Observing the User Experience

CHAPTER 5 The Research Plan

Note These instructions present a somewhat idealized situation that starts with a blank slate as far as user experience product goals are concerned. This isn’t the case for many projects, which may work with preexisting goals and processes. It’s easier to enumerate goals in such projects, but it may be more difficult to create a unified vision of how research should be integrated with existing processes. Deborah J. Mayhew’s The Usability Engineering Lifecycle and Hugh Beyer and Karen Holzblatt’s Contextual Design describe a completely iterative development environment that thoroughly integrates experience research.

Never research in a vacuum. Every piece of user research is part of an ongoing research program, even ...