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Contextual User Studies

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Influencing UX Stakeholder Values: 6 Ways to Convey the Significance of User Research

  • Contextual User Studies, Customer Experience, Design, Design Theory, Interviews, Product design, Project Management, Research Methods and Techniques

Has UX research ever been the priority for your stakeholders? If not, here are some ways to convey its significance.

IDEAS IN BRIEF
Influencing UX Stakeholder Values: 6 Ways to Convey the Significance of User Research
  • When stakeholders have insights around user needs, goals and behaviors, the team can make evidence-based decisions.
  • One of the most common pain points are having to communicate and prove the value of UX and user research to leadership.
  • One author shares some ideas to overcome this:
    1. Understand the “why” behind the push-back
    2. Speak your stakeholders’ language
    3. Don’t fight the battle alone
    4. Find and use tools made by the government, for the government
    5. Identify quick wins to show the value of UX faster
    6. Get better value for stakeholders out of the user research
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5 min read

The UX of Notifications | How to Master the Art of Interrupting

  • Behavioral Science, Contextual User Studies, UX Education

Stop frustrating your users. Invest in notification strategy instead.

IDEAS IN BRIEF
The UX of Notifications | How to Master the Art of Interrupting
  • As part of UX, notifications are key to leading the user to a better interaction with the product. Therefore, notification strategy should have a central role in UX design.
  • A good starting point is to create a user’s journey map and identify major pain points. This should serve to understand when and where notifications might be of help, rather than create confusion.
  • It’s a good practice to use a variety of notifications and provide the user with opt-outs so they don’t feel overwhelmed.
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7 min read

The Liminal Space Between Meaning and Emotion

  • Behavioral Science, Business Value and ROI, Contextual User Studies
This article explores how the liminal space between meaning and emotion came to be, and how designers can beat it by focusing on users.
IDEAS IN BRIEF
The Liminal Space Between Meaning and Emotion
  • To innovate well is to search for meaning behind the innovation first. This requires investing time into discovering what users need and think of unique ways to serve them and better solve their problems.
  • Emotions are widely misunderstood in UX design and often manipulation is used to predict user behavior. However, a much better approach to UX design is storyscaping, which aims at empowering users, rather than controlling them.

Read the full article to learn more about liminal space and how to apply this thinking to your design.

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6 min read

How We Listened to Our Users and Made a Better Product

  • Behavioral Science, Business Value and ROI, Content Strategy, Contextual User Studies, Customer Experience, Direct Observation Research, Empathy, Enterprise Products, Interaction Design
Three Tried and Tested Ways to Understand What Users Want
IDEAS IN BRIEF
How We Listened to Our Users and Made a Better Product

Users may know their needs and problems but it can be difficult to articulate them. In this article, the author provides a brief exploration of some approaches that might be helpful.

  1. Analysing users’ behaviour and their interaction with the product.
  2. Talking to users
  3. Collecting feedback and conducting A/B testing to iterate from ideas.

Read the full article to learn how the founders at Ludwig used this approach on their product.

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5 min read

Law of diminishing returns, design and decision making

  • Behavioral Science, Business Value and ROI, Contextual User Studies, Design Theory, Research Methods and Techniques

How do you know if there’s still room for improvement?

IDEAS IN BRIEF
Law of diminishing returns, design and decision making
How do you know if there is still room for improvement in the experiences you design?
  • The law of diminishing returns, a widely used concept in Economics that shows the relationship between investment (time, money, resources) and benefits can help Designers, UXers and Product Owners/Managers make better design, product and business decisions.
  • The Law of Diminishing returns is a bell curve:
    • Section 1 – curving upwards: is the fastest growing part of the curve, which means that efforts invested provide a more than proportional return.
    • Section 2 – leveling off: along this part of the curve we still see returns on our investment, and will keep decreasing as we approach section 3, as the curve becomes less and less steep.
    • Section 3 – curving downwards: here the slope starts to go down, meaning that our efforts stop having positive returns. This means it doesn’t make sense to keep investing (effort, resources, etc.).
  • Knowing how this curve works and where in the curve your problem lies is key so you don’t invest effort into something that doesn’t make sense to optimize. 

Read the full article to learn more about the different ways that the law of diminishing returns can be applied to design problems.

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