hoteliers were conducted to generate insights for creating a comprehensive JTBD Map. A JTBD Map is a visual depiction to clarify the job users are trying to get done in a specific context, including respective process steps, desired outcomes and pain points. The JTBD framework helped the product development team, across different job profiles, to have a shared understanding of hoteliers’ needs. The framework was applied on both B2C and B2B product development areas. The framework also helped to identify areas where deeper UX Research was needed. Stakeholders were able to assess the different jobs and conclude which ones to focus on. The results of this study are specifically of value for practitioners and academia in the travel industry and have implications for Product, UX and Research practitioners.

Performance of aging consumers in an e-commerce product choice task: The role of working memory and decision strategies.

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in research on aging and the decision-making behavior of older consumers. The subject of this article is multi-attribute decisions made using product comparison, a widely used functionality of many e-commerce stores. Studies on cognitive aging have established a negative relationship between age and accuracy in multi-attribute choice tasks; however, works in informatics (Human-Computer Interaction, UX research) have not accounted for how individual user differences affect the optimality of users' product comparison decisions. Our work attempts to bridge this gap between the disciplines of psychology of aging and informatics. We predicted and confirmed, in an online study simulating e-commerce shopping, the strong limitations of older adults in product comparison tasks. In subsequent modeling, other individual characteristics, such as visual working memory, were predicted and shown to be a reliable mediator of the relationship between age and decision accuracy. Popular product comparison tables are not sufficient for older consumers. Despite following UX guidelines for designing product comparison tables, overall correctness of consumer decisions in our study ranged from 90% to as little as 30%, depending on the difficulty of the task and the age of the consumer. These findings have important practical implications for UX design of e-commerce Websites.

Privacy and Ethics Concerns Using UX Research Platforms

The Interactions website (interactions.acm.org) hosts a stable of bloggers who share insights and observations on HCI, often challenging current practices. Each issue we'll publish selected posts from some of the leading and emerging voices in the field.

PECULIARITIES OF UI TESTING

The modern development of information technologies significantly affects the formation of demand and causes the appearance of digital products. For any digital product to be successful, a user-centric approach must be taken. User experience research is a key component of this development approach. UX research is the process of finding out how people interpret and use products and services. It is used everywhere from websites to mobile phones, consumer electronics, medical equipment, banking, and more. In UX design, research is a fundamental part of solving relevant problems. Today, when all existing processes are greatly accelerated, users quickly lose loyalty to a product, because they know that there are many other options and do not hesitate to look for them, so a bad user experience with an application, site or product in general can mean the end of the interaction. UX research is very useful for developing a product strategy and algorithmizing solutions that would meet the needs of users. The issues of optimal choice of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative are considered. Both the methods themselves, such as the interview method, focus groups, card sorting, tree testing, preference assessment, eyetracking, proof of concept, A/B testing, and their areas of application are examined. The advantages and disadvantages of the methods, as well as their features, are considered. The method of analyzing hierarchies to calculate criteria such as efficiency, price, time, and sample size was used. Based on the conducted analysis, it was established that the most important criterion when choosing a research method is its effectiveness. Further calculation of the weighted average scores for each decision option allowed to identify the best research methods and provide recommendations for their effective use at different stages of digital product development. Thus, the optimal choice of testing method can significantly improve the quality of the user interface.

Bibliometrics Analysis and Research Profiling to Solve User Experience Overload Information

Today's technology is not just a tool to help humans perform complex tasks but has an impact on the revolutionary changes in human thought and behavior as well as culture and societal civilization that we need to know and follow, such as the current development of UX design, UX is a type of work-related to how to increase the satisfaction of application users and site visitors seen from the value for benefits, also the pleasure that the user gets from an application or site. UX is also a pattern that requires the industry and researchers to think that the human factor is more than just maintaining the user's functional needs, moreover, UX brings the concept that the user is a user. UX research is needed on the relationship between systems and interactive experiences learning about cross-disciplinary research experiences using large-scale research profiling studies and bibliometric analysis. People who use systems experiences are becoming more and more important, and because of this, interactive technologies are becoming more and more important in these experiences. Research studies show that the number of publications is growing rapidly indicating a growing scientific interest in experiential research.

