Intro to User Research – DENVER

User research is one of a number of disciplines that fall within the field of user experience. Before designing a product, software, or website, it is critical to know who will be using it and what their overarching goals are. User research aims to answer these questions in an effort to provide you and your team with in-depth knowledge about what your users are trying to accomplish and how your product could help them. The goal for conducting this type of research before designing your product, is to reduce the risk of creating something your users don’t need or want.

During this course we’ll clarify what user research is and its importance in the user experience process. You’ll get a foundation on how to create and conduct your own study, analyze your findings, and implement those findings into a deliverable. This class is low-tech, but highly collaborative.

WHAT YOU WILL LEAVE THIS CLASS WITH:
• What is user research and why it’s important to the user experience process
• The understanding of how user research differs from usability research and market research
• How to plan a research study including, establishing a hypothesis, determining what type of research to conduct, and how to recruit participants
• How to write interview questions and conduct user interviews
• How to analyze the data coming out of your research
• Deliverables that can be created from user research

PREPARING YOURSELF FOR THIS CLASS:
A baseline understanding of user experience (UX) principles is recommended, but not required. We recommend Intro to User Experience (UX) as a prerequisite to this course.

If you have not taken Intro to User Experience, here are a few books that will get you kickstarted:

How to Make Sense of Any Mess (http://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/) by Abby Covert

Mental Models (https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Models-Aligning-Strategy-Behavior/dp/1933820063) by Indi Young

Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond (https://www.amazon.com/Information-Architecture-World-Wide-Web/dp/1491911689) by Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld, and Jorge Arango.

TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS:
• Your laptop & charger (optional)
• A notebook to take notes (optional)
• Wifi will be provided

THIS CLASS IS TAUGHT BY MEGAN GOLDENBERG
Megan is a Senior Experience Design (XD) Consultant at Slalom Consulting in Denver, focusing on Strategy and Evidence Based Design. Over the past 16 years she has developed a unique and niche creative process that meshes business, technology and design to help clients solve their more complex and interesting challenges.

QUESTIONS?
We're here to help! If you have additional questions or would like to talk further before signing up for an event, please contact Cara Jo Miller at boulder@girldevelopit.com

We are offering scholarships on a limited basis for students with financial need. Please complete our scholarship application [http://gdiboulder.com/scholarship] if you are interested.