VatorNews - Vator contributor stories

Do’s and dont's of usability testing

by Bryan McClain, March 11, 2010 | Comments

Guidelines to help everybody enjoy the usability testing process

Usability testing is one of the least glamorous, but most important aspects of user experience research. Over the years, it has also been one of the forms of user research we have performed most frequently. In doing so, we’ve learned quite a few best practices and encountered some potential pitfalls. We think it’s important that we share what we’ve learned ...

Taming the elephant in the room

by Bryan McClain, February 8, 2010 | Comments

	Brand perception and bias I’ve been a bit of a pizza snob ever since my first job making pizza at the age of 15. I’ve always had a pretty low opinion of Domino’s Pizza®, so I was very impressed when I saw Domino’s recent efforts to reinvent both their pizza and their brand identity by tackling their problems head on. When I first saw ...
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Research logistics

by Bryan McClain, December 30, 2009 | Comments

A crash course for designers and stakeholders

With more companies today putting a stronger emphasis on gaining a deeper understanding of their customer, it’s not unusual for us to be called in for a project to find that our clients don’t have a lot of experience with research and don’t know what to expect. This article is for every designer, architect, manager, engineer, and stakeholder who wants ...

Building a product can be like saving a life

by Bryan McClain, November 13, 2009 | Comments

	What designers and researchers can learn from hostage negotiators It's 2 a.m. and a call comes across the radio that a young man with a gun has barricaded himself and his mother in his home. No shots have been fired, and little communication has been established between the man and police officers outside. The officers on the scene report that the young man has been struggling with the ...
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The user knows best

by Bryan McClain, October 29, 2009 | Comments

	How to listen to the user and hear the experience When someone is speaking, do you think about what the other person is saying, or do you think about what you are going to say next?At Metric Lab, we are big believers in communication and what it can do to improve research. Our background in both human factors research and communication has allowed us to harness the experiences of our ...
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Home visits and ethnography

by Bryan McClain, October 20, 2009 | Comments

Differences between self-report and behavioral research

It's important to make a distinction between these two different research methodologies and the kind of data you get from each. Home visits, which rely on self-report data, and ethnography, focusing on behavior data, are sometimes confused as being the same, but they actually provide different types of data and have different strengths. We've had clients engage with us requesting ...

Bryan McClain
Partner and Principal User Experience Researcher
Metric Lab (Owner)

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