From the monthly archives:

November 2007

What Designers Can Learn From Facebook’s Beacon: the collision of “fronts”

by Sam Ladner on November 30, 2007 · 18 comments

in beacon, facebook, goffman, online advertising, product design, qualitative research, technology design, user experience

[digg=http://digg.com/design/What_Designers_Can_Learn_From_Facebook_s_Beacon_the_collision_of_fronts]
The blogosphere (and even the regular old newspaper-sphere) is alight with stories of Facebook’s online advertising flop, Beacon. What can designers learn from this flop? It’s not about privacy; it’s about the presentation of self. People have different “selves” for different places — virtual or otherwise — and designs must be consistent with these variety [...]

18 comments

Tagged as: facebook, goffman, identity, identity management, linkedin, privacy, self, social capital, social networks, sociology, user experience

Categories: beacon · facebook · goffman · online advertising · product design · qualitative research · technology design · user experience

Why customer satisfaction surveys are useless

by Sam Ladner on November 12, 2007 · 0 comments

in Research Methods, customer satisfaction, product design, quantitative research

Many readers seem to enjoy my qualitative versus quantitative research post. I take this to mean that designers are hungry insight that beyond the requisite (and useless) customer satisfaction survey.
I’m not a huge fan of customer satisfaction surveys because they are usually 100% reliable but 0% valid; they tell you nothing (but consistently tell [...]

0 comments

Tagged as: customer satisfaction, quantitative research, Research Methods, surveys

Categories: Research Methods · customer satisfaction · product design · quantitative research

When to do qualitative and quantitative research

by admin on November 8, 2007 · 0 comments

In a previous post, I talked about what designers need to know about economic class. How did we learn that economic class can be “seen” in designs? How did we learn that “refined” taste is “upper” class?
In general, use qualitative research at the beginning of a design process to uncover innovations. Use quantitative research at [...]

0 comments

Tagged as: linkedin, qualitative research, quantitative research, research design, Research Methods

Discourse analysis and design: reading "texts" for design purposes

by Sam Ladner on November 3, 2007 · 0 comments

in Research Methods, discourse analysis, product design, qualitative research

Designers are already discourse analysts, they just don’t know it. These designers can produce more innovative ideas by adopting a more systematic approach to their intuitive discourse analysis.
Discourse analysis the practice of deciphering the meaning of “texts.” Anything can be a “text.” Television commercials, Us Weekly, a trial transcript — these are all “texts.” Famous [...]