Linknote — — 66 words

Human-centred approaches — User experience — User research

Marry data science with user research — ethical design depends on it — Tony Ho Tran — dscout

Illustration of Ovetta Sampson

Why do unethical products keep being designed? According to Ovetta Sampson, it’s because of an unnecessary disconnect between user researchers and data scientists.

…it’s easier to say, “I’m just the engineer” or ”I’m just the numbers guy.” It allows us to divorce ourselves from the responsibility of what that data can do to people.

See also: ‘What’ means nothing unless you know ‘why’

Linknote — — 43 words

User experience — User research

Work:

Contextual enquiry with members of staff working with course materials digitally — Website and Communications Blog

Staff foam board

As part of our comprehensive programme of user research in support of the Learn Foundations project, the User Experience Service has conducted contextual enquiry to better understand the contexts and needs of staff members working with Learn. This blog post summarises our findings.

Linknote — — 72 words

Human-centred approaches — Technology — User experience

The flow — Simon Wilson

Self-checkout machines may seem like an easy target for critcism. But there’s a really interesting point here about what happens when people get used to a new technology, their flow changes — but the technology hasn’t updated to adapt to people’s new behaviour.

Happens all the time — people are used to these things but the machines aren’t used to what the people now do. I am here to correct the machines.

Linknote — — 67 words

User experience — User research

Understanding design better by looking from different levels of magnification — Nicola Dobiecka — Website and Communications Blog

Screenshot from Powers of Ten showing a man having a picnic

My colleague Nicola Dobiecka wrote this brilliant blog post about how designers need to take different approaches depending on the level they are working at. It builds on [Jared Spool’s analogy](https://playbook.uie.com/blog/zooming-in-and-out-of-ux-design-resolutions) with Charles and Ray Eames’ classic film Powers of Ten.

> Essentially, colleagues at different levels of the organisation have different perspectives. All valid, but all require different skills and processes.

Linknote — — 62 words

Information architecture — User experience — User research

Work:

First click tests — building up the elements of user experience for Learn Foundations — Website and Communications Blog

First click heatmap

> We had developed an information architecture and tree tests as part of our programme of user research for Learn Foundations. The next step was to use first click tests to pit the new template against existing courses.

The latest post in my series for the Website and Communications blog about our user research work around the University of Edinburgh’s virtual learning environment.

Article — — 52 words

Service design — User experience — User research

Work:

Slides from my Edinburgh UX meetup talk on Monday 2 September 2019, about the user research we have been conducting around the needs of students and staff working with course materials digitally at the University of Edinburgh. See the more detailed blog posts about this project over at the Website and Communications team blog.

Note — — 96 words

Technology — User experience — User research

Work:

I’m doing a couple of talks this week. They are both about [the user research we’ve been doing for the Learn Foundations project](https://duncanstephen.net/tag/learn-foundations/).

This evening I will be presenting at the [Edinburgh UX monthly meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Edinburgh-User-Experience-Meetup/events/ghvkllyzlbjc/). It’s a friendly meetup and it’s free, so do come along if you’re interested.

Then on Wednesday I’ll be [presenting](https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2019/sessions/a-105/) with my colleagues Karen Howie and Paul Smyth at the [Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Annual Conference](https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2019/).

Linknote — — 106 words

User experience — User research

Author of Practical Empathy Indi Young on going deeper than insights — Carrie Neill — dscout

Indi Young illustration

It’s always great to see advice from Indi Young. Here are tips on how to better identify and synthesise patterns in qualitative data.

…when you’re looking at data, don’t group things together by noun. Group them together by verb. I’ve done a lot of work with the healthcare industry, and one thing I often see research teams do is bring together insights that are all about a noun — here is all of the data that we got about how people feel about the doctors. But when you do that the intent behind what people are really saying ends up all over the place.