I Think, Therefore I Test: What Descartes Can Teach Us About UX
What can a 17th-century philosopher teach us about UX? Surprisingly, quite a lot. One of the most famous phrases in philosophy comes from René Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” For him, this wasn’t just proof of existence. It was the starting point of an intellectual journey to find absolute certainty through radical skepticism. Centuries later, this […]
The Group Interview: A UX Researcher’s Guide to Richer Group Insights
One-on-one in-depth user interviews may be the bread and butter of many UX researchers, but group interviews and workshops create a unique opportunity of observable collaboration, negotiation, and debate. When facilitated well, these sessions become living laboratories where one person’s idea can collide or react with another’s, creating new and unexpected findings. The key is to use group interaction itself as a source of data. Achieving this requires a thoughtful […]
UX is not a Set of Boxes, but a Melody: Rethinking Experience Through Bergson’s Concept of Time
In UX design and research, we frequently deal with the concept of time. When we create customer journey maps or refer to frameworks proposed in the “User Experience White Paper” (Roto et al., 2011), we often divide experiences into phases such as “before use,” “during use,” and “after use.” Breaking complex phenomena into manageable phases can be extremely useful in day-to-day […]
From Curiosity to Clarity: What Kids Reveal About Better UX
A Lesson in Usability from My 4-Year-Old Son One afternoon, my 4-year-old son pointed at the TV remote and asked, “How do I make it louder?” I told him, “Just press the volume button.” But instead of pressing it, he looked at the remote in confusion:“What’s ‘volume’? Which one is that?” In that moment, I […]