UX research has borrowed a lot from the fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. From analysing behaviour to documenting how people perform certain tasks, you clearly see these fields bleeding into UX. In fact, some even say that those who have studied anthropology are already well trained for being a UXer.
Observational research is a powerful research technique – one of the many popular qualitative methods used in the industry. The information gleaned from observational research helps you discover what your users think and experience, and how you can fix problems they face.
Qualitative research delves deep into the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of your participants.
Research observations fall under the umbrella of qualitative research, so let’s dive into definitions.
Qualitative research is exploratory, and it delves deep into the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of your participants. It gives us an opportunity to identify problems and uncover answers for questions we didn’t know we had by tapping into the minds of our research participants.
Qualitative research takes a number of different forms, such as interviews, focus groups, and usability testing, and many of these methods involve writing research observations. As you can see by these types of research methods, each one provides a forum for people to discuss a topic in depth to provide quality insights.
Some of the many benefits of using qualitative research are:
Researchers Catherine Marshall and Gretchen Rossman defined observations in their book “Designing Qualitative Research” as “the systematic description of events, behaviours, and artefacts in the social setting chosen for study”.
In the case of UX research, these are things that happen when you’re watching people perform certain tasks or when you ask them interview questions.
For example, when conducting a usability test, a research observation would be something the researcher sees or hears — something that provides insight into what the research participants are doing, thinking and feeling. This could be that it took 10 minutes for the participant to find the login screen of the website you’re testing, and the participant expressed frustration.
There are various kinds of observations you can note down in your research. A paper from Michael Angrosino, citing research from Oswald Werner and Mark Schoepfle, identifies three different kinds of observational research processes.
Interestingly, authors Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw penned similar thoughts in their book “Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes”. According to the authors, writing field notes (which are research observations) “is not a matter of passively copying down ‘facts’ about ‘what happened’. Rather, these descriptive accounts select and emphasise different features and actions while ignoring and marginalising others.”
Descriptive, focused or selective. What types of observations are you recording?
Research observations, once collected, allow you to drill down deeper into the behaviours of your users. Observational research can also help you to verify or explain other kinds of research you have collected or are collecting, such as a Treejack study or other methods of remote user testing. Remember, what your users may say in a study might not be what they’re actually thinking or feeling. Observational research will help you get over that hurdle.
When it comes time for you to begin your research and note down your observations, keep these tips front of mind.
You might be about to embark on a qualitative research project for the first time, or a seasoned veteran. Either way, I hope you’ll be able to record better observations using Optimal Workshop’s qualitative research tool Reframer.
Whether you’re researching alone or as part of a team, just remember that preparation, detail, and organisation are key to helping you get great research results. Happy testing!
The post How to write effective research observations appeared first on UX Mastery.
She's a failure, “the most overpaid CEO in history."
Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, failed to turn things around for the struggling tech company. She went on a shopping spree, spending $2 billion dollars buying more than 50 startups, none of which panned out.
What's worse, she's about to be rewarded for her failure. According to Fortune, she's about to receive a $123 million dollar payday, for failing at her job.
Just like Mayer, developers are viewed as overpaid, that they're simply not worth the money. The question is asked on Q&A sites. Posted on forums and message boards. Stated as fact by career sites.
But you know the truth.
You work incredibly hard for the money you're paid. You're worth every penny. But the small amount of money you receive for the large amount of work you do isn't always a fair trade.
For many developers it just isn't enough.
What if you could get more? What if you could dramatically increase the amount of money you're making now? Not only is it possible, it's inevitable… if you follow the right steps.
The strategies you're about to learn work incredibly well but they require hard work. If you're looking for an easy road, turn back now. Only all-star developers with grit and determination can do this. I say that because this will be one of the hardest moves you make in your career.
That sounds insane, doesn't it? Who would run from a salary increase like this? It's obvious. The developers who don't want to try.
These are the developers with an external locus of control. The belief that their career is shaped primarily by factors outside their control.
False beliefs centered around concepts like...
See what I mean? These beliefs flow from an external locus of control. These developers aren't in control of their career, their career happens to them. They won't get what they want out of life unless they take control.
Here's a test. What if every single one of the objections I laid out just now were true? Would that mean that you're out of luck? That you should kiss a meaningful pay raise goodbye?
Absolutely not.
When you're exceptional, getting a raise doesn't depend on any of those outside factors, it depends on you. That's the problem, isn't it? It exposes a question many developers can't answer.
Why should my boss give me a raise?
I want him to. I need him to. I want him to pay attention, to notice my hard work and contributions to this company. But that's not his job, it's mine.
Here's the problem.
It's actually a trick question. Inexperienced developers believe employers are looking for an answer that's focused on them. They use descriptors like "I'm a hard/talented worker" or "I'm a good listener" and "I'm helpful."
You're a hard worker — loyal, trustworthy, talented. You listen well and you're focused on doing a great job. Your boss doesn't care about any of that. Why?
Because those things are the starting point. You're supposed to work hard. You're supposed to be a decent human being. In fact there's only one thing that creates raises and delivers job promotions.
Results.
You need both to dramatically increase your salary, create the promotion you want and become an all-star.
