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planning user studies vendors

Tips for working with usability vendors

Sometimes you can’t do all the usability work yourself. Either there’s too much work, it’s highly boring work, it’s highly specialist work, or the whole project is being outsourced. Here are some tips for choosing and working with vendors.

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design charrette methods paper prototyping planning user studies site visits user testing video

Watch the “Fast, easy usability tricks for big product improvements” video online free!

The video from my 2012 GOTO conference presentation is available online. Fast, easy usability tricks for big product improvements

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planning user studies

Different locations for different measurements

There are times when “ecological validity” is important, and there are other times when you just want to know whether users can make their way through your interface. Save money by choosing the right location to run each type of study.

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methods planning user studies user testing

Build the big picture from many small, fast studies

Incremental research aggregates data from frequent small, fast studies to check you’re on track. Running large numbers of participants during any one study is a waste of time and money.

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design validation guerrilla technique planning user studies

Cheap, fast, reliable: you can have all three

Cost-effective, quick research techniques don’t always inspire confidence in your data. Perform many small incremental studies to build reliability over time. 

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design validation planning user studies user testing

Stay user-focused during development

You kicked off the project with a Design Thinking session. Now that you’ve started development, run fast and cheap tests to stay user-focused.

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planning user studies

So you want to “run a study” … the cheat sheet

Your team decides they need to “run a study.” They don’t know what that means, and they are relying on you to set it up. That’s a good problem to have. Use this cheat sheet to help you out.