Category Archives: conferences

Mobile User Experience Research in Seattle

Next month I’m traveling to Seattle to speak at the first ever Web Directions Unplugged conference. I’ll be talking about research mobile experiences with a focus on remote methods.

Here’s the blurb:

Most user experience research takes place sitting behind a computer. And yet these days, most networked experiences are happening on mobile devices. Some common user experience research methods work well in a mobile environment; others don’t. In this talk, Juliette Melton will guide you through how to use some great existing research methods in a mobile context, how to incorporate some new (and fun!) methods into your arsenal, and propose next generation tools and services to make mobile user experience research even better.

Use the discount code WDMELTON for $50 off registration.

Speaking in Atlanta and Sydney: Setting up a UXR program and running remote studies

I’m honored to be on the rosters for the upcoming Web Directions USA in Atlanta and Web Directions South in Sydney. (And you can register for Web Directions USA for only $799 using my discount code, “WDUSA-MELTON.”)

At both conferences I’ll be running a workshop, “Know Your Users: Developing effective user experience research plans” (Atlanta and Sydney) and giving a talk, “Running effective remote studies” (Atlanta and Sydney).

Know Your Users: Developing effective user experience research plans

You can dramatically improve your websites when you pay attention to how they are being used. Understanding user behavior can be challenging, but there lots of ways to get started. User testing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and shouldn’t only happen at the end of the product development cycle. The best and most useful research is distributed throughout the product lifecycle and is done in a way that clicks with how your organization works.

At this workshop, Juliette Melton will show you how to build an effective user experience research program from scratch and how to keep it going over time.

Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is for those who want to understand how to learn about user experiences, including project/product managers, designers, and usability professionals.

What will you learn?

  • A structured approach to building a user testing program
  • Web analytics basics
  • Writing effective surveys
  • How to include coworkers in your research
  • How to perform task analysis
  • When to use remote research tools
  • Tips for recruiting testing participants
  • Best practices for sharing research findings

Remote research: Running effective remote studies

Remote research can raise the quality and lower the costs of your user research efforts; using a combination of surveys, video, screensharing, and phone, you can connect with a much broader range of users than you could using traditional lab-based usability tests, while using resources more efficiently than you would doing contextual research. In this workshop-style talk, Juliette Melton will cover recruiting sources, technology tools, and caveats you might not have thought of, including managing time zones and participant distraction. We will also address pros and cons of increasingly popular non-scripted research services.

Quarterly Report

Quarterly Report

Hello there, internet! Things have been busy around here! The past few months have been a whirlwind, but I finally have time to catch my breath. Phew.

Here are a few of the adventures I’ve been stirring up lately:

Deluxify

In November I launched Deluxify, an independent user experience research practice. Since then I’ve worked on lots of awesome projects with companies including Adaptive Path, Digg, Answerlab, Punchcut, and LendAround. Like I said, it’s been busy!

Speaking

Last week I spoke about remote user experience research at the UX Web Summit along with Daniel Burka, Cindy Li, Dan Rubin, and other smart folks.

In September I’ll be doing a talk and a workshop at an as-yet-unannounced conference. Will report more once details are available.

Writing

I’m excited to announce that I’ve started writing as a columnist for UX Magazine. My first article is Usabilla and Loop11: Taking remote research tools on a test drive. If you have ideas for UX tools you’d like for me to write about, or people I should interview, drop me a line.

Traveling

I travelled to Atlanta in December, Austin in March, and New York, Boston, and Portland (Maine) in April. And then I’ll be in Atlanta again in June, and September, and December. Hopefully the next six months will also involve travel to places that are not Atlanta.

The Great Terrarium Zeitgeist

OK, so this one is particularly weird and awesome. My little terrarium project totally blew up on the internet in February. The tutorial I wrote got over 10,000 page views within a week and got picked up by the likes of The Huffington Post thanks to hundreds of tweets, blog posts, etc.

I created Tiny Terra to share terrarium photos and started a successful store on Etsy. But here’s the thing — when a project goes from the experimental “Hey, can this be done?” stage to the “Time to make the donuts…” stage something big and essential is lost. So I’m pondering what’s next for the terrarium project. I might shutter the Etsy store and go back to just making them for friends. I might try expanding my use of materials and do something really different; what would a paleo-terrarium look like, for example? What about terrariums that have clocks or robots or LCD lights? Or seamonkeys? Or miniature wave machines? Clearly it’s time to do some playing around.

That’s all for now. Follow along on twitter.com/j for only slightly more frequent updates.