Here's why these results matter. Conventional results build trust. It's easy for your boss to take a risk on you, to spend more on you when they trust you.
Here's what these results look like..
Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp, had a problem. He was stuck. He wanted to take his business in a new direction but he didn't know how to code.
He knew his way around as a designer but that wouldn't be enough to create what he wanted. He tried learning PHP on his own but didn't feel he got the traction he needed. So he asked for help on his blog…
… Which is how he met David Heinemeier Hanson. David responded, helping Jason through his problem. They began working together with David doing his best to build trust and deliver conventional results. They would eventually work on the first version of Basecamp together, with David writing all of the code.
Here's where the transformational results came in. David extracted Ruby on Rails from his work on Basecamp, released it as open source in 2004 and shared commit rights in 2005. Ruby on Rails has since been used by heavy hitters like Shopify, Airbnb, Twitch, Hulu and SoundCloud.
Ruby on Rails helped cement Basecamp as a market leader; as of January 2016, more than 1.2 million websites run on Ruby on Rails. It's indirectly enabled them to attract attention and investment from Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.
Your boss wants both conventional and transformative results. But they're not interested in transformative change until they trust you to achieve the conventional. Transformative results are often risky; the trust you've accumulated acts as a buffer, giving them what they need to take a chance on you.
That opportunity is how you'll double your salary. But how do you go about getting a raise? And when should you ask?
Headaches and roadblocks are inevitable. So it's a good idea to flush them out ahead of time before they become a problem. When they're ignored these problems have the potential to do a lot of damage.
These aren't the only roadblocks you'll have to deal with but they are three of the biggest. Deal with them and you're ready for…
You need a list of big problems to solve. These problems can be specific to your company, an industry-wide problem or an issue that only affects customers. You need the problem to accomplish two things:
"Just one problem, Andrew. I'm not sure where I should start."
Start by asking the right people about their problems. Okay, who are the right people?
What kind of questions do I ask in the interview?
See where I'm going with this?
Awesome.
Don't forget to customize these questions for co-workers, customers and influencers.
Take some time to think about the problems on your list. Which problem, if solved, will have the biggest impact at work? Which problem can you solve? How would you solve them? What would you do to make things better for others?
Write down a rough outline of your ideas, but don't build anything yet. Take your rough outline to the people you interviewed and ask for feedback. Reach out to those who responded, as well as those who didn't respond to your interview request. Ask them what they think.
Save their feedback.
Reach out to your list of influencers. Focus your attention on relevant influencers. Keep everything above board, avoid spamming at all costs.
Save your influencer's feedback.
Give yourself 24 hours. Walk away. Then, when you've had some time, analyze your feedback. Look for trends. Are people saying the same things? Look for conflicts. Do your co-workers agree or disagree with influencers? Why?
Make decisions based on your feedback. Your solution should meet four specific criteria.
If you think your boss will be open to your plan, take some time to prime things a bit. Be vague as the final outcome may change. On the other hand, if you know your boss is not interested, keep the necessary details to yourself. Just make sure you're following the rules.
Looking for examples? Here's how others have done it.
It's done. You've created a solution to the big problems on your list. It's time for the big reveal. This is the step most developers neglect. They create something amazing, then they go out of their way to avoid promoting it — which is a complete disaster.
Continue reading %5 Simple Strategies to Double Your Salary%
I'm making a game titled "Charisma The Chameleon." It's built with React, Three.js and WebGL. This is an introduction to how these technologies work together using react-three-renderer (abbreviated R3R).
Check out A Beginner's Guide to WebGL and Getting Started with React and JSX here on SitePoint for introductions to React and WebGL. This article and accompanying code use ES6 Syntax.
Some time ago Pete Hunt made a joke about building a game using React in the #reactjs IRC channel:
"I bet we could make a first person shooter with React!
Enemy has<Head /><Body><Legs>etc."
I laughed. He laughed. Everyone had a great time. "Who on earth would do that?" I wondered.
Years later, that's exactly what I'm doing.
Charisma The Chameleon is a game where you collect power-ups that make you shrink to solve an infinite fractal maze. I've been a React developer for a few years, and I was curious if there was a way to drive Three.js using React. That's when R3R caught my eye.
I know what you're thinking: why? Humor me for a moment. Here's some reasons to consider using React to drive your 3D scene:
<Player />, <Wall />, <Level />, etc.<Texture src={ require('../assets/image.png') } />Let's set up a scene to get an understanding of how this all works.
I've created a sample Github repository to accompany this article. Clone the repository and follow the instructions in the README to run the code and follow along. It stars SitePointy: The 3D Robot!
Warning: R3R is still in beta. Its API is volatile and may change in the future. It only handles a subset of Three.js at the moment. I've found it complete enough to build a full game, but your mileage may vary.
The main benefit of using React to drive WebGL is our view code is decoupled from our game logic. That means our rendered entities are small components that are easy to reason about.
