Resources

Important and useful resources for conducting studies with real people, as well as design tools and writing guides.

You are required to obtain consent from the user before you conduct your interview or test session. You must keep a secure spreadsheet listing: (1) participant name; (2) date of interview or evaluation; (3) proof that they provided their consent. You must keep this spreadsheet separate from your interview or test data, and it must be securely stored for a minimum of 1 year. You must provide the participant with copies of the consent materials on request.

For In-Person Sessions:

Arrange to meet your participant in a safe, accessible, and ideally semi-public location. If amenable to your participant, this could be at their workplace. You should meet the participant with at least two team members: one to facilitate, and one to observe. Do not invite an unknown participant to your home or agree to go the home of an unknown participant.
Consent is typically by signature. Your participant should read the consent information letter and form and sign the paper or electronic copy. Document that consent was by signature in your participant spreadsheet and keep a copy of the signed consent form with it in the same secure folder.

For Online Sessions:

Provide your participant with a link (e.g., Zoom link) for an online meeting. Do not ask for their personal ID (e.g., Zoom ID).
Consent is typically verbal. You must document the verbal consent responses in your participant spreadsheet.

Recruitment

You are encouraged to recruit through word of mouth (e.g., people you know, friends of friends) via a variety of channels (e.g., email, phone call, social media, chat interfaces such as Slack). When using social media or chat interfaces (e.g., Facebook group, Slack workspace), you should post only if the norm of the social media or chat group permits this type of study recruitment posts. If in doubt, first check with the social media or chat group owner before posting. You must use the following recruitment script in your email, phone call, or chat or social media post when recruiting participants.

All participants must be adults (age 18+).
Participants are allowed to withdraw from the study at any time.
Recruitment Script

Information Interviews

During the empathize phase (the first phase), you are not permitted to video or audio record the interview, so take good notes! With the user’s permission, you can use anonymous quotations and pictures. Notes and images collected during this study (without identifying information such as names and faces) must be kept for a minimum of 1 year on a password-protected computer, data server and/or cloud service. You must obtain consent from each participant using the consent forms:

Prototype Evaluation

During test phase (the second phase), with the user’s permission, you can take audio and screen recording without any identifying information (e.g., names, faces). With the user’s permission, you can use anonymous quotations and pictures. You can transcribe audio recordings, if you wish. Notes, images, screen recordings and audio recordings/transcriptions collected (again, without identifying information) should be kept for a minimum of 1 year on a password-protected computer, data server and/or cloud service. You must obtain consent from each participant using the consent forms:

If you are conducting the interview at a workplace during work hours, then you will also need the permission of the manager before recruiting any participants for the interview or prototype evaluation. You must obtain verbal consent from the manager using the following consent forms, and document the verbal consent responses in your participant spreadsheet.

Thank You Letter

After all sessions are complete, you should provide your participants with a thank you letter.

User Study Thank You Letter

Design Templates

Design Tools

Miro - for brainstorming, personas, affinity diagramming, task analysis, user flows, etc.
Figma - for wireframing and high fidelity prototyping plus pretty much everything that Miro does (in FigJam)
XMind - for mind mapping and brainstorming
Avatar Generator

Figma Tutorials

Evaluation Templates

Heuristics Evaluation Worksheet

Academic Writing

Notes on Writing by Fredo Durand — good, general guide
Writing Technical Papers by Aaron Hertzmann — good, general guide
Writing a CHI Paper by Jacob Wobbrock — useful for writing introduction, related work, and discussion (but overall, it’s more focused on original research papers)