SR-capabilities-2015
- 1. Design the ultimate user experience UX Capabilities © 2015 Situated Research | All Rights Reserved
- 2. Who Is Situated Research? We evaluate the user experience ‘in situ’, or in the actual environments where products are used. Our “situated” approach means that we study the entire environment in which cognitive and social interactions occur. Our goal is to uncover user practices and behaviors that give insight into how technology is expected to behave. Our clients recognize us as a valuable resource to help them create spot-on, easy-to-use solutions that balance aesthetics with functionality. Areas of Expertise • Expert Review • Card Sorting • Persona Research • Brainstorming / Strategy • Qualitative Research • Quantitative Studies • Focus Groups • User Experience Testing • Rapid-Iterative Testing • Eye Tracking • Mobile Usability • Statistical Surveys • Remote User Testing • Competitive Assessment • Longitudinal Studies We are industry leaders of ‘situated’ usability research, where users are observed in their native environments. This helps to re- duce bias and yield more accurate results. 1
- 3. 2 Bring Situated Research in at any Stage of the Design Process Common to most development processes are some sort of requirements gathering, design, implementation, and testing. Situated Research is accustomed to entering the design process at any point to capture data and make recommendations that inform your design team, so they can make the right development decisions. For example, usability experts might inform early designs with questionnaires, workshops, and card-sorting activities to uncover users’ needs. Later in the design process, usability testing and validation provides designers valuable feedback on the effectiveness of their design. Regardless of your development process, usability experts can improve the product at various phases to improve overall satisfaction and productivity of users with the end product. When you need expert advice and usability validation, we can carry you through the entire research and design process, or simply step in as a vetted research partner. How to Optimize and Inform DesignYour Reliable Partner Situated Research’s experienced team of researchers not only pinpoint problems within your project, but come up with viable solutions. These solutions are delivered to you so your team can quickly implement them and improve the user expe- rience. We’ll exceed your expectations on each and every project. As our partner, you’ll find us to be perfectionists, trustworthy, and dependable. The usability research process is highly contingent on where you are in your development process, and the particular usability study best suited to your needs. However, we will take the time to carefully analyze your business objectives, and to review customer interactions with your product. Our results highlight user behavior, and how user interactions either support or detract from business objectives: giving you actionable data to improve future designs.
- 4. 3 High-Demand and Trending Usability Studies Surveys and Statistical Analysis Surveys are structured questionnaires that produce data on user performance or sentiment to gauge what works and doesn’t work in a design. The goal is to highlight design problems and successes so you can serve your users better. These tests rely on structuring good questions and experts in statistical analysis, so that results are statistically significant. With surveys we have helped clients determine what features to include in a new product, and helped others capture feedback from a product that has already been released. Persona Research identifies key stakeholders of your system. Through interviews, the needs of each type of stakeholder are determined and used to generate personas. Personas provide an abstract view of your users, aiding in system design and use cases. Personas highlight relationships among groups, aiding in the design of user interactions. Personas represent user archetypes, or different groups of users that will be using the sys- tem. These user groups can have custom user experiences designed that are optimized to their specific needs. Persona Research Card Sorting We have helped clients early in their design process using card sorting sessions, where users are separately given cards with labels, then asked to organize them and assign category names. Card Sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the Information Architecture (IA) of a system. In a card sorting session, par- ticipants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and help you label these groups. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online card-sorting software tools. Run moderated interview sessions with users to help clients figure out where to focus their design efforts. Once a team is able to focus their design efforts, it makes for a smoother design process moving forward. A Focus Group is a moderated discussion that typically involves 5 to 10 participants. Through a focus group, you can learn about users’ attitudes, beliefs, desires, and reactions to concepts. Individual nterviews can ac- complish the same without bias from other users. Focus Groups
- 5. 4 High-Demand and Trending Usability Studies Mobile Usability Testing Mobile apps and websites need to abide by a different set of rules on a mobile device, since available screen space is limited and navigation is done by touch rather than a mouse. If your website does not have a usable mobile version, you may be losing business. Your content is delivered across many web platforms, whether it be a mobile app or website viewed on a Mac, PC, or other device. We’ve tested on iOS, Android and Win- dows-based phones and tablets. Eye Tracking Study Eye tracking visualizations such as gaze plots, heat maps and gaze replays can easily be interpreted and pre- sented in a convincing way. We have helped companies figure out where their users’ attention is drawn, and derive value by learning what marketing materials are most effective at presenting information. The visual results of eye tracking studies and real-time data observations provide tremendous tools to get non-usability experts excited about and involved in usability testing. Competitive Assessment A Competitive Assessment makes it easy to spy on your competition. For a website, you’ll be able to see how many indexed pages, inbound links, and social media followers competitors have, and how your traffic rank compares to theirs. This helps you stay on the winning side by assessing your branding, usability, accessibil- ity, information architecture, and other elements of your web content strategy. By examining competitors, you can gauge what you do best and what they do best: creating key objectives that you can improve upon. Expert Review Many clients choose an expert design review early in the design process, since a finished product is not quite ready for users to test. An expert in usability and design can talk high-level design to ensure your team is headed in the right direction. The nature of this test is highly contingent to the product being tested, but will involve a usability expert gauging a product’s usability and user experience. In other words, we’ll find out how and why users behave the way they do while interacting with your product.
- 6. 5 Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D. President & Co-founder Michel Sharritt. VP & Co-founder Alex Chen, Ph.D. Jennifer Kania Laura Minnigerode, M.Ed. David Woods, Ph.D. Contact us: info@situatedresearch.com, (630) 522-0855, or visit www.situatedresearch.com Lead UX Researchers Your free usability report was very insightful and helpful for our team to understand the usability behind our website. Thank you again and we look for- ward to working with you. Thank you so much for the in depth usability analysis you did on our company’s website. Our school prides itself on perfection and this report did not disappoint. Thank you again. Executive Team