Starting at Essex County Council: My first six months as a Junior User Researcher
Essex County Council's Essex Digital Service| Essex Digital Service
We ran a design sprint over five consecutive days in February 2025. We’ll share the outcomes from the sprint in another blog. Here we’ll be exploring running the sprint itself, what went well and what we’d do differently next time. …| Essex Digital Service
Have you made any new year’s resolutions? I did. I made one. Go to the gym more? Nope, not that. Drink more water? Nope, should do, but not that either. Make consent forms better? That’s the one. I enlisted the …| Essex Digital Service
Adam Spencer details how the User Researchers within Essex County Council work with staff and residents to gather data that helps the council make important changes and improvements to its services by exploring and validating user needs.| Essex Digital Service
Essex County Council's Essex Digital Service| Essex Digital Service
Is there a misalignment in skills in the UX profession? Specifically, when UX managers are hiring, is there a misalignment in what applicants and current practitioners report doing and the skills managers need? In a previous article, we did a deep dive into what UX practitioners reported doing in the 2024 UXPA salary survey, tracking […]| MeasuringU
Last October, I had the privilege of speaking at the Design Leadership Summit in Toronto. It was an excellent event crammed with great material. While every session is worth viewing, here are my top picks: Though seemingly about user research, Jen Cardello’s presentation is gold for *any* design leader looking at how to establish andContinue reading "Enhance your design leadership: select videos from the 2019 Design Leadership Summit"| Org Design for Design Orgs
Many years ago, Jared Spool wrote about the importance of “exposure hours” for project team members: The number of hours each team member is exposed directly to real users interacting with the team’s designs or the team’s competitor’s designs. There is a direct correlation between this exposure and the improvements we see in the designsContinue reading "Unpopular Opinion? Consider ResearchOps before Researchers"| Org Design for Design Orgs
As a Fast Streamer, I spent six months at the Department for Education (DfE) working as a user researcher on our internal digital platform for reporting IT issues. The research, commissioned by leadership, aimed to understand how users experience the …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
The last piece in this series provided a conceptual look at how to practice active listening when facilitating customer interviews. Our advice was to “simply| CX by Design
Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra walks us through the framework his startup used to make product/market fit more actionable, detailing the survey and four-step process that were key to measuring and optimizing it.| First Round
Read how DDaT's Monitoring and Evaluation team designed an evaluation methodologly to capture data from a M365 Copilot trial.| digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Banking isn’t limited by borders. No matter what language you speak, there’s a universal need to save and access money, check balances, transfer money, and pay people. What’s also universal with digital banking is the inevitable friction caused by security concerns and troublesome user interfaces. While our previous SUPR-Q® benchmark reports have focused on U.S. […]| MeasuringU
User experience research has a wide variety of methods. The variety can be both inspiring and daunting—where do you start, what should you master?| MeasuringU
AI is rapidly changing. By the time we write about the latest features and performance benchmarks, they are replaced by newer features and benchmarks. But are all those features and benchmarks noticed by users? Perhaps. The speed of change in AI shouldn’t stop us from taking a snapshot of the user experience. Even with rapidly […]| MeasuringU
This blog provides guidelines and tips for observing user research sessions ethically. It emphasises the importance of respecting participants and maintaining the integrity of the research process.| Digital trade
Jason Stockwell, Research Operations, reflects on the work done to develop a user research manual for Defra and the importance of consistency across user research.| defradigital.blog.gov.uk
Recognizing the Signs of Usability Issues Usability issues aren’t always dramatic. They rarely appear as obvious errors or broken features. More often, they manifest in subtle forms of friction that slow users down, cause hesitation, or push them to abandon a task. A button might look decorative instead of clickable. A navigation label might be…| VERSIONS®
Informed consent is a process where an individual makes a choice whether to take part in research. They make this choice after a user researcher gives them information about what the research is about. Informed consent involves both communicating what …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
A research crit is a place for researchers to come together and provide each other advice and feedback on their work. The benefits of a crit are they: How they started In the Children & Families Digital portfolio at DfE, …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
User researchers (URs) conduct research to understand the needs of people that we are designing services for. URs have several routes to recruit participants. You can explore these further by reading these blog posts about recruitment strategies and managing biases …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
In the world of usability testing, one tool that has become essential is the tech checks - ensuring participants are ready ahead of research.| Experience UX
When we talk about usability testing and user research at Experience UX, we are referring to qualitative and moderated user research. Qualitative because we focus on small numbers of people in a study. Moderated because we sit with our respondents throughout each research session. Unlike traditional market research, which often relies on large sample sizes,... The post A moderated approach to user research appeared first on Experience UX.| Experience UX
Many people, who are new to usability testing, struggle with the idea of only testing with five, ten, or even fifteen people. It doesn’t seem like there’s enough people to be able to make some decisions on. But this is where usability testing and user research is different to regular research. And the key part... The post How many respondents do we need? appeared first on Experience UX.| Experience UX
The prison visits team has been working on the Welsh language version of a new public service. Find out how we tested Welsh content as a team without a Welsh speaker. Getting Welsh language support Visit someone in prison is …| Justice Digital
Last year, I worked with Fable to write a blog post. This year, I reflect on that blog post a bit, and thank some lovely people.| David Cox – accessibility, design systems and more
On a crisp spring morning, user researcher Sree and interaction designer Claire travelled to Sheffield to visit the Department for Education’s Accessibility Lab. Their goal was to understand how digital services function for those who navigate the world differently. Inside …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
