Course Overview

Knowing what and how end-users think is critical in defining features or creating recommendations for design improvements. Interviews, surveys, focus groups and user testing provide rich data about users, but these techniques must be employed carefully.

This course covers how to choose an appropriate data-collection method, design the study, recruit participants, conduct the study, analyze the data and report the findings effectively.

Audience: Usability Specialists, Product Managers, Business Analysts, Marketing Professionals, User Experience Designers, User Interface Developers, Managers, and anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge of data-collection techniques.

Course length: 1 day or 2 days

Course Highlights (Customizable)

• Pros and cons of interviews, surveys, focus groups and user testing
• Selecting the right data-collection method
• Designing your study
• Defining your research questions and metrics
• Tips for recruiting study participants
• Guidelines for conducting your study
• How to ask questions
• How not to ask questions
• How to determine whether one design is “better” than another
• How to extract more data from participants
• Using scales and indices to improve data collection and analysis
• Analyzing the data
• Turning qualitative data into quantitative data
• Communicating the findings and recommendations
• How to do research with a small budget or no budget
• Reviews of examples suggested by participants during class
• Interactive exercises
• Q&A