Welcome to the December edition of the Userfocus usability and user experience newsletter!
- Message from the Editor
- Feature article: The 7 Deadly Sins of User Research
- What we're reading
- Upcoming training courses
- User experience quotation of the month
Message from the Editor
Welcome to the December edition of the Userfocus usability newsletter. This is our attempt at diverting you from the fact that there are only 23 sleeps till Christmas.
Over the week-end, I was speaking with my niece who's just started a degree in maths. She told me that one part of her course is about proving that 4 is bigger than 3. I avoided the Homer simplification ("Do you want 4 donuts or 3 donuts?") because I appreciate there is often value in challenging your core assumptions. So in this month's article I aim to do exactly that: are you sure your user research activities are valid?
I hope you find it useful.
Feature article: The 7 Deadly Sins of User Research
Most companies would claim to design products and services that are simple to use. But when you ask customers to actually use these products and services, they often find them far from simple. Why is there a disconnect between what organisations think of as "simple" and what users actually experience? Read the article in full: The 7 Deadly Sins of User Research.
What we’re reading
Some interesting usability-related articles that got our attention over the last month:
- I like this idea of providing 30% feedback on a design concept.
- It takes 23 steps to set up an iPad Air and just 8 to set up an Android Nexus.
- When Information Design is a matter of life or death.
- The Making of a UX Designer.
- The Banks of the Future: An Experience Design Perspective.
- People will believe anything so long as you show them a graph.
- "Digital psychology" is now a thing.
- "UX myths" posters that you can download and print large.
- Just for fun: invent your new UX job title.
Like these? Want more? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Usability Training: Now Booking
Web Usability: An Introduction to User Experience. Jan 12-13th, London. 4 places remaining.
For web designers who want hands-on practice with user experience tools and techniques, this is a fast-paced, 2-day immersion seminar that will show you how to boost sales and conversion rates, increase usage and improve customer satisfaction.
User Experience quotation of the month
“Only write code when you can't think of any other way to validate your hypothesis.” — Mark Randall, Chief Strategist, VP Creativity at Adobe.
Hungry for more?
Foundation Certificate in UX
Gain hands-on practice in all the key areas of UX while you prepare for the BCS Foundation Certificate in User Experience. More details
Newsletter archive
Look back over previous newsletters in the newsletter archive.