Localizing UX Advocacy and Accountability: Using Personas to Amplify User Agency

Purpose: This article documents ongoing UX research to develop a grant-funded mobile safety app for recreational boaters. The article presents a workflow for designers to align user advocacy with organizational accountability through the use of personas. Each year, numerous boating safety concerns and incidents go unreported. User research into this context shows that recreational boaters want a mobile app that helps them enjoy boating trips while remaining safe.<br/> Method: We reviewed best practices from literature, analyzed interviews with 141 stakeholders, and then discussed findings using personas to amplify user agency as part of a Lean UX workflow for the development of a mobile app that balances users' goals with organizational accountability.<br/> Results: Representative groups of boaters want features that help them with navigation, charting, and communication. These features would help alleviate pain points and enable goals having to do with not getting lost, avoiding hazards, and communicating trip progress to audiences onshore. In addition, the personas we have developed will help us communicate to the development team behind the app to explain how they can develop features that accommodate users' needs.<br/> Conclusion: Though personas are limited as to how well they represent actual users, if used properly within a design process they are a powerful tool for amplifying user agency so that resulting apps achieve user adoption. As part of a Lean UX workflow, personas are a useful tool in tailoring products and services to user needs while ensuring organizational accountability to those needs.

Usability Evaluations Employing Online Panels Are Not Bias-Free

A growing trend in UX research is the use of Online Panels (OPs), namely people enrolled in a web platform who have agreed to participate regularly in online studies and/or in the execution of simple and repetitive operations. The effect of the participation of such “professional respondents” on data quality has been questioned in a variety of fields (e.g., Psychology and Marketing). Notwithstanding the increasing use of OPs in UX research, there is a lack of studies investigating the bias affecting usability assessments provided by this type of respondents. In this paper we have addressed this issue by comparing the usability evaluations provided by professional respondents commonly involved in debugging activities, non-professional respondents, and naive people not belonging to any OP. In a set of three studies, we have addressed both the effect of expertise and type of task (debugging vs. browsing) on the usability assessments. A total of 138 individuals participated in these studies. Results showed that individuals who performed the debugging test provided more positive usability ratings regardless of their skills, conversely, professional respondents provided more severe and critical ratings of perceived usability than non-professionals. Finally, the comparison between the online panelists and naive users allowed us to better understand whether professional respondents can be involved in usability evaluations without jeopardizing them.

Using Design Thinking Method for Product Development: Lessons Learnt From a Ux Research for B2b Employee Loan - Flexible Benefit Feature

As the world began to adapt to Covid-19, the phenomenon of mass resignations emerged in the world of work. Companies are competing to retain their best talents by offering flexible benefits. The emergence of various players who develop flexible benefit digital applications, makes these players explore and iterate over their products to become the market leaders. The growth in using financial technology products in the Indonesia Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending sector is more than 20 times as much in 2022 as it was in 2021 (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, 2022). This makes the loan feature one of the most attractive additional feature in the Business-to-Business (B2B) setting. However, to create a loan feature that caters the user needs further user experience research needs to be done. The user experience research is following the Design Thinking framework popularised by IDEO in the 1990s. Design Thinking is one method of developing products that address user needs. The Design Thinking process itself includes empathising, defining, ideation, prototyping, and testing with iterations at each stage as needed (Gibbons, 2016). The primary data collection methods used in this study were In-Depth Interviews (IDI) and moderated Usability Testing (UT). Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, and User Journey Map are also used in this study. Sample participants are those who have experienced the employee loan end-to-end process. Keywords: Flex benefit, product development, UX research, design thinking, usability testing

Research and development of the method design UX / UI design internet – platforms

