THF: Week 2: Usability and User Experience Methods

This week we will start with your study design for your user experience research with participants. You will learn about different methods to learn about people, their experiences and their use of technology (say-do-make method), select appropriate methods for your coursework, and start preparing instruments (e.g., an interview guide).

This weeks lecture content will provide an overview of usability and UX methods, introduce you to the say-do-make model and explains why we use different combinations of methods. It will also cover a range of examples of say, do and make methods to give you some ideas and examples of the types of methods you can explore and integrate into your own research. 

In the workshop, we will engage in activities designed to help you 1) define your research aim based on the topic, technologies and context your group has picked, 2) chose the say, do and make method that will work best for your research and how to combine these effectively, and 3) start to create the instruments you will use to conduct your methods.

Resources

This is a sample usability test by Steve Krug which illustrates the procedure of a usability test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UCDUOB_aS8 

There is a field note template and usability test template you can download and use for your do methods linked below under Files