UX Exam (modules 1-2)

Question 1

UX design is…

Answer 1

A philosophy & methodology, user/human centered, inclusive design

Question 2

What is user centered design?

Answer 2

A design strategy that focuses on understanding people, their tasks, the technology available, and the large social and organizational context of where they live, work and play. Keeps the customer involved in the design process

Question 3

What is the user-centered design cycle/process?

Answer 3

Plan, Understand, Specify, Make, Evaluate (ISO 9241-210)

Question 4

What is involved in the ‘Plan’ stage of the 5 processes of user-centered design?

Answer 4

• Work out your approach – customise the lifecycle
• Assess and mitigate any risks
• Plan out the project but be prepared to iterate
• Planning-driven, not plan-driven

Question 5

What is involved in the ‘Understand’ stage of the 5 processes of user-centered design?

Answer 5

• Observe the users in their real context
• Understand their characteristics, goals, tasks
• Understand the physical, social, technical environment
• Understand tools currently used and any problems
• Start with an open mind – not too focussed
• Progressively focus and hone in on the problems

Question 6

What is involved in the ‘Specify’ stage of the 5 processes of user-centered design?

Answer 6

• Create research artefacts to communicate the context of use
• Describe the users’ needs
• Define attributes and behaviours of appropriate solution(s)
• User stories

Question 7

What is involved in the ‘Make’ stage of the 5 processes of user-centered design?

Answer 7

• Outputs of this process are extremely varied
• Most often mockups or prototypes of a user interface
• Can also include anything else that will help to increase understanding of the problem and its solution(s)
• Designed as experiments

Question 8

What is involved in the ‘Evaluate’ stage of the 5 processes of user-centered design?

Answer 8

• Test the design with users
• The results should either support or disprove your ideas
• Evaluation ≠ validation
• Usability testing ≠ user acceptance testing

Question 9

What are the benefits of user-centered design?

Answer 9

• Enhances effectiveness and efficiency
• Improves human well-being
• Improves user satisfaction
• Improves accessibility
• Improves sustainability
• Counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance

Question 10

What are the 2 ISO standards for user-centered design?

Answer 10

ISO 9241: 11 Ergonomics of human-system interaction - Part 11: Usability: Definitions and concepts
ISO 9241: 210:2019 Ergonomics of human-system interaction - Part 210: Human-Centred Design for Interactive Systems

Question 11

What is usability according to the ISO standard?

Answer 11

The extent to which a system, product or service can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use (ISO 9241-210).

Question 12

What are the components of usability?

Answer 12

From ISO 9241-11:
* Effectiveness - “The accuracy and completeness with which users achieve specified goals” including:
o Accuracy - “The extent to which an actual outcome matches an intended outcome”
o Completeness - “The extent to which users are able to achieve all intended outcomes”
* Efficiency - “The resources used in relation to the results achieved”
* Satisfaction - “The extent to which the user’s physical, cognitive and emotional responses that result from the use of a system, product or service meet the user’s needs and expectations. This includes the extent to which the user experience that results from actual use meets the user’s needs and expectations. Anticipated use can influence satisfaction with actual use”

Question 13

What are some problems with poor usability?

Answer 13

• Directly lead to success or failure of a website or system
• Loss of sales e.g. online stores
• Safety e.g. medical systems, airplane cockpit

Question 14

What are the key principles of user-centered design?

Answer 14

ISO 9241:210:
* The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments
* Users are involved throughout design and development
* The design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation
* The process is iterative
* The design addresses the whole user experience
* The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives

Question 15

What is user experience (UX)?

Answer 15

User experience (UX): A person’s perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service (ISO 9241-210).
User experience includes all the users’ emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviours, and accomplishments that occur before, during, and after use.

Question 16

What are the periods and elements of UX?

Answer 16

Before usage: anticipatory UX
During usage: momentary UX, episodic UX
After usage: cumulative UX, reflective UX

Question 17

Which is more important? User or business needs?

Answer 17

UX design is not about achieving user goals at the expense of business goals. Before even considering the specific site or system goals and objectives, it is an important need to understand business objectives, goals and priorities. Understanding these business needs would help define your project goals.

