Category: Discovery, Research, and Testing

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Discovery, Research, and Testing / Process and Methods

Flawed Products Harm – A Framework to Respond

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Technology products are embedded in every aspect of daily life from homes, cars, phones, schools, workplaces. They’re in entertainment, healthcare, safety, and beyond.  While technology is often billed as making things easier, faster, cheaper, and fairer, it can cause harm at scale.  People face frustration, harassment, financial loss, physical harm, and more.  What are “Flawed products?” Flawed products are products, services, and technologies developed without considering, including, and understanding the needs of underserved consumers expected to buy and use them.

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Photo of two women conducting a usability session. Photo credit: Kobu Agency on Unsplash.
Discovery, Research, and Testing / Findability

Taxonomies: Connecting Users to Content

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Taxonomies may be thought of as hierarchies of categories to group and organize information to be found when browsing, or as a structured set of terms used to tag content so that it can be retrieved efficiently and accurately. Sometimes the same taxonomy may serve both purposes, and sometimes two different taxonomies are used, one for each purpose, for the same content or site. Taxonomies are not new, in fact  there has been a lot written about them, including an

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Discovery, Research, and Testing / Foundational Thinking / User Centered

Focus on Usage Maturity: Part III

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Using a Usage Maturity Matrix to Make Design and Strategy Decisions Early Foundations You may recall from earlier installments in this series, that usage maturity is a measure of users’ comfort and familiarity with, and degree of use of, a product, process or place.   During our master’s capstone research at Kent State, my project partner and I explored the varied levels of usage maturity of participants using Apple’s voice assistant Siri and found usage maturity did not coincide with participants’

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Case Studies / Discovery, Research, and Testing / Foundational Thinking / Mobile UX

A Digital Response to the Pandemic

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In March 2020, the pandemic stretched across Europe to the UK and Ireland. As the governments of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic began reporting cases of a deadly new coronavirus strain, both health services began to organize expert teams to take on what would be the biggest threat to public health in generations. At Big Motive, we have enjoyed the privilege of working with the health service as part of an integrated and multi-disciplined stakeholder team, charged with combatting

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Discovery, Research, and Testing / Process and Methods / Prototyping

Usability Testing Guide

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Usability testing is a core component of User Centered Design and can be used at any stage in the process. It provides valuable insight into the mind of the user, giving us a better understanding of users’ mental models, and it helps to highlight issues that might negatively impact the experience, while also pointing to solutions. If you are new to Usability Testing and want to learn more or just interested in how someone else approaches it, this article gives

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