Moving to Medium

After a few months of posting to WordPress first, then importing my stories into Medium, I've decided to pull the plug on WordPress. It's harder to use and it's harder to build up an audience with. Going forward, Medium will have a monopoly on my monthly musings. My previous 6 years of posts will remain…

Big data is nothing without small data

Quantitative UX Research. Big Data. Data Science. Analytics. They're all about figuring out exactly what's going on. But sometimes they miss the mark. Until they get help from good old qualitative research. A study by Microsoft and the University of Florida about academic collaboration used several iterations of qualitative (quant) research to inform and improve…

How to do detailed first click analysis on UsabilityHub data

What is UsabilityHub? UsabilityHub is a user research tool where you can build surveys and various simple tests. The story I recently used UsabilityHub to evaluate four variations of a fundamental design system change. I wrote about this in Expert Quant UXR advice from Sauro and Lewis. The study was set up as a Variation Set,…

How to learn a language – the slow way

"Puis-j'aller au toilette?" I asked the exam facilitator, using the phrase that I've often joked is the only thing I remembered from high school French class. Translation: "I need to pee." "No, I'm sorry. You can't leave until you've handed in your exam," she answered in French. I was two hours in to the "épreuves…

Expert Quant UXR advice from Sauro and Lewis

It was a Monday afternoon. My coworker Jason, a Senior UX Researcher, was talking through a study. Jason had done most of the planning and I had done most of the analysis. There were dozens of people on the Zoom call, most of which were much higher than me on the totem pole, and many…

Stats in spreadsheets

I am reading the book Quantifying the User Experience by James Lewis and Jeff Sauro. Slowly. It is a BEAST. I'm also trying to recreate all the calculations in Google Sheets. I know, I know. There are templates and Excel companions available. I don't want that, though. I want to build the formulas by myself…

How to get started with Quantitative UX Research

I'm trying to move my career into Quantitative User Experience Research. That's a lot of big words, so let's call it Quant UXR for short. If you are in a similar situation, you've come to the right place. I'm no expert on Quant UXR, but I know a lot about how to learn about Quant…

How to build a blogging routine

I'm baaack! When I became a dad, I put my blog on hold. After almost five years of monthly posts, I’m saying goodnight to this blog. Maybe I’ll be back for more in 2021; maybe not!Goodnight blog, July 2020 I'm indeed back for more in 2021. If you're like me, your blogging has been an…

Goodnight blog

Don't laugh. I literally made this on my phone in the hospital with my wife. I just became a dad. After almost five years of monthly posts, I'm saying goodnight to this blog. At least for a few months. It's been amazing to take my thoughts, distill them down, and share them with the world.…

5 psychological principles from The Undoing Project

Last month, I wrote about the phenomenon of Decision weighting after reading the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Some friends then recommended another book featuring the work of Kahneman and Amos Tversky: The Undoing Project. The Undoing Project covers much of the same material as Thinking, Fast and Slow, but in an…