What things inform (impact) design?
Qualitative -vs- Quantitative
- looking at metrics: need to know why you're looking at them
- measuring mistakes people are making → can we plan to avoid this scenario?
- Qualitative: planning from the user's point of view
Who's Your Audience?
Example of knowing your audience: Hay Net
Example of misunderstanding audience: Berkeley Alumni Network
(see both examples in Jeff Veen's slides)
Subjective approach:
- talk to people, write down what they say, highlight important parts
- suggest: put all the information on sticky notes and organize
- different than working backwards from site logs
Blink → surround yourself with information to get inspiration
- suggestion: become a user yourself to gain perspective
- use your own site
Follow the Money Trail
- will inform priorities
- how does this project make money?
what clients really want to know, even if they don't ask
Don't look at numbers
- look at trends and patterns
- quantitative analysis
- site metrics just tell you how the server's being used
Why do research?
- suggestion: use survey monkey to create quick user surveys
- cost of change increases over time, so do research while you can still change things
User Needs & Business Needs
- foundation of a project
- what questions does the business need to ask its users?
- what goals do they have for this project?
Research
- Ask users how they do things in the real world to get ideas for doing the same things on the web
- Sticky notes → task analysis
Assigning a value to metrics
- research as inspiration, not guidelines
Tools
Are there tools for documenting the development process?
- some, but they're imperfect
- depends on what you need to know
- differenc between planning before and measuring after
Simple tools get you an 80% solution
Q & A
What if numbers and intuition conflict?
Helps to immerse yourself in research
Research as an event vs. as a process