fordes

There is an interesting type of feedback, which you can often find when people tell on the web that they are disappointed in a product they are invested in.

“I waited 10 years for this release and I had high hopes. But after trying it, I was shocked by the …

I research how people learn new skills using instructions. As fields, I selected working with people who learn programming and people who (re) learn cooking (some of them do so as they got a diagnosed with a condition that demands a new diet). Both fields work with very different materials …

Methods are a core topic in UX design. The human centered design cycle, Design Thinking steps or other variants that suggest how to structure one’s design activities. Not designing methodically is framed as wrong and as missing out on valuable insights ⁹. However, it is unclear if formally structured …

This is a text I thought about for a long time. I hoped that I would find a nice theory that someone else suggested for the observations I made, but I was unable to find one or maybe unable to see the ones I know from a perspective that made …

In most experimental quantitative research, it is essential to have a research question, or rather: an hypothesis. However, in qualitative research, a research question can be useful, too as it helps to communicate to others what you are doing and it can help to guide your research. In contrast to …

In discussions about equity in the web and in technology I often come across two terms: Gaps and Biases. Sometimes they are accompanied by barriers. It is said that, to achieve equity, we need to close gaps, correct biases and remove barriers.

“Gaps and Biases” had quite a career since …

As UX Designers and UX Researchers, we often talk about problems and user needs as “found”, “uncovered” and “arrived at”.

I was going through a guide on Design Thinking⁶ and the language used suggested that the process of design research is like going through a landscape¹:

• The Method …

Wikipedia can be edited by everyone. But after the honeymoon phase until 2006, Wikipedia saw had a slow decline of people joining and staying. Why is it so hard to retain editors?

One way to explain the problem of retention could be the idea of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP)^{1 …}

Repeatedly, me and my colleagues complain about the lack of documentation: Why is the software constructed in this particular way, how are users supposed to know how to set this up etc. We say there should be “more” documentation but, alas, there is just not enough time to write it …

TL;DR: Rule-based evaluations for usability are an efficient way to improve interfaces

There are a lot of designs that could be improved. The “right” way to do this is testing with users while applying the appropriate method for the appropriate questions. After all, User Experience design is an empirically …