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This way is a combination of observation and interviews. Users work in their natural environment – this provides an opportunity to see how customers behave in reality. Usually, there are no given tasks or pre-defined scenarios; however, researches may implement these – if needed. Depending on the mentioned, this method provides both qualitative (observed data) and quantitative (measured data) results – in various proportions. Anyway, it’s invaluable to see how users interact with the product and how they behave – before the release.

This is one of the most traditional methods – it involves a discussion within a small group (typically up to 10 participants). Even though it looks similar to contextual interviews, it’s very different. In this method, the users tell about their experiences or expectations, but the researchers don’t verify these ‘in action’. There is a moderator who can change the scenario in order to keep the conversation run smoothly. What is unique, is that we don’t pick random people – we identify your target audience personas and choose participants from that pool.

How many times did you abandon an app or switch to another website due to poor experience? Well, you don’t want that to happen with your product, do you? Well, that’s what heuristic evaluation is for – to identify a product’s common usability issues and improve users’ satisfaction. Keep in mind that it’s not a cognitive walkthrough or analysis performed by random users. It’s performed by experts who have in-depth understanding of the chosen set of heuristics. This method works best after wireframing and prototyping and before visual design and UI development.

This method provides a description of how people use a particular feature – in terms of accomplishing a sequence of simple steps to achieve the predefined goal. It’s not the same as contextual interview, as use case outlines – from a user’s perspective — a system’s behavior as it responds to a request. The value of this method is to help explain how the system should behave, as well as to identify what could go wrong in the process. What use case does not provide? Details about UI or implementation-specific language. Use cases can be simple or complex – it all depends on the project.

This one helps save money – before you invest in the development process. Different types of prototypes are in use – namely, low-fidelity (paper-based) and high-fidelity (computer-based). Both of these are super-useful, as they allow the design team to explore the ideas and find usability issues, before the serious work starts. You know, it’s like finding out what can be done and what works (or doesn’t) before coding magic is happening.