Phases of product development:
Goal, approach, typical methods.
Add testing onto my blogger, use the ones from the app brief.
Research into Don Norman. He is the creator of UX, wrote a book ‘The psychology of everything’.
Make sure to test everything, as it is for people.
Landscape of User research methods, Rohrer. We have to make a selection on the ones that we are going to do for this project.
Attitudinal vs behavioural- What people say vs what people do. It relies on self-reported data. Examples: Card sorting, surveys, focus-groups. A/B testing, eye tracking methods.
Qualitative vs quantative. Numerical vs descriptive. Difficult parts of qualitative research, making the right questions to get good data, then sorting the data. Use both together to get the best result.
Context of product use. Natural of near-natural, testing something in its natural setting, or as close as you can get to it. The setting of the testing changes everything, you need to get it as close as possible because the further it is from the realistic setting then the less accurate the testing is going to be.
UX research methods, select the ones that I could use within my project.
- Usability-lab studies- The participants are brought into a lab, one-on-one with a researcher, and given a set of scenarios that lead to tasks and usage of specific interest within the product or service.
- Ethnographic field studies- become a part of your audience so that you can understand them fully.
- Participatory design- The audience is part of the project; you work with them to get the perfect final piece.
- Focus group- Where you gather a group of people and ask questions, and have discussions about the topic, then get verbal or written feedback.
Use cameras, visual data is important. Can give slight clues, but not many. 2 cameras, so you can see the screen as well as one that is capturing the face of the user. Seeing their facial expressions can help you see their thought process, as it is usually shown in peoples faces.
Can have researcher taking notes next to the participant, however you always need to have at least one camera.
Always need to be testing your project. Take notes as the whole purpose of doing research is to get data.
- Interviews- Structured interviews, un-structured interviews. Structured is when you have very specific guidance for the answers, un-structured is where the participant is free to answer any way that they want to.
- Eye tracking- an eye tracking device is needed for this. It shows precisely where the participant is looking as they perform tasks or interact naturally with websites, applications, physical products, or environments.
- Usability benchmarking-
Usability benchmark is the measures of the current usability of a system to provides a baseline against which future systems can be compared.
Have interviewee, research guide, audio recorder, note taker, moderator. Have face-to-face, make the participant feel like you are having a conversation, it is an art. The more comfortable the participant is, the better the answers will be.
- Unmoderated remote panel studies
- Concept testing- we fake the final product, so that you can show how it is going to be, and so you can get specified date.
- Diary/camera studies- giving a participant a camera, so that you can see how they react to the product or service.
- Customer feedback
- Desirability studies- creating associations with other product.
- Card sorting- make a series of cards as if you are making the website or app, make the user make their own version of those cards.
- Clickstream analysis- analysing the way that people click on the screens, can use a specific code that gives you analytics.
- A/B testing
- Unmoderated UX studies
- True-intent studies- understanding what the user would use it/ wants.
- Interpreted testing
- Email surveys
Action-research through creative practice. Not just getting data but using it to make the product better. This is the most used one for designers, as this is typically the end goal for us. There is no difference between designers and researchers.
Then I researched how to draw horses and there were lots of posts about drawing using the circle method, then building the general shape off of these circles. I don’t generally use this method as I find it difficult to gage the size of the circles etc, so I just start drawing based off of pictures I find, and improve the shape as I go along, until I can eventually draw the thing without a reference image. 
I decided to focus on the Spanish-Norman breed of horses, this is because they are one of the most common types in the UK. I then chose it to be dark brown, with beige hooves, as whenever I see horses, they tend to be this colour, and it is quite an easy colour to work with for shading and highlighting. 
After I practiced drawing the horses on their own, I decided to draw some with people riding them, as that is how the final horse will be drawn, to have the soldier on it. I did this by basing the drawings off of some reference images. This helped me to see how the person will be positioned on the horse, as well as the harnessing that will possibly be on the horse. 
