Gone learnin’

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash I'm taking a quick break from blogging. I know I said I'd post monthly, but I have a good excuse to skip a couple months: learning. I'm taking an online course called UX Data Analysis from HEC Montréal on edX. It runs about 6 weeks and requires 6-9 hours…

Combining usability metrics into a single score

I'm a former chemical engineer, software tester, programmer, and UX designer who is transitioning into quantitative UX research. I write here monthly. If you're new to Quant UXR, check out my article How to get started with Quantitative UX Research. If you're an expert, leave me a comment to let me know all the mistakes I've…

How Quant UXR works in the real world

Edit: I'm transitioning from WordPress to Medium. To see the latest version of this article, see How Quant UXR works in the real world on Bootcamp When I wrote How to get started with Quantitative UX Research, one of the steps was "Learn about Quant UXR in the real world". I included a couple articles from…

My 3 new lenses from Advancing Research Conference 2020

Imagine visiting New York City for the first time and hanging out with hundreds of people who share your interests. Imagine watching real, in-person talks from several leaders of your field. Leaders that you've followed for years and learned from via podcasts, books, and more. Imagine the impact that this would have on the way…

Biases in science

TL;DR: Science has biases, but there are ways to reduce these biases. I've been bingeing lately. No, not on Netflix. Way nerdier than that. On a podcast. About economics. I love Planet Money The Planet Money podcast is interesting and entertaining. They take topics like unions or escheatment and explain them in an accessible and…

Cognitive biases in user research

In the late 1800s, there was a famous horse in Germany. Clever Hans was famous because he could do math. Hans's owner would ask him questions and Hans would tap his hoof the correct number of times. Hans toured Germany, showing off his skills to audiences for over a decade. A horse that can do…

Case study: Tactics of User Experience Research at ADP

This is part two of two, focusing on the tactical details of ADP's UX Research. For high-level strategy, see Case study: Strategy of User Experience Research at ADP I first got into user experience research by reading "Rocket Surgery Made Easy" by Steve Krug. This book was empowering because it was a step-by-step guide. It covered…

What did I just do?

I had one job this month: September Shane, your job is to have fun improving this site.What's wrong with my site, July 2019 I almost achieved the exact opposite thing. I didn't have fun or improve the site. I almost destroyed it, which caused me to swear at my laptop. How did it happen? I…

My lazy redesign

I would have liked to have started from scratch and redesigned my site from the ground up, mulling over every pixel and color, and making it my own. But that would have taken me months of hard work. Instead, I redesigned my site in no time just by switching the theme. My job was this…

Fixing the information architecture of my site

Last month, in What's wrong with my site, I picked three small improvements and assigned them each to a different "Future Shane". fix the Information Architecture (IA) of this site. If someone comes to ShaneG.ca and reads an interesting article, it’s difficult for them to explore. That’s a problem because there’s over fifty great articles…