ABSTRACT
Exploratory research may be ethnographic research, in which the employers watch users during their normal day-to-day activities perhaps with previous versions of the product or perhaps using competing products. Many techniques in a user researcher’s toolbox are qualitative—in-depth sessions with limited numbers of people. The employers may also find opportunities for quantitative research, for example surveys of users or perhaps usability studies that have enough participants to be valid as quantifiable data. Human factors engineering, as a discipline, is rooted in the military, aviation, and transportation industries but has grown and flourished in a wide variety of other industries such as government, healthcare, consumer products, software, and manufacturing. Accessibility-checking algorithms can certainly be very robust, but they cannot replace the employees actually confirming that the meaning of the content that should be conveyed to users, is, in fact, being conveyed properly.
