Yes, yes, I’m a little delayed in posting this. But I wanted to share an article that I wrote back in January for UX Magazine, about developing the skill of paying attention, and how it applies to UX research. I intended the article primarily for those of us who spend most of their time in a lab setting, working with a research script.

Read the article here: Paying Attention: The Most Valuable Skill in UX Research

The sneaky thing is that I really care a lot about attention, and my point in the article is for readers to take what they learn about attention in a research context and apply it to the rest of their lives. As I wrote, “Stay with the present moment with your participants through better attention and discover for yourself what you might have been missing.”

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.

I’m excited to announce that in a few weeks I’ll be starting at IDEO as a senior designer/human factors specialist, based in their San Francisco studio. I’m thrilled by this amazing opportunity and the projects that lie ahead.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the friends, collaborators, and clients I’ve worked with over this busy past year of working independently — it’s been a wonderful adventure. Although I’ll have less available time, I look forward to continuing our conversations and endeavors.

For now I’m going to focus on enjoying the summer weather that just made its way to SF and wrapping up a few consulting and writing projects. Holler if you’re in the neighborhood and want to sit outside and drink cocktails.

(Photo copyright IDEO)

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.

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.

What started as a fun way to make Christmas presents has grown into something more interesting; over the past couple months I’ve been making lots and lots of very small terrariums inside of lightbulbs. I’ve experimented with different types of lightbulbs (some are easier to open and empty than others); different positioning angles (the metal part of the bulb needs to be relatively high to preserve balance); different substrates (small rocks are easier to work with than sand); different mosses (too much sheet moss leads to mold); and different types of tillandsia (they’re all working well).

To learn more about what I’m talking about, see this blog post, “How to Make a Tiny Terrarium in a Light Bulb,” that I wrote for the fantastic blog The Hipster Home. It describes how to get started with basic terrarium/light bulb endeavors.

In the past week my terrariums have started moving in a new direction because of a cat. While eating dinner with friends at their house, we kept leaping up to move their terrarium (I gave them this one) away from the inquisitive paws of their highly active teenager cat. I realized that building terrariums with a loose substrate, like what I wrote about in the Hipster Home post, was pretty risky. They are just too fragile.

So I started experimenting with ways to retain the organic feel of a terrarium while constructing it in a way that would be more stable. Many failed experiments with polyester resin later, I figured it out.

What looks like water in the terrariums above is actually resin. You can pick these up and shake them and they’ll stay intact. The tillandsia that I “rooted” in the resin is still doing well.

I realized that terrariums that are essentially all one piece can be safely shipped. I started an Etsy store thinking that maybe I could start funding this kind of weird hobby.

My next experiments will focus on resin; what is the right temperature for it to cure properly? How long should I wait after pouring the resin before I can water the plants? Will the tillandsia continue to grow happily despite being stuck in plastic?

I’m sure you’re waiting with baited breath for my findings, so I’ll be sure to report back. Also, I’ll be tracking my terrarium project over at Tiny Terra.

As previously noted, I gave a presentation to BayCHI on January 12, 2010. Folks have been asking for the slides — here you go! (photo by Coley Wopperer)

Next Tuesday, Jan. 12, I’ll be presenting to BayCHI about how to do great user research with remote methods.

The program description:

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.

I hope to see you there!

I’m taking what has so far been a pretty exciting and enjoyable leap of faith. I’ve decided that the next step in my series of projects (”career,” as it were) is to do freelance user research on a full-time basis. I’m focusing first on usability testing, user interviews, and survey design, since these are research modalities that I’m particularly drawn towards. For now, I’m calling my little company Deluxify User Experience but am open to better suggestions. Expect a lovely new website, etc., at some point in the coming weeks.

I already have some awesome clients and am busy doing work I love. Not bad for six weeks in! If you are interested in learning more about how I can help your company, whether a stealth-mode startup or established enterprise, do drop me a line at juliette@deluxify.com.

A week of traveling through Tokyo, Koyasan, and Kyoto, compressed into two minutes.

Watching Japan from Juliette Melton on Vimeo.

Audio: hwy chipmusik by x|k