ABSTRACT
As an interweaving between the physical, cognitive, and cultural, the complexity of user experience necessitates an equally deliberate strategy of design thinking that aims to gather a more complete understanding of the dimensions driving behavior. Traditionally, usability and user experience focused on the visible manifestations of culture and cognitive influences, rather than the root causes of those behaviors. Research methods for usability and user experience look at the user experience from a number of different perspectives as a comparative study. They also seek out a more participatory interaction with the users, where not only can the designer observe how a person behaves under certain circumstances (or just in everyday life) but also how they are thinking, processing, and feeling during that same situation. And possibly more importantly, they can reframe how we are designing in the first place, by giving the user more agency and involvement in the design and development process. Since so much of the examination of usability and user experience is derived from behaviors and use–which have complex and multifaceted reasons driving them, both the research and ideation inherent in designing for usability needs to take a mixed-methods approach. As designers, we are ultimately seeking to understand why a person finds satisfaction or joy in using a product, but these reasons have many dimensions which means that we always need to look at it from different angles. The research methods below are diverse in their process and methods, but the hope is that through the critical use of mixed methods, the designer can gain a more holistic, diverse, and comparative understanding of the factors driving how and why people interact with design experiences in way that they do.
