HCI Archives - Situated Research

How UX Research Increases Gamer Engagement, Satisfaction, and Enjoyment

January 30, 2023

User Experience (UX) research is a critical aspect of video game design that can significantly impact the success of a game. UX research involves studying and understanding the behavior, attitudes, and emotions of gamers while playing the game. The goal of UX research is to create a game that provides a satisfying and enjoyable experience for gamers. In this article, we’ll explore how UX research can improve the success of a video game and increase gamer engagement, satisfaction, and enjoyment.

Medical Software UX / UI Tips: User Experience Design for the Healthcare Industry

October 14, 2021

Supporting Healthcare with Understandable, Convenient, and Easy-to-Use Technology

Today’s healthcare industry has become increasingly reliant on technology and medical software. While medical software has come a long way in recent years, it can still cause difficulty or confusion for many of its users. In addition, the wide variety of people using the software tools (doctors, nurses, patients, administrative staff, people with disabilities, etc.) makes it even more important for the design of a great user experience (UX, an acronym for user experience) in medical software. In this article, we will discuss tips for building great UX into medical software for the healthcare industry, along with UX research methods that can achieve big results.

Nintendo’s newest Mario Kart is the best video game you never knew you wanted to play

September 9, 2020

By now, Nintendo has made exactly 87,493,029 versions of Mario Kart since the game was first introduced in 1992 for the Super Nintendo. (Okay, the company has really made 13—which is still a lot!) But a new sequel coming this fall to the Nintendo Switch changes the formula in an enticing way, thanks to super experimental UX.

How Airbnb drives users’ actions with their landing page design — a UX analysis

January 16, 2020

There is a reason you are not familiar with many -maybe not even one- of Airbnb’s competitors. The renting/booking marketplace “giant” has thrived in the global market for a decade and still hasn’t found anyone that can stand up to him.

Boost 2020 Profit: E-commerce Experience Optimization

November 21, 2019

User-friendly Experience + Simplified Buying Journey = More Sales

Online businesses in 2020 are forced to compete with large online and big box retailers, including Amazon, Wayfair, and brick-and-mortar stores like Walmart and Best Buy. In order to compete, e-commerce websites need to have a great user-experience (UX) and a streamlined buying process. Complicated checkout systems, over-cluttered product pages, and a lack of mobile optimization can severely inhibit a retailer from competing with large companies that have large, dedicated user-experience teams.

Games User Research: Driving Development with Actionable Insights

November 28, 2018

Developers both large and small can benefit from an outside perspective given by a game user research, or usability research geared towards games. Indie developers can benefit from adding UX expertise to the development team, while large developers can obtain an outside perspective to compliment and verify findings from internal members of the development team. In this article, we will present three key ways in which game research can maximize a game’s success.

Why Great Products Do Only One Thing

October 25, 2018

And why one feature is better than two or three

Uber did not allow you to pre-book a taxi. Amazon started out by selling books only. Google was just a search engine. McDonald’s got rid of cutlery. And somehow we still believe that for a product to be successful it must do many things.

The clever UX that made Fortnite a $1.2 billion sensation

October 5, 2018

The gaming hit is a masterclass in UX and experience design.

The online videogame Fortnite Battle Royale was launched just a year ago in September 2017. Since then the game had amassed 125 million active players by June and made $1.2 billion for its developer Epic Games. It has also been linked to 200 divorces in the U.K. and a case of aggravated harassment where a 45-year-old man threatened to kill an 11-year-old boy after losing to him in the game.

The True ROI of UX: B2B Redesign Case Studies

June 25, 2018

User-centered design isn’t just about creating a great experience for customers—it’s also a smart business move.

Rapid UX Research at Google

May 4, 2018

How do you conduct impactful user research in a short space of time?

As the manager of a Rapid Research team at Google, I’ve built a team around just that — delivering meaningful insights, fast. My job is to ensure our product teams get the insights they need quickly and effectively.