Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research - Softcover

"This new version retains the approachable style of the original edition while making the most of recent developments in mobile and social technology. The clear instructions and comprehensive overview of research methodologies make this volume a perfect guide for novices and a reference for experienced practitioners looking for new ideas."-- Dr. Aviva Rosenstein, User Research Manager, salesforce.com

Observing the User Experience is a groundbreaking, comprehensive resource for user experience research. For over a decade, it has helped readers better understand what their users want and need from their products and whether users will be able to use what they've created. This second edition improves upon a classic, adding new methods and approaches to meet today's challenging and diverse research requirements. You'll find revised methods chapters that explain how to adapt time-tested techniques for designing mobile and cross-platform products and services. New sections offer strategies for conducting remote user research, using new tools for digital ethnography, and informing cross-cultural design. Filled with real-world experience and a wealth of practical information, this book helps designers and developers see through the eyes of their users. 

• Explains how to create usable products that are still original and creative. 
• Provides a real-world perspective on research, with tips on conducting user research inexpensively and quickly, and on persuasively presenting the results. 
• Gives readers the tools and confidence to get started fast, while introducing more advanced questions and techniques. 

Through writing, design and research, Elizabeth Goodman works to inform and inspire the future of interaction design. Over the past decade, she has worked with exploratory user experience teams at Intel, Yahoo! and Fuji Xerox, and taught user research at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently a Phd candidate at Berkeley, she has a masters degree in interaction design from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. She frequently speaks on interaction design and research to businesses, schools, and industry groups. 

Mike Kuniavsky is a user experience designer, researcher and author. A twenty-year veteran of digital product development, Mike is a consultant and the co-founder of several user experience centered companies: ThingM manufactures products for ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things; Adaptive Path is a well-known design consultancy. He is also the founder and organizer of Sketching in Hardware, an annual summit on the future of digital product user experience design tools. Mike writes and speaks on digital product and service design, and works with product development groups in both large companies and startups. His most recent book is Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design.

Andrea Moed believes that research is essential in designing to support human relationships. She has been a design researcher and strategist for over 15 years, observing users of websites, phones and other mobile devices, museums, retail environments and educational and business software. She is currently the Staff User Researcher at Inflection, a technology company working to democratize access to public records. Andrea has master's degrees from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and the UC Berkeley School of Information, and has taught at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Her writing on design and technology has appeared in a variety of publications.