Behavioral Science, Brain Science, And Design, By Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.
Elizabeth is the Founder and Director of World Usability Day. She joined us on this episode of the Human Tech podcast to talk about how World Usability Day got started, a little bit about the history of photography, her definition of usability, and the possible future of UX conferences. We also talk about her book, Successful User Experiences.
This year World Usability Day is on November 14, 2019. You can find more information at the World Usability Day website.
Alfonso de la Nuez started in the field of usability with his small services company in Spain and ended up in California co-founding the user research software firm UserZoom. Last year UserZoom customers conducted more than 12,000 user research projects.
In this episode of the Human Tech podcast we talk with Alfonso, the CEO of UserZoom, about the current state and likely future of user research and testing, what makes user research successful inside a large enterprise, and much more.
You can check out UserZoom here, and you can email Alfonso at alfonso@userzoom.com
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
Creating personas before you design a product seems quaint and old-fashioned these days. In this Human Tech podcast episode we get UX-nerdy and talk about why we still think personas can be useful, how they help you design, and the mistakes that people make when they create personas.
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
How do you know if the work you are doing to improve the user experience of your product is worth the time and the effort? One of our most popular webinar topics is how to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of User Experience. So we decided to talk about it on this latest episode of the Human Tech podcast
HumanTech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
User Testing as a way to get feedback from people about a product is still going strong. In this episode Susan quizzes Guthrie about the what and how of user testing, and talks about some of her fun and more memorable moments of the hundreds of tests she’s conducted.
HumanTech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
At The Team W we’ve updated our free User Experience Fundamentals online video course. This latest version of the course has been filmed in our new studio. We’ve expanded and updated the content. The video clip below will give you an idea of what’s in the course.
You can get details on the course, preview some lessons, and/or register for the free course at our online video course website. To see the catalog of all of our online video courses, go to the main catalog page.
It’s been over a year since I wrote my last Top 10 book list for Usability and UX, so I decided it’s time to update the list.
Since I’m limiting the list here to 10, chances are high you have a favorite that I’ve not included. Let me know what your favorites are in the comments.
I have an Amazon affiliate account, so I’ve linked to the books on Amazon if you are interested in purchasing, or even just getting more info.
The list below is in no particular order:
1. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. This is a newer edition of the book. Steve is such a great writer (and an all round great guy!). He has a way of cutting through all the chatter and clutter and bringing out the essence of a topic. If you are going to get one book for your team to introduce them to human-centered design thinking, then this should be the book.
2. Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug is the other necessary book if you are doing usability testing. And you ARE doing usability testing, right? This book will teach you everything you need to know about how to plan and conduct a user test of your product.
3. Forms That Work by Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney. If you are designing anything that has a form: a web page, web app, software application, mobile app, or even a paper form, you must read this book. It’s practical and also conceptual — my favorite book on form design.
4. The User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley. I don’t agree with this title. Because this is a great book even if you are a UX team of 10! This is the best book I’ve found that walks you through processes, deliverables, and what you need to do in a very clear and readable way. Not ponderous. A really hands-on book.
5. Communicating the User Experience: A Practical Guide for Creating Useful UX Documentation by Richard Caddick and Steve Cable. In an era where many are calling for “lean UX”, and the end of the formal deliverable, I am going to be so bold as to say that there are many times and situations when you should create deliverables for communicating your user experience work, and luckily this book will show you how to do that. It’s practical and innovative at the same time. A must-read for practitioners who have to create deliverables for their projects.
6. Smashing UX Design: Foundations for designing online user experiences by Jesmond Allen and James Chudley. This book has everything. It will walk you through the idea of user centered design, teach you the details of how to do everything (stakeholder research, user research, wireframing, prototyping, user test, etc etc,) and then will show you how they did it with case studies. A great book for the UX practitioner, whether new or experienced.
7. Client Centric Web Design by Paul Boag. Have you ever had your design or UX project blow up? Misunderstandings with clients? Then you need to read this book. Paul takes the point of view of the client, not just the user. This book has critical advice for anyone who works on web design/UX design projects for clients. Unless you are only designing your own personal website, you need to read this book. It’s not available on Amazon, just through his site.
8. Measuring the User Experience by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert. Need metrics? Need numbers to back up your impressions? This is the go to book for everything measurable about the user experience. Really thorough and detailed.
9. Quantifying the User Experience: Practical statistics for user research by Jeff Sauro and James Lewis. The word “statistics” scares a lot of people. I love statistics, but I understand that many others don’t. Whether you love ’em or not, you should read this book. If you are friends with stats then you’ll enjoy the book. And if you’re not you really NEED to read it! Don’t be afraid. Jeff Sauro is a master at getting people to understand the why and how of stats for user experience.
