User Research Friday
An unconference at Bolt Peters, San Francisco, 27-Oct-2006
Teresa Hernandez: Eyetracking: love it or hate it, here's how you can use it
Some people think eyetracking is great, some people think that they already get the benefits without using it. That’s all fine. Eyetracking is a valuable, but currently under used tool for understanding website usability. We’re going to talk about ways you can use eyetracking to optimize communication on the Internet, and how written communication as well as design can be optimized.
Bios: Greg Edwards is founder and CEO of Eyetools, Inc., which provides eyetracking services to agencies so that they can provide it to their clients. Edwards has been in the eyetracking field since 1995, and generated the pioneering research and patents for eyetracking analysis and visualization in the commercial market.Teresa Hernandez is Director of Research at Eyetools, Inc., overseeing study development and data analysis.
Wendy Castleman: Remote Site Visits
Site visits are a crucial way for us to gather information about a user’s experience, and to identify user requirements and opportunities for improving an experience. UX practitioners have been using site visits for decades. However, they are difficult to conduct when the timing of user’s tasks are transitory or unpredictable. We have begun to pair remote usability testing tools (Ethnio) with our traditional “Follow-Me-Home” techniques for a rich, spontaneous view into what our customers are doing. I’ll talk about what we are doing and why, along with pros and cons of the approach.
Bio: Wendy is the Principal User Research Scientist at Intuit. One of her roles is to develop new UX research methodologies. Wendy has a PhD in Cognitive and Perceptual Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, and has worked previously at Remedy, Certive, Motorola, Philips and Lucent. She has also taught courses in research methods and human factors at UT Austin, CSU Fresno and Cal State Hayward.
Ravit Lichtenberg : Taking Customer Research beyond the product line: 5 keys to creating optimal customer experience during an acquisition
Ravit Lichtenberg will discuss how customer research helped Hewlett Packard’s software business meet its customer retention goals during the recent acquisition of Peregrine Systems.
Bio: Ravit Lichtenberg is a customer experience design and strategy expert with Hewlett Packard’s Corporate Design group. As an internal consultant for HP, Ravit has helped organizations grow by developing and implementing customer-centric strategies across the moments of contact between the company and its customers. Ravit has worked in consumer, small business, and enterprise business segments of the business. Most recently, Ravit created customer retention processes for HP’s software business during the acquisition of Peregrine systems resulting in higher than forecasted customer retention and sales performance.
Prior to HP, Ravit worked as an independent consultant to e-commerce and business solutions companies including Franklin Templeton, Kroger, Safeway, and Ford motors.
Ravit holds a Masters of Arts in Human Factors and Applied Experimental Psychology and is classically trained in mixed media and arts. Her work and life are both driven by her passion for discovering new experiences and new ways of thinking. For more information, visit Ravit’s blog at www.ustrategy.com.
Rashmi Sinha: Lost in translation: remote, international user research
How should large international companies listen to customers from all across the world? Rashmi will talk about her experiences running multi-country, multi-language remote research studies (largest being a 14-country, 11 language study). She will describe lessons learnt from recruiting and translation to tools and data analysis.
Bio: Rashmi Sinha is the founding principal of Uzanto - a Mountain View based consulting company that focuses on web product strategy. At Uzanto, Rashmi focuses on Customer Research and Social Technologies such as Recommender Systems & Tagging. For the past year, she has been working on MindCanvas, an remote research platform to rapidly gather customer insights for the design of technology products. Unlike traditional surveys, MindCanvas uses game-like methods to understand users thinking and preferences.
She writes a blog at rashmisinha.com using social and cognitive lens to examine people’s interactions with technology. Recently, she has focused on social technologies such as tagging, and social sharing of media.
Prior to Uzanto, Rashmi worked as a researcher at the School of Information Management, UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Brown University. She is also co-Program Chair of the monthly BayCHI Program.
Indi Young: "Mental Models and the University Effect"
A brief, very brief introduction to task based models and how I use them to derive application design and coordinate team projects & priorities, followed by a whirlwind tour of several international models that depict something I call “The University Effect.” In a nutshell, these are findings validating other research that if you study a process taught in college, it’s likely to be the same or very similar from country to country.
Bio: Indi Young is an applications and navigation designer who began her work in 1987 with Unix-based products, then migrated to Web applications in 1995. Her clients range from technology start-ups to large financial institutions. Indi was a Founding partner of Adaptive Path but currently consults independently while writing her book on mental models.
Steve August: Immersive Research: A Methodology for Remote Contextual Research
High Internet adoption rates, XML driven social software, ubiquitous digital media, and connected wireless devices have provided researchers the tools to remotely capture day-to-day customer experiences literally as they unfold. This presentation presents a methodological framework for utilizing these tools to immerse ourselves and the organizations we serve in everyday customer experiences.
Bio: Steve August is a Principal of KDA Research where he leads KDA’s online in-depth practice, and has guided the development of Revelation, KDA’s online research web application.
Over the past four years, he has presented to ESOMAR, IIR, the Market Research Association, the American Marketing Association, the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, and the Puget Sound Research Forum.
Steve has contributed articles to Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, QRCA Views and the Canadian MRIA Vue. He has contributed a chapter on the topic online in-depth qualitative research for the 2nd edition of Qualitative Research Online, to be published by Research Publishers, LLC in 2006.
Lane Becker & Todd Wilkens: Research strategies: choosing and mixing methods
These days finding and fielding a good research method is not as difficult as it used to be thanks to all of the excellent books and software packages developed by people like those presenting at this event. With all of these options available, the problem is not finding good methods but finding the *right* methods for your specific project. This is even more important and problematic in the fast-paced, beta culture of the web. We’ll discuss approaches that have been successful for us in a number of different projects.
Bios: Lane Becker is a founding partner of Adaptive Path. Since 1995, Lane has guided companies, from startup stage to Fortune 100, in designing Web sites that integrate user goals and business objectives. Recent clients include NPR, PBS, Princess Cruises, McGraw-Hill, the National Gallery of Art, and the United Nations.
Todd Wilkens is a design researcher for Adaptive Path. His career has straddled research and design in both academia and industry, giving him experience in a wide range of subject areas, methods, and contexts.