The research plan

Plan for each phase, each sprint and update the plan A research plan can be one of the outputs of a design sprint, when there is one.  If not, it's still helpful to write one as soon as possible. To be accessible to both team and stakeholders,…
Not all surprises are pleasant

Not all surprises are welcome

A good reason to start researching sooner rather than later is to address the questions and inform the decisions teams have at the start of a project.

Challenges with designing local government services

A recent assignment with local government brought home the challenges of introducing digital, agile and service design into a traditional service provider; into an environment that's neither digital first nor by default. In the UK local statutory…
How gov landing pages are laid out

A language of visual design – the grammar of digital engagement

Researching for a county council involved looking at other local government websites to see if there was a structure to the visual design, if they used a visual language. Unlike Gov.uk which is very uniform and accessible, local authority sites…
What people say is different from what they do

Formative research – techniques and tips

The post "Different types of research", categorised user research as either formative or summative (aka generative/evaluative): - Formative investigates environmental and human factors, constraints, opportunities, behaviours,…
Venn diagram - Diagram

Different types of research

Who researches what In the world of UX and UR, research can be crudely  categorised into - Formative - What's useful Summative - What's useable The first helps to create the product by investigating its context, environment,…
Title printed by Dymo

Analogue, digital, visibility, affordance and Klingons

It might not zap Klingons but nonetheless I know what to do If you don't remember the original Star Trek, you'll probably not recognise the quote or think the green Dymo printer resembles a phaser gun. The idea…

A checklist for evaluating webforms

Heuristics At some point, looking for a definition of "heuristic" turns up: "rule of thumb", which might or might not be helpful depending on whether you know that means "rough and ready", widely accepted, approximations that are "good…

Internet access by age demographic

Data from the UK's Office for National Statistics represented in an Excel radar (spider) graph. It shows 37% of those surveyed aged 65+ had accessed the internet in a three-month period; which seems high for the demographic. It would…