Quantitative User Experience Research

This book is your definitive guide to the rapidly growing role of Quantitative User Experience (Quant UX) Research in product development. The book provides an overview of the skills you need on the job, presents hands-on projects with reusable code, and shares advice on starting and developing a career. The book goes beyond basic skills to focus on what is unique to Quant UX. The authors are two of the most widely recognized practitioners in Quant UX research, and this book shares insights from their combined decades of experience.

Organizations today have more data about user needs and behaviors than ever before. With this large-scale data, Quant UX researchers work to understand usage patterns, measure the impact of design changes, and inform strategic decisions. In the Quant UX role, interdisciplinary researchers apply analytical skills to uncover user needs, inform engineering and design, answer strategic business questions, and optimize software and hardware products for human interaction. This book provides guidance around customer satisfaction surveys, understanding user behavior from log analysis, and the statistical methods that are commonly used to assess user outcomes.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

* Discover the role of Quantitative User Experience (Quant UX) research
* Understand how Quant UX research differs from other disciplines such as data science
* Plan common research projects and know how to achieve success
* Position Quant UX activities in product development, engineering, and UX organizations
* Apply the HEART framework to measure user experience outcomes
* Evaluate your skills and potential to be hired as a Quant UX researcher
* Know what to expect during job interviews
* Find examples of common Quant UX projects with shared R code and data sets

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

Practitioners and managers who seek a comprehensive guide to the new field of Quantitative User Experience Research. Readers will understand the Quant UX role, build research skills, find examples of hands-on code and analyses, learn about UX organizations and stakeholders, and receive advice on job interviews and career paths. Data scientists, social scientists, and other researchers will learn how their skills transfer to Quant UX, where they can help teams build better, more successful products.

CHRIS CHAPMAN, PhD, is a Principal UX Researcher at Amazon Lab126, the Founder and Co-chair of the Quant UX Conference, and President of the Quantitative User Experience Association. Chris is the co-author of two popular Springer books on programming and analytics: R for Marketing Research and Analytics and Python for Marketing Research and Analytics. As a psychologist, Chris emphasizes the human focus of research and the need for integrated quantitative and qualitative understanding of users.

KERRY RODDEN, PhD, is a Senior Principal Researcher at Code for America. Kerry founded the Quantitative UX Research role at Google in 2007 and managed the industry's first Quant UX research team. Kerry has originated popular tools and techniques, including the HEART metrics framework for user experience, and the sequences sunburst visualization of user behavior. Kerry’s background is in computer science and human-computer interaction, with a focus on the analysis and visualization of large-scale usage data, including A/B testing.

Introduction

PART I. USER EXPERIENCE (UX) AND QUANT UX

1. Getting Started

2. User Experience (UX) and UX Research

3. Quantative UX Research: Overview

PART II. CORE SKILLS

4. UX Research

5. Statistics

6. Programming

PART III. TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

7. Metrics of User Experience

8. Customer Satisfaction Surveys

9. Log Sequence Visualization

10. MaxDiff: Prioritizing Features and User Needs

PART IV. ORGANIZATIONS AND CAREERS

11. UX Organization Structures

12. Interviews and Job Postings

13. Research Processes, Reporting, and Stakeholders

14. Career Development for Quant UX Researchers

15. Future Directions for Quant UX

APPENDIX A: Example Quant UX Job Description

APPENDIX B: Example Quant UX Hiring Rubrics

APPENDIX C: References