R3R exposes a declarative API that wraps Three.js. For example, we can write:
<scene>
<perspectiveCamera
position={ new THREE.Vector3( 1, 1, 1 )
/>
</scene>
Continue reading %Building a Game with Three.js, ReactJS and WebGL%
This article is part of an SEO series from WooRank. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
If you’re a local, brick-and-mortar shop, local SEO is incredibly important; a few years ago ComScore found that almost 75% of local searches on mobile devices resulted in an in-store purchase. As with more traditional SEO, local SEO starts with keyword research. It forms the foundation of almost every on page and off page optimization you do going forward. If you’re a local business, or even a large chain with multiple locations, you need to tailor your keyword research to build a solid base for your local SEO.
In this piece we’ll go over how to find keywords relevant to your site and audience, and how to make sure those keywords are relevant to local searchers.
Before you start digging into data like local search volume, click through rate (CTR) and competitiveness, go through the process of keyword discovery. Don’t worry about whether or not these keywords are specifically local keywords, we’ll cover that in a minute.
Just like with traditional keyword research, start with the keywords people are already using to find your website. Use Google Search Console’s Search Analytics report and filter the data by queries. Add in the columns for impressions, CTR and position to make sure you’re looking at your top keywords.
You probably won’t end up targeting this list. Think of it more as answers to the question, "what type of business do you own?", or a list of topics covering your website content. If you’ve got a landscaping business in San Francisco’s South Bay, for example, your list at this point might look like:
Once you’ve come up with a list of topics, it’s time to generate a list of keywords for each. These are the keywords people will actually type into a search engine to find your site. You don’t need to come up with a list of every possibility, just a few places to start further research.
Start with one of the topics you just came up with and brainstorm a few keyword ideas. What would you enter in a search engine to find your business? This is where the "local" part of “local keyword research” comes into play. Start by appending geographical areas that you serve. So, for the “landscaping” topic for our Bay Area landscaper, you would come up with a starting list of keywords that looks like this:
If you’re having trouble deciding on where exactly your audience is located, dig into your analytics. Under Geo in the Audience section of Google Analytics, select Location. Drill down by clicking on your country and state. Set your primary dimension to ‘Metro’ or ‘City’, depending on the size of your business.
There’s no real target number of keywords to come up with. If you’ve got a small site with just one physical location or a small service area, you’ll need a lot fewer keywords than if you’ve got a large site or a business that has multiple locations.
Google Suggest is a great place to start when you’re looking to expand your keyword list, and is an excellent source of longtail keywords. If you want, you can do this manually by checking the bottom of the first page. This is a good way to go if you’re a small business with a pretty simple website, but isn’t very efficient. Luckily, there are plenty of free tools out there that will leverage suggested searches for you. Tools like Ubersuggest and Keywordtool.io work by appending every letter of the alphabet to your keyword and recording the suggestions. Keyword tool Answer the Public also includes question modifiers (how, where, who, etc.) and prepositions (for, to, with, etc.). Export your list of potentials as a .csv for easy analysis and use with other tools.
In Google AdWord’s Keyword Planner, search for the local keywords from your list of topics you came up with earlier. You can enter multiple keywords as either a comma or paragraph-separated list or by uploading a .csv file. Click on the Ad Group ideas tab to find ideas for related keywords. You will need to create a free AdWords account to use this tool.
Go over the search volume trends graph at the top to see how seasonality might affect your traffic. Our fictional landscaping business could start a campaign in December so they’ll appear at the top of search results when the season starts.
By now you’ve probably got a pretty sizable list of keywords — likely more than you should actually target. You’ve also probably got some keywords in there that don’t generate enough traffic to be worth targeting. It’s important to weed some of these out since local search volumes are generally already quite low.
Continue reading %Keyword Research: Finding Local Intent%
Podcasting has become immensely popular all over the Internet in the last few years and gives users the opportunity to broaden their web presence while increasing traffic simultaneously. Nearly 46 million Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis.
Numbers like those are hard to ignore. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about podcasting with WordPress and help you get started by introducing you to some of the best plugins to get the job done.
Let’s put all of this into context before we move on.
Although the concept has been around since the 80’s radio boom, podcast is a relatively new term which is a mishmash of Apple’s iPod media player and the word broadcast. Podcast is defined as:
“A digital audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer.” Source: Dictionary.com
Adam Curry and Dave Winer are behind the creation of iPodder which forms the building blocks of modern day podcasting. The purpose of the site was to provide users with an elegant broadcasting mechanism enabling them to listen to audio content whenever they’d like.
Podcasting has been around since 2004 and, over a decade later, they’re regaining popularity among the masses. According to a study, more people are listening to podcasts in the United States than ever before.
Podcasts are trending once again and this time they’re here to stay for some time. Most of the podcast listeners are young, affluent, and well-educated people who crave audio content on their morning commutes and running their daily errands.
Apple’s products come with the stock Podcast app whereas other apps like SoundCloud, Tune In, and Stitcher are also widely used.
Podcasting and WordPress are like two peas in a pod (pun intended!). WordPress is an immensely popular CMS and its users like to keep up with the latest trends and styles. You’ve probably noticed that most of the WordPress hubs have added a podcast to their site to supplement their daily blogs covering everything from the latest happenings to tutorials. In a way, website owners are translating written content into audio content.
Continue reading %A Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting With WordPress%
