Most user experience research takes place sitting behind a computer. And yet these days, most networked experiences are happening on mobile devices. Some common user experience research methods work well in a mobile environment — others don’t. In this talk, Juliette Melton will guide you through how to use some great existing research methods in a mobile context, how to incorporate some new (and fun!) methods into your arsenal, and propose next generation tools and services to make mobile user experience research even better. Juliette has ten years of experience building, managing, and researching digital environments and is a human factors researcher based at IDEO in San Francisco. She’s deeply interested in the intersections between digital culture, learning, and communication. Her work has spanned a broad range of industries including social media, casual gaming, education administration, electronic publishing, corporate banking, computer hardware, and public health. Community education — through workshops, lectures, and writing — is an important part of her work. Remote user experience methods, agile project management, and research program planning are frequent topics. Juliette holds an MEd from the Technology, Innovation, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she focused on developing models for innovative networked learning applications. She also has a BA in Comparative Literature from Haverford College. Follow Juliette on Twitter: @j

1. Mobile User
Experience Research
Juliette Melton
IDEO

2. flickr.com/coldtaxi

3. 3 things
Write this down, we’re coming back to it.

4. What do we mean
by “research?”

5. What do we mean by “research?”
Inspiration
Fixing

6. What do we mean by “research?”
Inspiration (formative research)
Fixing (usability testing and analytics)

7. What do we mean by “research?”
Getting the right idea...
... getting the idea right

8. Getting the right
idea...

9. Media Diary
Distance done right

10. flickr.com/zzd

15. Punchcut Diary Study
Users generate data all the time.
People produce rich data.
Don’t exclude participants unnecessarily.

16. Paper iPhone
Early-stage prototyping

17. flickr.com/stelladauer

18. Getting the right
idea...
A quick formative research exercise

19. A quick note on
concept validation

22. ...getting the idea
right

23. Instagram
Lessons in Beta distribution

27. Meexo
Moving fast

30. AOL Mail
Testing iteratively, internally

32. Medical Reference
Has to be right before release

34. The Smallest Mobile
Physical usability

36. ...getting the idea
right

37. Usability Basics
Find some participants
Ask them good questions
Make sure the findings get to the right people
Repeat!

38. Participants
Existing users? (Twitter, newsletters)
Potential users? (Craigslist, flyers, Mechanical
Turk)

39. Good Questions
“What are you goals and frustrations today?”
“Here’s this thing. I’m just going to watch you
use it.”
“How many people signed up for this last
month? How many of them completed the
signup process?”

40. Three questions to avoid
Future
How they’d design a service
Asking by providing their reason
- Jared Spool

41. Sharing the findings
Good idea: brief topline, longer report only if
necessary
Bad idea: Long report hanging out as an
attachment in someone’s email

42. Sharing the findings
Good idea: talk directly to whoever’s
responsible for making that change
Bad idea: expecting colleagues to pay
attention to research

43. Make it repeatable
Plan appropriately for your organization’s
goals -- guerilla-style or formal? Conference
room or testing lab?

44. Internal traction

45. Agile
Parallel research track
Regularly planned research sessions
Research looks both backwards and forwards
Focus on product quality
Expectation that the project will shift course

46. Agile UXR Sample Schedule

47. Back to your 3
things...
How will you get the right idea and get the idea right?

48. What’s next
Screensharing
Data

49. Special thanks to...
Blake Engel, Punchcut
Dav Yaginuma and Romain David, Meexo
Ron Goldin, Akku
Carla Borsoi and Krista Sanders, AOL
Mike Krieger, Instagram
Brynn Evans, UX Researcher

50. Thanks!
Juliette Melton
jmelton@ideo.com
@j