Userfocus Usability Newsletter, April 2012

Welcome to the April edition of the Userfocus usability newsletter.

• Message from the Editor
• Feature article: How to tell managers they’re wrong about UX research and still get hired
• What we're reading
• Resources for information architects
• Upcoming training courses
• User experience quotation of the month

Message from the Editor

User Experience has certainly become flavour of the month recently. And like any new trend, some people get it, and some people don't. This month I've written down some faux-objections I've heard to user experience research, like 'Users don't know what they want'. I then pick each one apart and show why it's wrong. I hope you find it useful.

— David Travis

Feature article: How to tell managers they’re wrong about UX research and still get hired

Heard these before? ‘Market research uses hundreds of people. How come you can get answers with just 5?’ ‘Our product is aimed at everyone, so we can use ourselves as users.’ ‘Users don‘t know what they want’ ‘Apple doesn‘t do user research so why should we?’ ‘Our agency does all of this for us.’ Here's how to successfully counter each of these objections. Read the article in full: How to tell managers they’re wrong about UX research and still get hired.

What we're reading

Some interesting usability-related articles that got our attention over the last month:

• How UIs are perceived by colour deficient users, with good and bad examples and a neat simulator.
• The interaction design decisions behind the Facebook timeline.
• How to recruit users for online usability tests.
• Huge collection of corporate UX & UI Guidelines.
• A catalog of responsive design, multi-device layout patterns.
• The definitive guide to card sorting in the Encyclopedia of HCI.

Like these? Want more? Follow us on Twitter.

Resources for Information Architects

If you're interested in information architecture, you might want to try one of these articles from our archives.

• Card Games for Information Architects
• Shopping basket usability: Nine tests for a usable checkout
• Layout grids for Axure and Pencil
• UX Stencil for Omnigraffle, Visio, Pencil & Keynote
• Paper prototyping helper kit

Like these? Want more? See all 85 of our previous articles on user experience.

Usability Training: Now Booking

Web Usability: An Introduction to user experience, May 21-22, London.

A hands-on 2-day immersion seminar that shows how the various user experience tools and techniques fit into real-world design and development processes. More information about this training course: Web Usability: Designing the user experience.

Design Thinking: How to Sketch User Experiences, June 18, London.

Learn how to generate many different design solutions to a user experience problem — even if you're a klutz with a pencil. More information about this training course: Design Thinking: How to Sketch User Experiences.

User Experience quotation of the month

“Our understanding of the world is largely determined by our ability to organise information.” — Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville.

Hungry for more?

Read previous newsletters.