Observing the User Experience
A Practitioner's Guide to User Research
- 3rd Edition - January 1, 2026
- Latest edition
- Authors: Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsky
- Language: English
Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, Third Edition helps readers bridge the gap to understand what users want and need from their product. Filled… Read more
Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, Third Edition helps readers bridge the gap to understand what users want and need from their product. Filled with real-world experience and a wealth of practical information, the book presents a complete toolbox of techniques to help designers, developers, and other stakeholders see through the eyes of their users. Sections discuss the benefits of end-user research and the ways it fits into the development of useful, desirable, and successful products and present techniques for understanding people’s needs, desires, and abilities, providing a basis for developing better products, whether Web, software, or mobile-based.
Final chapters explain the communication and application of research results.
Final chapters explain the communication and application of research results.
- Explains how to create usable products that are still original, creative, and unique
- Provides a real-world perspective on research, including advice on how user research can be done cheaply and quickly, and how results can be presented persuasively
- Gives readers the tools and confidence to perform user research on their own designs and tune their software user experience to the unique needs of their product and its users
- Includes new features in this updated edition, including numerous, new illustrations, coverage of mobile UX research techniques, and discussion of newer UX research techniques, tools, and software
UX practitioners, usability engineers, software developers, Web page designers and developers, graduate and undergraduate students in user experience and UX design courses
PART I: Why Research Is Good and How It Fits into Product Development
1. Introduction
2. Do a Usability Test Now!
3. Balancing Needs through Iterative Development
PART II: User Experience Research Techniques
4. Research Planning
5. Competitive Research
6. Universal Tools: Recruiting and Interviewing
7. Focus Groups
8. More Than Words: Object-Based Techniques
9. Field Visits: Learning from Observation
10. Diary Studies
11. Usability Tests
12. Surveys
13. Global and Cross-Cultural Research
14. Others’ Hard Work: Published Information and Consultants
15. Analyzing Qualitative Data
16. Automatically Gathered Information: Usage Data and Customer Feedback
PART III: Communicating Results
17. Research into Action: Representing Insights as Deliverables
18. Reports, Presentations, and Workshops
19. Creating a User-Centered Corporate Culture
1. Introduction
2. Do a Usability Test Now!
3. Balancing Needs through Iterative Development
PART II: User Experience Research Techniques
4. Research Planning
5. Competitive Research
6. Universal Tools: Recruiting and Interviewing
7. Focus Groups
8. More Than Words: Object-Based Techniques
9. Field Visits: Learning from Observation
10. Diary Studies
11. Usability Tests
12. Surveys
13. Global and Cross-Cultural Research
14. Others’ Hard Work: Published Information and Consultants
15. Analyzing Qualitative Data
16. Automatically Gathered Information: Usage Data and Customer Feedback
PART III: Communicating Results
17. Research into Action: Representing Insights as Deliverables
18. Reports, Presentations, and Workshops
19. Creating a User-Centered Corporate Culture
- Edition: 3
- Latest edition
- Published: January 1, 2026
- Language: English
EG
Elizabeth Goodman
Elizabeth Goodman has taught user experience research and tangible interaction design at the University of California, Berkeley and site-specific art practice at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has also worked with exploratory research and design teams at Intel, Fuji-Xerox, and Yahoo and speaks widely on the design of mobile and pervasive computing systems at conferences, schools, and businesses. She received her PhD from the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley in fall 2013. During graduate school, her scholarly research on interaction design practice was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and an Intel PhD Fellowship
Affiliations and expertise
Design researcher and UX strategist at 18F, a design group within the General Services Administration.MK
Mike Kuniavsky
Mike Kuniavsky is a user experience designer, researcher and author. A twenty-year veteran of digital product development, Mike is a consultant and the co-founder of several user experience centered companies: ThingM manufactures products for ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things; Adaptive Path is a well-known design consultancy. He is also the founder and organizer of Sketching in Hardware, an annual summit on the future of tools for digital product user experience design for leading technology developers, designers and educators. Mike frequently writes and speaks on digital product and service design, and works with product development groups in both large companies and startups. His most recent book is Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design.
Affiliations and expertise
Founder, ThingM