10. UX For Lean Startups by Laura Klein. I have a lot to say about Lean UX. I’m a fan, but I also think there are misconceptions about what it means, where it comes from, how it’s different from “not lean” UX. I’ll leave you find out all my opinions in my Lean UX Workshop course! Let’s just say you should know about Lean UX. And this is the best book to learn it from.
Which makes 11!
(You might also be interested in my top 10 Psychology books to read.)
What are your favorites?
Have you ever been the User Experience point person on a product team and found yourself explaining over and over again what it is you are actually doing? Working with a team that doesn’t “get” user experience is one of the obstacles to creating a great user experience.
I talk about that obstacle plus a few more, as well as what to do about them, in this video. It’s one lesson in my latest course course called “An Introduction To User Experience”. And the entire course is FREE.
Even if you are an experienced UX professional you might enjoy this video and the whole course.
In the video I talk about three obstacles:
What do you think? Have you experienced these obstacles? More? Others?
If you know someone who needs to learn about UX, what it is and why it’s important, point them to the free course on our TeamW Courses page!
There is something about September that makes us all want to sharpen our pencils and learn something new. And so we are very excited to announce the launch of 4 brand new in-person classes that we are offering in Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Edgar WI, and Washington DC. I’m teaching some of them, but we also have some of the BEST and most experienced instructors teaching some as well.
One-day courses:
3-day Workshop: Weinschenk Behavioral Science Workshop (Edgar, WI)
You can see a list of all the courses, dates, instructors, and locations at the Weinschenk Institute website, and link to detailed outlines.
To celebrate the course launch I’m writing a series of blog posts to highlight each course.
So here are 3 reasons why I’m excited about the Don’t Guess: Test! The Why, What, and How of User Testing course:
1) We’re partnering with UserTesting.com and they are going to provide us with FREE tests to use in the class, as well as giving every participant 3 FREE User Test Coupons to use after the class when you go back to your office to apply what you’ve learned.
2) With the free in-class test, you will conduct an actual user test during the course. You will decide what to test, who to test, write the test scenario and tasks, conduct the test, and watch the video.
3) Always wondered what to test? In this course you will learn how to write a usability specification and use that to guide you in deciding who to test, what to test, and what the success criteria should be. And you can use these usability specifications not only in user testing, but also in design.
The “Don’t Guess: Test!” course is intensive, hands-on interactive, and fun.
Text me at 847-909-5946 or send me an email at susan@theteamw.com by September 30, 2013, and I will give you a code to use during registration that will get you 25% off the course fee.
In the next post I’ll talk about the How to Design Intuitive and Usable Products Through User Research course.
I’m going to be somewhat honest here: I’m no “spring chicken”. I don’t know if I’m prepared to tell you exactly how old I am, but here’s a story that will give you some hints: When I was in graduate school I had to file a formal appeal with the dean of the graduate school in order to get approval to create and submit my dissertation on a computer rather than typing on a typewriter. That hadn’t been done before and they weren’t sure it would be allowed (they did allow it).
Suffice it to say that I’ve had a long career in my “field”. But even after all this time I, and many others, are still struggling with what the field is, what it is called, and how to describe what we do. You’d think we’d have had it figured out by now, but we apparently haven’t.
So what is it that I do anyway? I use psychology and brain science to predict and direct behavior. A lot of my history has to do with designing the interactions between people and technology. Because I’ve been in the field so long I pre-date the term “user experience”. In fact, I pre-date many terms, including: usability, user friendly, user-centered design. The term I, and many others, tend to use most often is “user experience” but many object to the term “user”. And ask 10 “user experience professionals” what they do and they will tell you 10 different things.
Jim Jacoby has a post at the admci website with a great video of Peter Merholz speaking at a conference about what user experience really is, and what the work really is. I don’t agree with everything Peter says, but it is a thought-provoking video, and it got me thinking not only what user experience people do, but about the term “user experience”.
I’d like to use a different term to describe what I do, but I’m not sure what that would be.
Customer experience doesn’t work because a lot of the experiences I am designing aren’t for customers. They might be for employees, or visitors. Is a museum visitor really a “customer”? I know the employees at Wal-Mart aren’t “customers”. And people going to their government website to do self-service are not really customers either. I’ve designed for all of these audiences, so “customer” doesn’t really work.
Then I thought perhaps I’d just describe it as “Experience Design” or “Behavioral Design”. But that brings us into the thorny area of what “design” means. Is it visual design? Interaction design? And sometimes I’m not even designing. I’m evaluating, or strategizing what the experience should or should not be. But the terms “Experience Strategy” or “Behavorial Strategy” seem just as bad as “User Experience”.
A rose by any other name is still a rose?
What do you think? How do you describe and name it?