The work is devoted to interface design using the developed methodology. The paper considers the issues of developing a methodology to improve the quality of development of online stores and speed up this process. The purpose of the work was to research and develop a methodology for designing UX / UI design of an Internet platform. As a result of the work, a study was made of the design process of the user interface of the Internet platform. A methodology for designing the interface of an online store has been developed, which helps to develop a product with high quality. The main approaches to designing user interfaces were considered, studies of existing UX research methods were carried out and the most popular of them were applied. A methodology for designing the interface of an online store was developed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the created methodology, the ranking method and the network analysis method were used. As a result of an experimental study of the proposed methodology, the values of the concordance coefficient were found, which indicate a sufficient degree of agreement of opinions. Also, based on the results obtained by the network analysis method, it can be concluded that the second design option is the most preferable (global priority = 0.612). An economic justification for the feasibility of this work has been carried out.

User Experience Evaluation in Intelligent Environments: A Comprehensive Framework

‘User Experience’ (UX) is a term that has been established in HCI research and practice, subsuming the term ‘usability’. UX denotes that interaction with a contemporary technological system goes far beyond usability, extending to one’s emotions before, during, and after using the system and cannot be defined only by studying the fundamental usability attributes of effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction. Measuring UX becomes a substantially more complicated endeavor when the interaction target is not just a technological system or application, but an entire intelligent environment and the systems contained therein. Motivated by the imminent need to assess, measure and quantify user experience in intelligent environments, this paper presents a methodological and conceptual framework that provides concrete guidance for UX research, design and evaluation, explaining which UX parameter should be measured, how, and when. An evaluation of the framework indicated that it can be valuable for researchers and practitioners, assisting them in planning, carrying out, and analyzing UX studies in a comprehensive and thorough manner, thus enhancing their understanding and improving the experiences they design for intelligent environments.

A Pedagogy of Its Own: Building A UX Research Program

Abstract While there is insufficient scholarly literature on UX pedagogy in general, there is a particular lack of work on how to construct a UX Research degree program, rather than one in UX Design. Therefore, this article examines what the requirements for such a program would be, the impediments to building it, and whether a distinct program emphasizing research is necessary. Based on my experience working as a UX Researcher and as an Assistant Professor teaching UX/Applied Anthropology, I argue that the industry would benefit from interdisciplinary UX Research programs that harness the strengths of several departments to teach the skill set involved in this role.

Embedded Versus Horizontal UX Research Teams: Which May Best Suit You?

This paper explores the two most common user experience research team structures found in industry. The first is a horizontal research team that operates like an internal consultancy to support research across the organization. This structure is great for researchers that are looking to work with a strong community of researchers, have exposure to multiple methodologies, and impact the broader organization. Alternatively, an embedded research team model consists of a researcher supporting a specific product or feature. This model is great for researchers looking to work across the product lifecycle and build closer relationships with cross-functional stakeholders.

Barriers and Supports for UX/Design Leaders: from Tactical to Strategic Collaboration

The establishment of a UX Research function within the newly recognized Customer Experience organization gave rise to cases of failure and success, and developed a roadmap toward increased feedback from end‐user customers, as well as lessons in risk prevention.

Scaling Out (Not Only Up) Distributed Collaboration Models to Get Work Done

In this catalyst, we the authors describe the benefits of ‘scaling out': reaching out beyond one's organization to bring in external partners to accomplish UX research. Organizations scale out their research efforts in order to cover more ground, draw from more specialties, or conduct more research more quickly than they would be able to alone. As opposed to growing an in‐house team to meeting research needs ('scaling up'), scaling out can be a more inclusive approach to generating user insights, where the voices of diverse research partners throughout the world are brought together to produce powerful UX research outcomes. A case study example of work with suppliers and clients illustrates scaling out. Collective intelligence pushes scaling out even further, as it counts research participants, users and potential users as part of the network of partners who get work done.