Question 18

What are some methods to understand the current state of the site/system?

Answer 18

• Review site statistics and performance e.g. generation of sales or quotes compared with other channels such as call centres
• Conduct a site survey (also useful for benchmarking purposes)
• Talk to client facing staff - do they receive complaints about the site/system
• Review site/system feedback if available
• Have an expert review done by an external usability specialist or by an internal usability specialist not familiar with the site/system
• Conduct some brief exploratory usability testing

Question 19

How can you identify target or potential users?

Answer 19

• Speak with business/content experts
• Speak with client facing staff
• Look at available customer data if available e.g. customer databases
• Look at any marketing reports or strategies

Question 20

What is the basic criteria for a research participant in user research?

Answer 20

Research participants needs to be representative of your potential users, but it also requires to be inclusive.

Question 21

How do you identify primary users?

Answer 21

Focus on people with:
* Similar tasks and goals
* Operating in the same environment
* With access to the same resources
Then:
* Within that population, aim for a wide diversity and range of characteristics

Question 22

Who should you not be designing for?

Answer 22

• Don’t aim to design for the widest user population
• Don’t design for the average user – they often don’t exist
• Business stakeholders

Question 23

How should you classify users into groups?

Answer 23

“Typically, users are classified into groups based on their different needs, goals, tasks, roles, the environment in which they are using the object of interest, or in terms of their characteristics, physiological or psychological capabilities or states or other sources of individual differences. Characteristics include physical, sensory, psychological and social factors.
NOTE The market segments used in market research are typically based on personal characteristics related to purchase behaviour, rather than use behaviour.”

Question 24

Why should we design for accessibility?

Answer 24

• Legal requirement – equal access if required by law.
• Social equality – improves people’s lives.
• Business reasons – avoid loss of 10-20% of your market.
• Usually improves experience for everyone

Question 25

For the resource component of context of use, what are examples of resources?

Answer 25

Technology, equipment, information, support, time, effort, money, materials

Question 26

For the environment component of context of use, what are examples of environments?

Answer 26

Technical - electricity access, network, furniture
Physical - built environment, heat/light/sound, stability/vibration, weather, geography, time of day & year
Social/cultural/organisational - other people, roles & relationships, org structure, language, regulations, norms/values/work practices, privacy

Question 27

What are some discount (low-cost) user research methods?

Answer 27

• Existing records
• Site feedback / Email enquiries
• Consult client facing staff
• Competitor analysis
• Site statistics / metrics
• Scan social media & reviews
• Empathy mapping
• Diary studies

Question 28

What is the ‘existing records’ method of user research?

Answer 28

Look through any customer research, business reports or any available customer data.

Question 29

What is the ‘site statistics/analytics’ method of user research?

Answer 29

Overview
Involves analysing internal and external site statistics and metrics to identify information about your users and in particular, their online behaviour (usually Google Analytics).
Benefits
Cost effective (if you already subscribe to metric services).
Method
Analyse information such as most commonly visited pages, site exit points, drop off rates (from linear transactions), search engine or site search keywords and phrases, user pathways, upstream and downstream traffic (site users come from and leave for).
Note - time spent on page or the site not usually relevant - user may not have been able to find what they were looking for.

Question 30

What is the ‘email/helpdesk enquiries & feedback’ method of user research?

Answer 30

Overview
Involves reviewing customer site feedback and/or email enquiries over a set period of time to help understand problems with existing site/system or missing content or features.
Benefits
Although this process can be time consuming if data has not been previously tabulated or grouped, it can provide great insight into current problems and user needs which are not currently being met.
Method
Reading archived emails from customers and documenting patterns e.g. more than 2-3 enquiries on the same topic.
Tabulating customer feedback (preferably as they are received) and analysing for common pattern.

Question 31

What is the ‘social media/online reviews’ method of user research?

