Feb
21

EU’s UX Research Latest: Kick off to best practices, processes, and working smarter

posted by: Susie Kim

What’s the Research Team up to?

The research team recently got together for a round table meeting to get our best ideas, best insights and best practices documented and into production.  Our main goal was to start defining processes and best practices for several topics that relate to our work- ultimately, we aimed to work smarter, not harder.

Some topics discussed last week:

  • Kickoff meetings: Objectives with internal team vs. objectives with clients
  • Recruiting: Better ways to approach the compensation process for usability test participants
  • Metrics: What’s best to include for Client X vs. Client Y
  • Client profile: How to keep track of our wide range of clients better

Some ways to approach our best practices documentation:

  • Don’t write a book for deep exploration; instead, make bulleted lists or checklists
  • Build on existing documents- these are living documents meant to change as we learn or discover new practices and new tools
  • This will be in outline or ‘cheat sheet’ fashion- a quick, easy-to-glance and handy document to assist new people and remind veterans who are coming back to the activity

Collaboration is one of the research team’s greatest strengths and we’re dedicated to keep building on our processes and make great work even smarter.  Stay tuned for what’s coming next with our best practices project.
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Feb
17

Design as thinking & acting

posted by: Felix Desroches

Most people go through life doing one of two things: thinking or acting.

Thinking is synthesis, careful consideration, cost-benefit analysis, asking and researching.

Acting is speaking out, communicating, externally doing.

As designers it’s our job to find the right balance of thinking and acting, sometimes as a counterbalance to what’s going on around us (i.e. someone who speaks without thinking). It’s a tightrope walk, and every challenge involves a different mix of the two. For example, right now I’m in the midst of thinking and researching with very little acting – but I know that in a month’s time I’ll be mostly acting, with spurts of thinking in between.

What’s your ideal mix of thinking and acting?
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Feb
10

The Weekly Echo 2/10

posted by: Kimra McPherson

At EchoUser this week, our office chat was buzzing with news about airlines, movies, and … breakups? Yup. Join the conversation by checking out some of these links:

Visual.ly dazzles the eyes with 20 great visualizations from 2011, from the serious to the outright silly.

Oh hi, pretty new Jet Blue redesign. It’s slick and a little Apple-y, no?

After its Qwikster stumble, Netflix is rebounding with a move into original programming. Fast Company’s Co.Create sat down with Netflix’s head of content to learn more about how that’s going to work.

We most certainly hope you’re not staring down a weekend full of bad dates … but if you are, Wot Went Wrong wants to help you give and get good feedback on why that coffee meeting didn’t turn into anything more. Wah-waaaahhhh.



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