UX Research applied to digital transformation of primary care in Brazil

Abstract Background Digital are powerful tools to improve the work and quality of information of primary care teams (PHC) in Brazil has been encouraged through the institution of the e-SUS Primary Care strategy (e-SUS AB). Digital tools were developed to optimize the PHC work process in collecting data on the health of the Brazilian population. The e-SUS AB application was one of those tools developed by the Ministry of Health. This simplified collection of population data. Despite technological updates, since 2015 there were updates regarding the usability of the application. Objective Aim to report on the use of UX research tools to identify changes needed in the e-SUS AB application and to propose solutions aligned with the concepts of usability. Methods For the UX Research, we used focus groups and field monitoring. As a result, we produced personas, empathy map, user journey, and user history documents. The Heuristic User Interface Design, proposed by Nielsen, was used for the application analysis. The World Health Organization's MEDHI (Monitoring and Evaluating Digital Health Interventions) protocol was used for designing solution proposals for UX Design. Results In the design process, we produced navigation sketching's flow and high-fidelity prototypes for improvement proposals. It was necessary to correlate Nielsen's 10 heuristic principles with the needs inherent to public health applications. Problems related to the freedom of control and use by the health professional and the flexibility and efficiency of use were the most significant finds. We also identified underutilization of data collected. Conclusions Based on the results found, an aesthetic reformulation was proposed to solve the heuristic problems. It was also proposed to include a new functionality: a checklist for specific conditions, thus optimizing the use of data collected for primary health care. The proposals are currently undergoing usability testing in a municipality in northeastern Brazil. Key messages We need to plan health digital tools with UX knowledge to improve analysis and decision making capabilities to pointing out strategies to face health issues in the territories. Digital tools are powerful tools to improve health care system performance.

Возможности применения юзабилити-тестирования в научном исследовании при оценке удовлетворенности пользователей деятельностью экологических цифровых платформ

This article is aimed at demonstrating the possibilities of using the usability testing method in the framework of research to determine the features of the new forms of digital urban participation by Russians in solving social and environmental problems and conflicts. In particular, the authors investigated the effectiveness of environmental online platforms in the UX research methodology through usability testing of these sites from the perspective of their users. The results of testing showed that both the functionality of these platforms to involve the population in environmental practices and technical limitations prevent users from putting environmental initiatives into practice. The data obtained in the framework of the UX study will allow us to compare the perception of users of online platforms with the conceptual vision of their developers to identify potential biases in the perception of these products by their ideologues and users in order to minimize these gaps. In terms of the increase of scientific knowledge, this study will allow to assess the effectiveness of the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for digital ecoactivists in comparison with traditional (offline) forms of urban participation, to analyze the new strategies and forms of digital participation, and to identify the main advantages and disadvantages of ICTs in minimizing socio-environmental problems and conflicts in the tradition of M. Castells, digital environmental humanities/ English version of the article on pp. 86 - 94 at URL: https://panor.ru/articles/possibilities-of-using-usability-testing-for-scientific-research-in-assessing-user-satisfaction-with-the-activities-of-environmental-digital-platforms/50575.html

카셰어링 서비스 환경에서 차량 내 음성 에이전트의 관계적인 개인화 수준과 재사용에 따른 사용자 경험 효과 연구

공유경제의 흐름이 자동차 산업에도 영향을 미치면서 카셰어링 서비스가 크게 성장하고 있다. 차량을 일시적으로 사용하는 카셰어링 서비스에 대해 긍정적인 사용자경험(UX)을 제공하기 위해서는 개인화된 인터페이스에 대한 연구가 필요하다. 본 연구는 대인관계 상호작용 원리를 카셰어링 서비스 차량 내 음성 에이전트에 적용하여, 관계적인 개인화가 사용자의 장소애착, 심리적 소유감, 신뢰와 지속 사용 의도에 영향을 주는지 살펴보았다. 또한 카셰어링 서비스는 재사용 시마다 다른 차량을 이용하게 되는데, 차량 내 음성 에이전트의 관계적인 개인화가 재사용 시 영향을 미치는지 확인하였다. 분석 결과, 관계적인 개인화가 형성된 대상과의 동행은 처음 방문하는 낯선 공간이라 할지라도 사용자의 정서에 긍정적인 영향을 준다는 가능성을 확인하였다.