Brainstorm badly characteristics for your product and turn them into characteristics that are good for the product. ...
Usability
Method Toolkit
Free & Open Collection of
Usability Methods for Everyone!
This website has emerged from a seminar about Usability Methods from the study program Human Computer Interaction at the University of Siegen (Germany). It aims to help other students, researchers and everyone interested in usability, to explore methods supporting each design phase, from ideation to prototyping and beyond.
The Fab Lab Siegen
The Fab Lab Siegen is an interdisciplinary (creative) workshop at the University of Siegen that is open to everyone and focuses on collaborative work and experimentation with the fabrication of (almost) any object. Our intention thus is intended as being useful to people – regardless of expertise, education and background – to be able to plan and implement projects in exchange and collaboration with others.
Due to the connection to the local University of Siegen, we are also doing research in the fields of ubiquitous design, as well as computer supported cooperative work and social media (CSCW).
About The Toolkit
Methods can be filtered by their design phase. So depending on where you are in the process, you will find multiple methods supporting either emphasize, define, ideate, protoype, or test phases in the developmental process.
You can browse through the different methods and find the perfect one for your situation. Morover, we provide documents with all the information for each method, as well as a presentation slide deck to use for free. Because the methods are contributed by students, please be aware of the creative commons license!
Methods by Design Phases
Web Analytics
Understand how a website is actually used and transform data about it into meaning and actions for better usability. ...
Walt Disney Method
Dive into a role play method to ideate on ideas. Every idea is heard and discussed. ...
UX Laddering
This method helps you to explore correlations between components of a product, by conducting user-interviews. ...
User Journey
This method helps to understand users emotions and thoughts behind actions they can to with the product. ...
User Environment Design
This methods shows users a systems functionalities and where they are needed. ...
Thinking Aloud
Get a live feedback of users working on tasks on the interface/product and understand eventual problems. ...
Task Modelling
This method helps to understand tasks user can do with the interface and which problems might occur. ...
SWOT Analysis
Discover strengths and weaknesses from in- and outside perspective of your product. ...
Paper Prototyping
Use this method to quickly prototype your design idea with paper and get feedback from users. ...
Mental Model
Mental models express the network of thoughts towards something. Expectations of how sth. works. ...
Idea Clustering
Sorting ideas or information from interviews with user opens up the path for futher processing with the development. ...
Heuristic Review
The heuristic interview helps to detect usability problems by testing a user interface with guidelines for common problems. ...
Focus Groups
Guide a discussion with potential users to gather insides about their opinion on a product. ...
Fictional Personas
Creating fictional personas increases empathy for the target group and can help in the design process of a product. ...
Eye-Tracking
This digital method helps locating rooted design problems by tracking the eye-movements of a user. ...
Experience Prototyping
This methods aims towards prototyping in all stages of a design process. This might enhance a better understanding of the product. ...
Engaging Personas
This method helps you to get a deeper look into the target group by defining characteristics and needs. ...
Diary Method
This longitudinal method helps gathering lots of data about users experiences and usage of a product. ...
Customer Journey Map
This complex method reveals opportunities for addressing the pain points of customers, alleviating fragmentation and ultimately creating a better experience for your users. ...
Contextual Inquiry
This qualitative interview brings findings about the system-to-be's surrounding. Interviewees are potential users. Some skills about interviews are relevant. ...
Cognitive Walkthrough
Generally, Cognitive walkthrough is a technique that focuses on exploratory learning. Its a very good method for exposing assumptions about users and learning that can ...
Card Sorting
This method is really helpul subsequently to a brainstorming-type-of-method. After gathering lots of ideas some clustering is needed! ...
Brainwalking
A variation of the brainstorming method. In this case iteratively ideas are being developed individually by the participants. ...
5-Second Test
A quick and easy way of usability testing. The 5-second tests gets users initial impression of a product or design when they see it the ...
Braindumping
Similar to brainstorming but with some specialities is this quick and easy method popular to gather ideas individually in a group. ...
Bird-in-Hand
The bird-in-hand principle is a method for developing ideas based on individual competencies and attributes of the people who are working together on a new ...
AttrakDiff
AttrakDiff 2 is a questionnaire used for the evaluation of interactive products. While most questionnaires only evaluate practical usability, i.e. “pragmatic qualities”, AttrakDiff 2 also ...
How Might We? Questions
"Framing Design, Based On Problems And Solutions." How might we solve problem A? The question helps with the framework for innovative thoughts. ...