Week 22 @ KSU's UXD Program - Remote Vs. "Face to Face" Research

This week was an introduction to Remote Research Methods and to be honest with you, I'm all on board with it. Although it's not as cost effective as people would imagine when compared to in-person studies, it has many benefits that are not so obvious - 

• Easier recruiting
• Tons of information about the users real life environment
• Geographic diversity of participants

The readings really pushed that remote research is in its infancy and as a future UX researcher I need to stay on top of the new technologies that will be developing for mobile and non-stationary devices (like cars) research. Being adaptive and very creative with the new tools is key to succeeding. Along with the readings, I liked that we were asked to use and set up a remote testing tool called Validately. It's more difficult to set up than I figured, but it resonated with one of my favorite part of the readings - With so much dependency on technology for research, don't count on it always working. This means troubleshoot everything before you run a test, be an expert on how to make your tools work, and do your due diligence so you can stay calm, cool, and collected during your actual tests.

The last thing I want to remember from this week is the importance of "Time-Aware" research, the readings couldn't say enough about it, but it is true. Capturing people when they are in their own environment and performing the tasks for their own personal reasons (not incentives) will give you the absolute best research results.