Usability studies are sometimes devalued as mechanical work, as opposed to ethnography and other kinds of research considered to be a more strategic and engaging. This contributes to a perception of usability evaluation as lower status, or appropriate for early career researchers—work that one...
The thought of conducting a usability study may not excite most ethnographically minded researchers. While usability started out as the practical analysis of interactions with user interfaces, there has been an evolution toward devaluing such studies as more mechanical work. With the industry’s...
Application Programming Interfaces, commonly known as APIs, connect the front-end interfaces we see when we navigate the internet (like websites and apps) to the back-end systems, or databases, that store information. APIs enable people to carry out transactions online, like purchasing goods,...
Early in 2020 as a result of Covid-19, Convo—along with companies around the world—moved all research in India to remote solutions. This was quite a change and presented new challenges to the research team. While our preference is almost always to go in-home, particularly for foundational and...
How can designers reverse the complex mental models people develop from interacting with convoluted enterprise software? How can we respect the gratification people get out of executing complex tasks at work? When does simplicity actually compromise user experience? These are some of the questions...
This paper examines the cultural counter-flow between ethnography and remote usability testing, specifically what such tools might offer ethnographic practice. I explore how remote usability testing can both extend and delimit ethnographers’ sight lines. Because remote testing has a narrow...