Introduction
(1) Read Kuniavsky, chs. 3 & 4
(2) Troll through the webpages below to get an idea of the domain and the methods. This will help you get an idea of the field and what we’ll be covering. Note that this course is not about design, but UX Research usually provides information for a design process.
User Experience
Principles for Usable Design from Usability Body of Knowledge
Nielsen/Norman Group User Experience
Nielsen, Usability 101
A fairly good collection of definitions of UX and UX design from a consulting firm
Usability Professionals’ Association Poster The text on this page is a pretty good overview of a possible design process.
Top Ten Myths About Usability, Tom Tullis – very short PPT but true; links to PDF of all of his slides for this presentation. His book is Measuring the User Experience so this presentation and his website are useful for getting a sense of quantitative approaches to user experience.
User Experience Research Methods
Good overview based on the major dimensions on which methods can be categorized.
http://www.usability.gov/ Step through much of this site to get an overview.
http://www.usability.gov/methods/index.html Look at this page in particular. Doesn’t exactly match what we’ll be doing, but useful. Click on the links to get a general sense of what these methods cover.
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/methods/index.txl Another overview of common methods — not the same set asusability.gov
http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/methods.htm Note that this is an interactive chart that lets you specify three different sets of constraints.
http://www.theusabilityteam.com/overview.asp And another overview.