{"id":166,"date":"2015-03-13T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/?p=166"},"modified":"2015-02-27T15:54:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T15:54:22","slug":"introduction-to-user-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2015\/03\/13\/introduction-to-user-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to User Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s fascinating to see people use our websites &#8211; it lets us see where they have problems and how we can make sites easier to use. We use this research to help us <strong>develop, structure and improve<\/strong> the<strong> usability<\/strong> of our undergraduate and postgraduate websites at Newcastle University.<\/p>\n<p>We base our testing on training provided by the <a title=\"The Nielsen Norman Group website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/\">Nielsen Norman Group<\/a>, a market leader in the user experience\u00a0field.<\/p>\n<p>But did you know that you only need <strong>five people<\/strong> to test a site?<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t seem many, but data from your first user gives immediate results \u2013 you\u2019ve already learned almost a third of all there is to know about the <strong>usability of your design.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The second user will repeat some things with maybe a few new things, but you don\u2019t learn as much as you did from that first user. Same goes for the third user, in fact the <strong>more users you have,<\/strong> the less you learn\u00a0<strong><\/strong>because you will keep<strong> seeing the same things<\/strong> again and again.<\/p>\n<p>However, we can\u2019t effectively test with just one user as you risk being misled by the specific behaviour of that single user.<\/p>\n<p>So in this case at least, five is the magic number.<\/p>\n<p><strong>User Research topics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We will share <strong>case studies<\/strong> of the user research we\u2019ve completed recently on our <strong>postgraduate<\/strong> and <strong>undergraduate<\/strong> websites, and how the findings directly informed changes to content, design and layout.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll also take a look at the <strong>latest developments<\/strong> in user research \u2013 and let you know our plans for the next batch of user testing.<\/p>\n<p>We may even be asking for <strong>volunteers<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, take a look at this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/usability-101-introduction-to-usability\/\">introduction to usability<\/a> by the Nielsen Norman Group.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Suggest a topic<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If there\u2019s a topic you\u2019d like us to cover \u2013 get in touch via the comments or via <a href=\"https:\/\/internal.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/about\/contact.htm\">our website<\/a> (University login required).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s fascinating to see people use our websites &#8211; it lets us see where they have problems and how we can make sites easier to use. We use this research to help us develop, structure and improve the usability of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2015\/03\/13\/introduction-to-user-research\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[33,38,39,37],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-user-research","tag-introduction","tag-market-research","tag-usability","tag-user-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}