Introduction to Volume 16, Issue 3

Our May 2021, invited essay is “The Best of Times for UX Research, the Worst of Times for Usability Research?” by Jason Buhle.  He describes how the landscape of usability and UX research has been changing and provides recommendations for increasing the academic and professional standing of usability research.  In addition to the essay, this […] [Read More]

The Best of Times for UX Research, the Worst of Times for Usability Research?

The Field of UX Research Is on the Rise These are booming times for the field of UX research. Looking broadly at the field of UX professionals, Jakob Nielsen (2017) estimated growth from about 10,000 people in the late 1990s to about 1,000,000 in 2017. Data from Google Trends indicates that UX research has grown […] [Read More]

Creating Personas from Design Ethnography and Grounded Theory

Abstract Personas can be an effective means of communicating and synthesizing design ethnographic field data by helping designers maintain focus on users and make sense of complex needs. Personas have however been criticized on scientific grounding and methodological weakness in their creation. Furthermore, few detailed examples of their creation have been published. It is also […] [Read More]

GCS: A Quick and Dirty Guideline Compliance Scale

Abstract Expert-based usability evaluation methods offer valuable alternatives to traditional user testing in Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) development. While general measures of usability for user-based empirical studies are well-known throughout the community of researchers, expert-based approaches often lack such general measures of usability. This research introduces the Guideline Compliance Scale (GCS), a measure that can be […] [Read More]

A Review of Post-Study and Post-Task Subjective Questionnaires to Guide Assessment of System Usability

Abstract Usability is a key consideration when developing an interactive software application because of the various outcomes it can produce. Accordingly, numerous evaluation methods have been proposed, however, a recent review of usability methods concluded there is no current consensus on models applied to usability. While questionnaires are a commonly used measure, it is unclear […] [Read More]