Explore our thinking about User & Market Research

The webinar will delve into key considerations when designing front-end applications for capital markets, including how to incorporate real-time data visualization and analysis.

Advances in automation of data analysis, graph analytics, data lineage, conversational queries and IoT analytics are widely predicted for 2020. Expero has capabilities and assets already in place.

Structured Finance investors often miss opportunities to maximize portfolios due to a lack of state of the art tools and processes.

Software and web developers often wear many hats, including the UX/UI hat. But some developers lack the knowledge to design UIs or to collaborate effectively with UX designers and researchers.

As a user researcher, I’m always inclined to say, “Test everything, all the time!” when people ask, “What/when/how should we validate with users?” That’s my pie in the sky: the place where there’s all the time and all the budget in the world to get every last detail or spec just right for the good of the user, the product, and, ultimately, the business. But that’s not real life. Projects run on strict budgets and tight timelines, and there’s not always a lot of wiggle room.

What does the term “search” mean to you?

Product owners and stakeholders have a tendency to skip over discovery research and go straight to design—and then skip over validation research and go right to release. One of the main drivers behind this tendency is the fact that looking at designs is fun. Looking at numbers and bulleted lists of findings is not (as much) fun (for stakeholders). With designs, they get to see their product progressing and growing from inception to build. Data is more behind-the-scenes; it may drive design, but so what?

As Agile principles and Lean methodologies continue to take center stage in product management and strategy, it’s easy to get caught up in daily scrums and design iterations and shoot right past the user research (UR).

If you know anything about Expero, you know we specialize in solving “complex problems.” This means we’re not working on your average brochure website or e-commerce app. We’re tackling apps and softwares targeted to niche domains with expert end-users who have very specific needs and goals to solve their very complicated problems.

Achieving user adoption goals for enterprise software can be challenging.

As a user researcher, I am, of course, an evangelist of all things research. I love research! I love reading everything and learning everything and understanding everything I possibly can about a subject. Infographics are neat but I want more more more information! Give it to me—all of it! As a user researcher, I also, of course, realize that not everybody feels the same way. Often including clients.

I’m a fan of Yahoo for news and email, but I’m not a fan of their new “two-tap rule.” The rule states that once a user is in a Yahoo application, it should take only two taps to do anything the user wants to do. Fast-to-use apps are the goal here. The two-tap rule sounds a lot like our field’s misguided “three-click rule,” which Expero cautioned against in 2007.

I had an interesting discussion with a coworker while planning a new feature for our current project. We are practicing Domain Driven Design and maintain a strict separation between the GUI and the domain logic. We actually treat them as separate applications.

Q: How can we find people to be in our studies?

We’re redesigning our site, but there’s internal debate about whether the new design is any better than the current site. What’s the best way to determine which one is better?

Q: We run think-aloud usability tests at my company, but some people here don’t pay attention to the results because we don’t get much “hard” data. Do we need to run different tests?

Q: We get feedback from users when we’re able to do usability tests, which is not often enough. What other sources are good for user data?

Q: What are the pros and cons of remote usability testing?

Q: My company thinks about customer requirements but does not think about end-users. What’s your advice?

Q: How do you do research for an online wellness program that spans the course of several weeks and measures changes to behavior over time?

Q: When evaluating a web site, what is the correct process to create tasks for a user test?

If management isn’t implementing changes based on usability tests, they might not be convinced of the value of the data you’ve collected.

Iconixx legacy code base and user experience once cutting edge had become dated. They were concerned that the dated look and lack of mobile options could make them vulnerable.