The only winning move is not to play
My mind boggles at the thought of using a generative tool based on a large language model to do any kind of qualatitive user research, so every single thing that Gregg says here makes complete sense to me.
Link tags: research
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Anchoring insights: Key learnings from Research by the Sea | Clearleft
This was a day of big conversations, but also one of connection, curiosity, and optimism.
Seeing it all laid out like this really drives home just how much was packed into Research By The Sea.
Throughout the day, speakers shared personal reflections, bold ideas, and practical insights, touching on themes of community, resilience, ethics, and the evolving role of technology.
Some talks brought hard truths about the impact of AI, the complexity of organisational change, and the ethical dilemmas researchers face. Others offered hope and direction, reminding us of the power of community, the importance of accessibility, and the need to listen to nature, to each other, and to the wider world.
The Sunshine by the Sea: S20E08 - Harsh Browns
Research by the Sea was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in yeeeeeears. So many good, useful, inspiring, thoughtful, provocative talks. Much more about ethics and power and possibility than I’d expected. None of the ‘utopian bullshit’ you usually get at a product or digital conference, to quote one of the speakers!
Miniver Cheevy: Decision-based evidence-making
My presumption that one should examine evidence before reaching a conclusion, rather than using it to support a conclusion, was not even an idea they could understand well enough to reject.
I am not against trying to be persuasive. That is a necessary art. But I was shaken they could not conceive of any use of information other than persuasion.
Over the Edge: The Use of Design Tactics to Undermine Browser Choice - Mozilla Research
It’s a dream team of former Clearlefties: Harry and Cennydd joined forces to investigate and write an in-depth report looking into deceptive design practices used by Microsoft to stop people changing their default browser from Edge. They don’t pull their punches:
We judge that Microsoft cannot justify the use of these techniques, and should stop using them immediately. If they do not, we would welcome – where the law provides for it – regulatory intervention to protect against these harms.
Dark Patterns: We Asked 500+ People How Brands Deceive Them
User research into deceptive design patterns:
Despite our technological advancement and understanding of human nature, it’s still common to see deception in digital products. To understand digital deception (and better define it), we surveyed 536 people to measure and discuss people’s understanding of this matter.
The Customer Onboarding Handbook [PDF]
A free PDF with five articles:
- The Brand Experience Gap by Emma Parnell
- Ongoing Onboarding: Taking Customers from First Use to Product Mastery by Chris How
- Just Add ICE: 3 Ways to Make Your Customer Experience More Meaningful by Candi Williams
- Effectively Researching and Using Customer Journey Maps by Lauren Isaacson
- Using and Abusing Surveys in Customer Onboarding by Caroline Jarrett
Three of those authors spoke at this year’s UX London!
Improving the information architecture of the Smart Pension member app | Design and tech | Smart – retirement, savings and financial wellbeing
Here’s a really excellent, clearly-written case study that unfortunately includes this accurate observation:
In recent years the practice of information architecture has fallen out of fashion, which is a shame as you can’t design something successfully without it. If a user can’t find a feature, it’s game over - the feature may as well not exist as far as they’re concerned.
I also like this insight:
Burger menus are effective… at hiding things.
When Women Make Headlines
This is a great combination of rigorous research and great data visualisation.
The UI fund
This is an excellent initiate spearheaded by Nicole and Sarah at Google! They want to fund research into important web UI work: accessibility, form controls, layout, and so on. If that sounds like something you’ve always wanted to do, but lacked the means, fill in the form.
Skipping skip links ⚒ Nerd
Vasilis offers some research that counters this proposal.
It makes much more sense to start each page with the content people expect on that page. Right? And if you really need navigation (which is terribly overrated if you ask me) you can add it in the footer. Which is the correct place for metadata anyway.
That’s what I’ve done on The Session.
Keepers of the Secrets | The Village Voice
A deeply fascinating look into the world of archives and archivists:
The reason an archivist should know something, Lannon said, is to help others to know it. But it’s not really the archivist’s place to impose his knowledge on anyone else. Indeed, if the field could be said to have a creed, it’s that archivists aren’t there to tell you what’s important. Historically momentous documents are to be left in folders next to the trivial and the mundane — because who’s to say what’s actually mundane or not?
Web Histories
Rachel is doing her dissertation project on the history of web design and development:
I intend this site to become a place to gather the stories of the early efforts to create an open web.
Take the survey to help out!
4 Design Patterns That Violate “Back” Button Expectations – 59% of Sites Get It Wrong - Articles - Baymard Institute
Some interesting research in here around user expecations with the back button:
Generally, we’ve observed that if a new view is sufficiently different visually, or if a new view conceptually feels like a new page, it will be perceived as one — regardless of whether it technically is a new page or not. This has consequences for how a site should handle common product-finding and -exploration elements like overlays, filtering, and sorting. For example, if users click a link and 70% of the view changes to something new, most will perceive this to be a new page, even if it’s technically still the same page, just with a new view loaded in.
Home | SofaConf 2020
You don’t want to miss this! A five-day online conference with a different theme each day:
- Monday: Product Strategy
- Tuesday: Research
- Wednesday: Service Design
- Thursday: Content Strategy
- Friday: Interaction Design
Speakers include Amy Hupe, Kelly Goto, Kristina Halvorson, Lou Downe, Leisa Reichelt and many more still to be announce, all for ludicrously cheap ticket prices.
I know it sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet because this is a Clearleft event, but I had nothing to do with it. The trumpets of my talented co-workers should be blasting in harmonious chorus.
(It’s a truly lovely website too!)
Design Questions Library | d.school public library
This site is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather a useful guide—our FAQ for design understanding. We hope it will inspire discussion, some questioning, a little soul searching, and ideally, a bit of intellectual support for your everyday endeavors.
The Design Questions Library goes nicely with the Library of Ambiguity.
Open UI
An interesting project that will research and document the language used across different design systems to name similar components.
The rise of research ops — a view from the inside | Clearleft
I moderated this panel in London last week, all about the growing field of research ops—I genuinely love moderating panels. Here, Richard recounts some of the thought nuggets I prised from the mind casings of the panelists.
The Crowd and the Cosmos - Chris Lintott - Oxford University Press
This’ll be good—the inside story of the marvelous Zooniverse project as told by Chris Lintott. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of this book when it comes out in a couple of months.