Tools & methods

Peak Usability is now PeakXD

I am excited to announce Peak Usability has now been renamed PeakXD (short for Peak eXperience Design). Why?

When I started Peak Usability 15 years ago I actually named it UX consulting but no one knew what UX meant (User eXperience for those of you who don't work in the industry). Back then most people’s understanding of user centred design went as far as ‘usability’. And let’s face it, in 2003 there were a lot of really bad websites offering poor user experiences due largely to usability issues. User experience is so much more than usability and people understand that now.

Collaborative Design in Government - The importance of engaging stakeholders

Anyone working in or for government in the digital space should be aware of the wide range of standards, guidelines and methods such as Australia’s Digital Service Standard, UK’s Digital Service Standard and USA’s usability.gov and Web design standards. These standards and frameworks provide excellent resources for providing customer centric websites and systems. One of the common themes across these standards is the importance of having a multidisciplinary team including product managers, business analysts, user researchers, designers and technical roles. However, little is mentioned in these standards about how these multidisciplinary teams should actually work together. Having worked in or for government and many large organisations over 17 years I have learnt hard way about the importance of engaging stakeholders. In this article, I want to outline some of the methods we typically use to take stakeholders on the journey. This article is relevant for anyone working in large organisations as well as in or for government.

Moderating usability test sessions: Are you Darth Vader or C-3PO?

Helping participants' complete tasks; tipping them off that they have made a mistake; giving them too much freedom or leading participants; these are all things inexperienced test moderators might find themselves doing when moderating a test session. This article explores some of the common mistakes and why they're damaging to the test outcomes presented through 5 Star Wars archetypes. Learn how to be a good test moderator and how to avoid being one of these 5 archetypes.

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