Userfocus Usability Newsletter, January 2018

Welcome to the January 2018 edition of the Userfocus usability and user experience newsletter!

• Message from the Editor
• The User Researcher's Field Guide to Psychology
• From our archives: The Fable of the User-Centered Designer
• What we're reading
• User experience training courses
• User experience quotation of the month

Message from the Editor

Welcome to 2018 — and to the 12th year of our user experience and usability newsletter. In this month's newsletter, we have an article on four psychological principles that every user researcher should know. There's also a slew of links for further reading. (Slew? Is that the collective noun for links? Maybe it should be a 'congregation of links', a 'murmuration of links' or more likely a 'distraction of links').

— David Travis

The User Researcher's Field Guide to Psychology

When planning user research studies, there are four fundamental principles from psychology that user researchers must know. These are: your users do not think like you think; your users don't have good insight into the reasons for their behaviour; the best predictor of your users' future behaviour is their past behaviour; and your users' behaviour depends on context. Read the article in full: The User Researcher's Field Guide to Psychology.

From our archives: The Fable of the User-Centered Designer

"Once there was a bright young man who was looking for an effective designer. He wasn't looking for just any designer. He wanted to find a designer who could design complex technology that was simple to use." Follow a young man's journey as he discovers the three secrets of user-centred design. It's a small book that has big results. Read the article in full: The Fable of the User-Centered Designer

What we’re reading

Some interesting usability-related articles that got our attention over the last month:

• A collection of UX Maturity Models (SlideShare deck)
• Amongst people who run usability tests, “UX Researcher” is now the most popular job title, beating “User Researcher”, “Design Researcher” and “Usability Analyst”.
• What do these psychology findings have in common? “Power posing will make you act bolder”, “Smiling will make you feel happier” and “Big brother eyes make us behave more honestly”. They all failed to replicate. Here the details, along with 7 others:
• 5 ways user researchers can improve their value inside product teams.
• Don't even think about delighting the user until you have the basics covered.
• Three tips for great research conversations.
• Net Promoter Score considered harmful (and what UX Professionals can do about it).
• 5 reasons it's hard to think like a scientist: 1. We're swayed by anecdotes. 2. We're overconfident. 3. We're biased by prior beliefs. 4. We're seduced by graphs, formulas and meaningless neuroscience. 5. It’s not about IQ but overriding your gut instinct.

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Upcoming user experience training courses

Foundation Certificate in User Experience, Feb 20-22 2018, London.

Make it your new year's resolution to gain the BCS Foundation Certificate in User Experience. In this fun and hands-on training course, you'll practice all the key areas of UX from interviewing your users through to prototyping and usability testing your designs while you prepare for and take the exam.

Book now to benefit from early bird pricing: Foundation Certificate in User Experience.

User Experience quotation of the month

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." W Edwards Deming.

Hungry for more?

Read previous newsletters.

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