Answer 31

Overview
Involves people’s posts and comments on social media sites and review sites to tap into their experiences, lifestyles and opinions.
Benefits
Useful in the discovery phase or requirements-gathering phase when you need to do some quick and dirty design research to understand the context of use
Easily accessible & no privacy concerns, when profiles are public
Drawbacks
Sample. Are social media users representative of your target users?
Is the data clear enough to understand?
Are we seeing self-reported behaviour, not real behaviour (social media tends to be glorified)
Privacy settings – often groups and individuals are set to be private (especially on Facebook)
Method
1. Identify what type of information you would like to gather through your qualitative market research - What’s your research question?
2. Define keywords to monitor – You need to define a search query. What are you looking for. Official terms but also do some research into the phrases or hashtags used by users.
3. Choose social media site/s - Find out what type of social media that members of your target audience use to communicate their opinions. Focus on those sites.
4. Choose a tool - There are both free and paid tools social monitoring tools. Free search on site (basic or advanced) e.g. Instagram, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Free monitoring tools for social listening – Hootsuite (free version), klout, social mention. Paid tools, e.g. talkwalker, hootsuite
5. Gather data - Monitor social media sites for your keywords (phrases, hashtags, accounts), while keeping the goal of your qualitative research in mind. Preferably within a certain period of time. For apps look at app stores e.g. Google and Apple stores for user reviews, comments and feedback.
6. Analyse for insights - Group common statements, label them as you normally would when using affinity diagramming.

Question 32

What is the ‘benchmark/competitor analysis’ method of user research?

Answer 32

Overview
Involves analysing strengths and weaknesses of best practice sites or competitor sites.
Benefits
Other sites often mould user expectations e.g. users will have higher expectations when they visit your site.
Helps identify issues or major gaps in functionality that need to be addressed in order to compete
Can help raise alarm bells to your management.
Learn from the experience of global companies or other industries who may have significant usability resources.
Method
High level expert reviews or heuristic evaluations of key sites.
Complete a features matrix and rating for key competitors and plot numerical ratings using charts to show visually how they compare on certain criteria.
e.g. Home page comparison

Question 33

What is the ‘remote desktop access’ method of user research?

Answer 33

See what your users are doing on your session replay tools such as Hotjar and Crazy Egg

Question 34

What is the ‘access client facing or helpdesk staff’ method of user research?

Answer 34

Overview
Very effective method involving either interviews or surveys of staff in your organisation who deal with users on a day to day basis.
Benefits
Often these people know users better than they know themselves.
Can be useful in determining relative proportions of users.
Usually no external costs involved.
Often know the problems with a system from customer complaints.
Can be used to validate user research findings from other methods.
Method
Either qualitative interviews with a few or short surveys of a large number of client facing staff or both.
If available, can also analyse call centre data e.g. enquiry types.

Question 35

What is the ‘diary study’ method of user research?

Answer 35

Definition: A longitudinal research method where users keep track of the activities in which they engage. BCS Glossary
* Participants record daily events, tasks and perceptions
* Gain insights into their behaviour and needs over time
* Considered a ‘discount research method’ but labour intensive for participants and researchers

Question 36

What is the ‘pop-up interviews or intercepts’ method of user research?

Answer 36

Approach people in café’s or libraries and do guerrilla style research.

Question 37

What are behavioural (empirical) research methods?

Answer 37

Contextual interviews and contextual enquiries/ethnography

Question 38

Give an overview of a contextual enquiry

Answer 38

More observational rather than an interview, which involves observing users as they interact with a system, followed by inquiry.
Usually done by one interviewer speaking to one user at a time - the aim is to gather as much data about the user, their tasks and the environment and context in which they operate.

Question 39

What are the benefits of doing a contextual enquiry?

Answer 39

Ethnographic methods allow a particularly deep understanding of a design problem’s domain, audience(s), processes, goals and context(s) of use.
Works for services within a shorter timeframe, e.g. commuting with public transport to work
Helps really understand the context and environment that users operate in, user tasks and associated needs and goals.
Helps interviewers ask the right questions that may otherwise be missed as the user may not see as relevant.
Possible to do smaller pieces of ethnographic work with people experiencing different touchpoints in the journey and the context, e.g. people boarding the ferry.

Question 40

What are the steps to do a contextual enquiry?

Answer 40

Follow the user on the journey. Understand the user’s context and environment.
1. Agree a focus
2. Visit the users in their environment
3. Record observations
4. Interpret findings with user
5. Analyse data
6. Create artefacts - describe context of use

Question 41

Give an overview of contextual user interviews

Answer 41

Discover issues and needs and drill down to discover motivations, attitudes and beliefs in the context of their environment.
Overview
* Useful method for discovering facts, opinions, issues and the needs of existing or potential users and the context of the environment within which they operate.
* Can be deceptively difficult.

Question 42

What are the benefits of contextual user interviews?

Answer 42

• One-on-one nature allows interviewer to build rapport with users and get into their head - really understand their issues, concerns, needs, constraints etc.
• Less contaminated by social factors than focus groups.

Question 43

What is a ladder interview?

Answer 43

An interview technique where a simple response to a question is pushed by the interviewer to find subconscious motives. (essentially keep asking why for each answer)

Question 44

What are some interview tips?

Answer 44

Build trust & rapport by asking easy questions
Don’t ask leading or biased questions
Ask open questions, not closed questions
Record participant’s own words
Active listening
Write up insights asap

Question 45

What is task analysis?

Answer 45

Overview
* Task analysis is the process of learning how users perform their tasks and achieve their intended goals across multiple channels and systems.

Question 46

What are the benefits of task analysis?

Answer 46

Benefits
* Understanding how the user perform tasks and the context helps designers built usable systems/sites.
* Can align implementation model (key functions built) with users’ mental models (how they think about the tasks based on the real world)
* Understand how customer behaviour and needs change through the process.
* Can identify service or process improvements (especially if digitising a process).
* Avoids expensive redevelopments due to little understanding of how users perform tasks.
* Can align implementation model with mental model.

Question 47

What are some opinion-based (subjective) research methods?

Answer 47

Focus groups and surveys

Question 48

What are the benefits of surveys?

Answer 48

• Measure user satisfaction.
• Benchmarking to measure performance and compare before and after implementation of changes.
• Validate requirements and research to give more rigour to research findings and to determine if findings are representative of a larger group of users.

Question 49

A valid and reliable survey/questionnaire should:

Answer 49

• Use the respondent’s language
• Ideally short, succinct and simple
• Be relevant to the research objectives
• Be piloted before going live
• Avoid the following types of questions:
  o Biased
  o Leading
  o Ambiguity
  o Double-barrelled (asking 2 things in 1)
  o Double negatives
  o Answers that aren’t mutually exclusive
  o Long, overly technical and unnecessary (complex) words

Question 50

What is a focus group?

Answer 50

A group of selected participants who participate in a discussion session, intended to facilitate expressed thoughts and perceptions within a topic of interest. Typically used for market/product research and to solve an identified (set) of problems. An effective focus group usually involves 6-10 participants that represent a sample of user groups; a facilitator; and a set of questions to elicit responses from participants.

Question 51

What is a journey-mapping workshop?

Answer 51

A technique originally used for service design to visualise services. However it can also be a tool to visualise user’s or customer’s story as they experience a site, system, product or service. The journey map essentially identifies key interactions, use/customer’s feelings, motivations and questions for each touch point. Other features include user personas, timeline (from first interaction to the last) and channels for which interactions are taken place.

Question 52

First and last rule of user research?

Answer 52

Don’t ask your users: focus on behaviours – not opinions. Choose between good and bad design ideas using behavioural data

Question 53

What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods?

Answer 53

• Qualitative research is empirical research where the data are not in the form of numbers. Typically small sample size but rich data which provide deep customer insights.
• Quantitative research gathers data in a numerical form. Typically larger sample size, more likely to be statistically representative but data not as rich.

Question 54

Problems with opinion-based (subjective) user research methods?

Answer 54

• Users can’t see themselves objectively
• Users reconstruct memories which may not be accurate
• Hidden or unconscious agenda
• Users often cannot articulate what they want

Question 55

What should you not ask users?

Answer 55

• What they want
• What they will do in the future
• What they would do in a particular scenario or situation

Question 56

Why should you not ‘validate’ designs?

Answer 56

Should use word ‘evaluate’ instead of ‘validate’, since going into research/test sessions with the mindset you are ‘validating’ assumes you think it is right.