ADS 300, UX Design Methods, Spring 2022
Tuesday / Thursday @ 4:00-5:15pm
Marvin 216B
Matt Kirkland / mattk@ku.edu

Week 12

April 19 / 21

People are complicated, what if I want to deal with numbers instead?

Data & UX Design

Thus far we've looked at mostly qualitative assessments of users and their experiences, but UX designers also have quantitative tools at our disposal. We'll discuss data around people SAY (users talking about user experiences) and data around what users DO (observing user behavior and drawing conclusions).

Data-driven tools about what people SAY include surveys like: semantic differentials, System Usability Scale surveys, UMUX Usability Metric for User Experience, and Net Promoter Scores.

Data-driven methods WITHOUT talking to People - focusing on what they DO - include: A/B tests (change one thing, split the audience into A and B groups), multivariate testing (change a lot of things!), eye-tracking (vizualized as heatmap or pathways, web analytics (google analytics etc!), and all kinds of other automated user behavior data.

We'll also talk about some general ideas about data and UX to be aware of: ethical concerns, subjectivity, bias, consent, and the idea of a 'local maximum.'

Resources

• A good overview on A/B tests
• System Usability Scale
• Summary of 'How to Lie with Statistics'

Assignment

For Thursday Apr 21:
• Assigned text (see texts page!). Tiny quiz on Thursday.

For Tuesday Apr 26 by 8am, as always!:
• Figure out your QUESTION: what do you want to determine in your design next?
• IMAGINE that you have the tools and resources to find some data-driven answer to a question in your project.
• What is the question to address?
• What data-powered method would you try?
• Submit your report about what you did, what you learned, etc, via the google form link as usual.
• Please note: this round is hypothetical! You don't have to actually do it, I just want you to think through what might apply to your project