Returns are a big part of shopping, especially as online sales keep growing. How retailers handle the first step—return initiation—can make or break the customer experience. In this article, we’ll explore UX best practices and strategies for creating a seamless customer return experience (CRX) and driving return portal adoption, including insights from our Design Team’s latest retailer experience audit.| Optoro
Those of you with eagle eyes will have noticed the ’user researcher’ role in the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework, published by the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), has recently been updated. This blog post shares some of the background and thinking behind the changes, and highlights some of the things it means for user researchers working in government.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
When a debate about user needs is going nowhere fast, imagine yourself in a group of intellectuals debating the number of teeth a horse has.| Atomic Spin
At HMRC, we hold an annual learning and development event - ResCon - to discuss trending user research topics and learn new skills. At our last event, experts in body language, persuasion, negotiation and marketing advised us on effective communication, a vital skill for all researchers.| User research in government
Every piece of user research we do seeks to understand something about the people who use a DfE service or are impacted by a policy. We call that group a ‘population’. When we conduct user research, we need to find …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
PRO INSIGHT Understanding human psychology gives UX Designers a massive advantage when creating engaging and useful user experiences. But while an understanding of psychology can be used for good, it can also be used to manipulate and influence people in a negative way. By being aware of common cognitive biases, we won’t just be able […]| Make:Iterate
What is Customer Development? The concept of Customer Development from Steve Blank’s book “The Four Steps to the Epiphany.” At its core, Customer Development is a methodology that challenges the conventional wisdom of product-centric entrepreneurship, The post Customer Development appeared first on Productfolio.| Productfolio
Head of Function – Product, Kat Sexton, introduces Birmingham Foundry and explains how it is starting to deliver the benefits of working differently and sustainable change for the council. Birmingham City Council’s Product function was launched in March 2023. The purpose of it is to work with our council’s services to identify and solve the...| Birmingham: all things digital
For the last 18 months, we’ve been investigating and implementing initiatives for how we check and improve our digital services against standards, specifically, the Government Service Standard. Our research findings show that the way we assess these services in DfE …| DfE Digital, Data and Technology
Working in a multi-disciplinary team is important to deliver great services. Equally, it is important to make time for community. There are lots of ways we work in collaboration with our users and professionals in DfE (Department for Education). Our …| dfedigital.blog.gov.uk
Ruth and James share 6 step by step tips for a user-centred approach to renaming your service.| designnotes.blog.gov.uk
En mai 2020, je répondais aux questions de la team Profession Mutants sur l'UX design. Découvrez cette interview sur Youtube.| Carine Lallemand
Les échelles d'évaluation standardisées de l'UX sont fréquemment utilisées mais les processus de création et de traduction sous-jacents sont souvent incompris. Cela peut amener à de mauvais usages. Nous synthétisons ci-dessous la méthode de traduction de ce types d'échelles.| Carine Lallemand
Conducting UX research that includes participants with a variety of disabilities is vital to building inclusive technology, but most prototypes used for testing are inaccessible. Rather than continuing to leave out feedback from disabled consumers, which ultimately leads to exclusive technology, researchers must get creative in their workarounds and be relentless in their efforts.| Smashing Magazine
Co-op first started an e-commerce service in 2019 and rolled out delivery nationwide during the pandemic. Ever since, we’ve been trying to find out more about why people use this service. In …| Co-op Digital Blog
A few years ago I wrote about the difficulties of attending CSUN, the largest annual conference focusing on technology and disability. This year, I finally made it to the conference, so it seemed appropriate to write a follow-up post on my reflections, now that I’m back home. My original post related to the difficulty in making … Continue reading CSUN (re)visited| The '58 sound
What one user researcher learned from facilitating cross-government user research training, and how you could benefit from getting involved too.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
What we learned from user research with the public on completing PDF and online forms.| gds.blog.gov.uk
How doing ethnographic research with farmers and advisers helped to build trust and reframe a policy challenge.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
Chris shares lessons for ensuring ReOps functions meet researchers’ needs, measure their impact, and focus on the right things, learned from creating one at the Government Digital Service| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
As User Researchers, we champion user-centred approaches, and our work can be internal or external facing. As part of being user-centred, we have a duty to protect our participants’ data, as well as their wellbeing and safety; this applies whether they are members of the public or other civil servants and staff. In this blog, you’ll read about the steps you yourself can take to make sure you’re researching with internal participants in an ethical way.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
Good communication with participants is a foundation of user research. But how can you get meaningful insights when communicating isn't straightforward.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
We’re relaunching the user research in government blog| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
The team behind the Service Manual used collaborative workshops for gathering user inputs and exploratory research to understand the perceived value of the Manual.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
In this first of two blog posts, Alison Foley shares the user research approach and various methods her team has used to inform guidance.| userresearch.blog.gov.uk
How the GOV.UK Design System team investigated ways to support government service users, balancing functionality with the user need for privacy and discretion.| designnotes.blog.gov.uk
In math class, we spend a lot of time learning fractions because they are so important in everyday life (e.g., budgeting, purchasing at the grocery store). Fractions are also used extensively in UX research (e.g., the fundamental completion rate is a fraction), typically expressed as percentages or proportions. Unfortunately, fractions are also hard to learn, and as it turns out, they are not the easiest to statistically analyze.| MeasuringU
I’m very pleased to announce that the article written for Library Hi Tech based on research conducted earlier this year is now available. For more information and to read the article in full …| Researching Usability
In November we ran a survey to all students at the university to investigate mobile demographics among students, Internet habits and attitudes towards mobile library services. The survey ran for tw…| Researching Usability
