Userfocus Usability Newsletter, December 2014

Welcome to the December edition of the Userfocus usability and user experience newsletter!

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.

David Travis

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:

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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.

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