UX Methods Madness

Throughout the Interaction Design Methods course, we’ve explored, studied, and practiced numerous user experience research methods that are used in the industry. It is next to impossible to explore all the UX Research that exists so far in 4 months. For instance, in this book by Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington, 100 UX research methods are discussed.

My professor, Aqueasha Martin-Hammond, has come up with an amazing idea to get to know other UX research methods. It was named “UX Methods Madness Presentation.” It was an opportunity to explore other popular interaction design methods and analysis techniques that are not covered.

The main idea of this presentation is to form a group of 4-5 people and choose one of the UX Research Methods from the list. After choosing a method, each of the team members has to choose an academic paper or case study from the ACM digital portal or IEEE Xplorethat uses the method. Then they have to summarize and explain—

• The method.
• The technology/interface/set of users being studied.
• The study and how the method was used to gain insights.
• The key insights from the study.

The method we have chosen is Concept Maps.
Find my summary of Concept Mapping here.
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Group presentation:
These presentations occurred every Thursday in the last month. The key to the presentation is to be clear but succinct. Our goal is to introduce the method with enough detail that the audience can get a summary of what it is and how it can be used.
We had to—

• Create a 10-minute madness presentation that summarizes each method/topic aligning with the topics researched by individual team members.
• Explain—
• Timeframe: 10 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes for the question from the audience.
• Explain—
• The method and its history
• How and when is used in user research.
• Summarize 2-3 of the papers/case studies that your individual teammates researched ( you do not have to summarize all due to the time constraints)
• Find our slides here.

Conclusion: My team members and I have learned about the nitty-grittiest of Concept Mapping; we are glad that we’ve chosen this and have it in our UX Arsenal, and really excited to use it in our UX design process.  In these 3 weeks, we have learned about some unexplored UX Research methods, and some of them were really interesting and exciting. Almost all of the teams have done a great job explaining the selected methods.

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