Userfocus Usability Newsletter, September 2015

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

Message from the Editor
What user researchers can bring to the Design Studio Methodology
From our archives: You have 19 days to define your research problem
What we're reading
Online training in user experience
User experience quotation of the month

Message from the Editor

Over the last couple of months, I've been working on a new training workshop titled Sketching and ideation for designers who can't draw. During the development of the course, I reviewed dozens of different creativity boosters and looked to see how I could adapt them to work for user experience designers. One of my favourite methods was the 'Selection Box' technique. In this month's article, I explain how you can use this technique to generate dozens of design ideas and ensure every one is grounded in user research.

I hope you find it useful.

— David Travis

What user researchers can bring to the Design Studio Methodology

The Design Studio is a wonderful methodology to encourage multidisciplinary design, but in practice teams often create design concepts that aren’t grounded in user research. We can bake user research findings into every design concept that emerges by using the context of use (users, goals and environments) as a constraint. As an added bonus, this approach helps teams create many more solutions to a design problem. Read the article in full: What user researchers can bring to the Design Studio Methodology.

From our archives: You have 19 days to define your research problem

Without a clear understanding of a research problem one cannot expect customer or user research to deliver useful findings. Here are five things you can do to help better define a research problem and sharpen your research question. Read the article in full: You have 19 days to define your research problem.

What we’re reading

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

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell.
"Apple has gotten carried away by the slick appearance of their products at the expense of ease of use" according to Don Norman.
For an organization to move beyond the UX Tipping Point, it must first become literate in user experience.
Mobile interaction design trends.
32 UX Metrics.
List of UK-based academic courses (MAs) in user experience.
Kodak's managers "were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set".
Google's "Material design" is a great example of a UI style guide.

Like these? Want more? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Online training in user experience

We have three online training courses in user experience. Save money when you purchase them as a bundle.

User Experience quotation of the month

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb.