A while back, while working on a client site, I came across this great example of design. Someone had placed a list of ideas for software testing in a place where they couldn’t help but be read. (Click the image for a larger view).

Posters placed above a urinal and in a bathroom stall

This encouraged me to visit ministryoftesting.com, steal their idea, and give it a user experience twist. In my version, the ideas are all user experience related. And to fit with the urinal concept, I added a graphic of a fly.

30 Days of UX

Here are the thirty ideas, but to really have an impact I encourage you to print the PDF version and place it strategically in the ladies and gents bathrooms.

Download 30 Days of User Experience — The Bathroom Edition.

  1. Write down the top 5 tasks you think people do with your product.
  2. Ask a user to list the top 5 tasks that they do with your product. Compare with #1.
  3. Try a key task with your product, precisely following the steps in the user manual.
  4. Share a user research blog post with your team.
  5. Search a podcast about UX and listen to it on your commute.
  6. Use a competitor product to carry out a top task.
  7. Find an upcoming UX event near you and put it in your diary.
  8. Spend an hour listening in on customer service calls.
  9. Create an assumption persona that describes a key user group.
  10. Silently watch a user complete a key task with your product.
  11. Plan to make a visit to one of your users in the next 30 days.
  12. Lurk in an online forum relevant to your product.
  13. Graph the high and low points in a user's experience, from finding out about your product through to completing a key task.
  14. List 5 design principles that you believe are important to your product.
  15. Pick your favourite piece of technology and identify one 'delighter' that was designed into the user experience.
  16. Pick an application you use everyday in your job. Identify a work-around you use to overcome a usability issue.
  17. Call your company's support line and ask a question.
  18. Watch people interact with a parking, vending or ticket machine.
  19. Explain the difference between usability and user experience.
  20. Look up the concept of 'affordance' on Wikipedia.
  21. Evaluate the steps in a key task against one of Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics.
  22. Describe the most extreme environment where your product will be used.
  23. Summarise a blog post on UX in 140 characters and tweet about it.
  24. List 5 things about your product that probably drive your users crazy.
  25. Start a UX blog for your project team.
  26. Find and share a quotation on UX.
  27. Research a testing tool to help you run a usability test of a mobile device.
  28. Identify your team's vision for the ideal user experience.
  29. Sketch out how your product would work if you could ignore constraints that prevent you from delivering an outstanding UX.
  30. Write a 'Consumer Reports' style evaluation of your product as it might appear in an industry magazine.

Download 30 Days of User Experience — The Bathroom Edition.

About the author

David Travis

Dr. David Travis (@userfocus) has been carrying out ethnographic field research and running product usability tests since 1989. He has published three books on user experience including Think Like a UX Researcher. If you like his articles, you might enjoy his free online user experience course.



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David Travis Dr. David Travis (@userfocus) has been carrying out ethnographic field research and running product usability tests since 1989. He has published three books on user experience including Think Like a UX Researcher.

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