Slides and materials are hosted at https://gdiboulder.github.io/gdi-boulder-user-research/#/.
User research is one of a number of disciplines that fall within the field of user experience. Before designing a product, software, or website, it is critical to know who will be using it and what their overarching goals are. User research aims to answer these questions in an effort to provide you and your team with in-depth knowledge about what your users are trying to accomplish and how your product could help them. The goal for conducting this type of research before designing your product, is to reduce the risk of creating something your users don’t need or want.
During this course we’ll clarify what user research is and its importance in the user experience process. You’ll get a foundation on how to create and conduct your own study, analyze your findings, and implement those findings into a deliverable. This class is low-tech, but highly collaborative. Be prepared to engage with your fellow classmates and leave with the confidence to start your own research project.
- What is user research and why it’s important to the user experience process
- The understanding of how user research differs from usability research and market research
- How to plan a research study including, establishing hypothesis, determining what type of research to conduct, and how to recruit participants
- How to write interview questions and conduct user interviews
- How to analyze the data coming out of your research
- Deliverables that can be created from user research
PREPARING YOURSELF FOR THIS CLASS: We recommend Intro to User Experience (UX) as a prerequisite to this course. Otherwise a baseline understanding of user experience (UX) principles is recommended, but not required.
If you have not taken Intro to User Experience, here are a few books that will get you kickstarted:
How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert
Mental Models by Indi Young
Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond by Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld, and Jorge Arango.
- Your laptop & charger (optional)
- A notebook to take notes (optional)
- Wifi will be provided