research

People perceive attractive interfaces as easier to use, and forgive small problems in them more readily.

LAW·011Law · Perception

Two gaps break interfaces: not knowing how to do the thing, and not knowing whether it worked.

PRIN·010Principle · Interaction

Users act on their belief about how the system works, not on how it actually works.

MOD·001Mental model · Understanding

People prefer things to stay as they are, which is why every redesign starts with a deficit.

BIAS·005Cognitive bias · Judgement

Once you know how something works you cannot accurately imagine not knowing, which is why teams misjudge their own interfaces.

BIAS·008Cognitive bias · Judgement

People seek and weight evidence that supports what they already believe, which quietly corrupts research findings.

BIAS·009Cognitive bias · Research integrity

Analysing only the people who made it through hides everything the failures would have told you.

BIAS·010Cognitive bias · Research integrity

People judge how likely something is by how easily an example comes to mind, which favours the recent and the vivid.

BIAS·011Cognitive bias · Judgement

A strong impression in one area spills over into unrelated judgements about the same thing.

BIAS·013Cognitive bias · Judgement

Repeated exposure to something increases preference for it, which is why redesigns feel wrong before they feel right.

PSY·009Psychology · Perception

Watching people attempt real tasks, which is the most direct evidence available about whether a design works.

RES·001Research method · Evaluative

Experts reviewing an interface against a defined set of principles, which is fast and cheap but not a substitute for users.

RES·002Research method · Evaluative

Structured conversations about what people actually did, which is far more reliable than what they say they will do.

RES·003Research method · Generative

Good for measuring how widespread something is, and poor for discovering what that something is.

RES·004Research method · Quantitative

Asking users to group content, which reveals their mental model of a domain rather than your org chart.

RES·005Research method · Information architecture

Testing whether people can find things in a structure, with no visual design to confound the result.

RES·006Research method · Information architecture

Measuring where people click first, which predicts task success better than almost any other single measure.

RES·007Research method · Evaluative

Showing a design briefly and asking what people remember, which tests hierarchy and clarity of message.

RES·008Research method · Evaluative

Comparing variants with real traffic, which tells you what happened without telling you why.

RES·009Research method · Quantitative

Measuring what people do at scale, which tells you where problems are and never why they exist.

RES·010Research method · Quantitative

Measuring progression through a sequence, where the largest drop is rarely the biggest opportunity.

RES·011Research method · Quantitative

Watching people work in their own environment, which surfaces the context that interviews miss.

RES·012Research method · Generative

Participants record their own experience over time, which captures things a single session cannot.

RES·013Research method · Generative

Turning raw observations into findings, which is where most of the value and most of the bias enters.

RES·014Research method · Analysis

Organising, labelling and structuring content so people can find it, which determines navigation rather than following from it.

RES·015Research method · Information architecture

Fast, informal testing with whoever is available, which is far better than no testing and worse than proper recruitment.

RES·016Research method · Evaluative

Measuring where people look, which is expensive, frequently over-interpreted, and occasionally irreplaceable.

RES·017Research method · Evaluative

Framing user needs as the progress someone is trying to make, which separates the need from any particular solution.

RES·018Research method · Generative

Study how others solved the same problem to learn the conventions your users already hold, not to assemble a feature list.

RES·019Research method · Evaluative

Group individual observations until themes emerge from the data instead of from the categories you brought with you.

RES·020Research method · Analysis

Working out what problem to solve before deciding how, which is where most product failure is actually prevented.

FLOW·004Workflow · Practice

Choosing how finished a prototype needs to look, which is decided by the question you are asking rather than by taste.

FLOW·005Workflow · Practice

Turn a pile of research into one statement narrow enough to design against and wide enough to allow more than one answer.

FLOW·007Workflow · Process

Pick one behavioural measure per goal, pair it with a quality measure, and decide the threshold before you look.

FLOW·011Workflow · Process

Assisted coding of qualitative data, which speeds up the first pass and must not replace the analysis.

AI·003AI workflow · Research

Defines the question, the method and the decision the research will inform, before any data is collected.

TPL·001Template · Research

A structured set of questions anchored in past behaviour rather than in hypothetical intention.

TPL·002Template · Research

A research-grounded description of a user type, focused on goals and behaviour rather than demographics.

TPL·003Template · Research

The stages a person moves through, with what they do, think and feel, and where the experience breaks.

TPL·004Template · Research

A session script with tasks phrased as goals, and moderator prompts that do not lead.

TPL·007Template · Research

Research repository for storing, tagging and searching qualitative data across studies.

TOOL·014Tool · research

Research analysis and repository tooling focused on the synthesis step itself.

TOOL·015Tool · research

Participant recruitment from a panel, plus tooling for managing your own participant pool.

TOOL·016Tool · research

Recruitment with a stronger focus on professional and B2B participants.

TOOL·017Tool · research

General assistant with strong long-document handling, useful for synthesis, writing and structured review.

TOOL·049Tool · ai