How Relevant is an Expert Evaluation of User Experience based on a Psychological Needs-Driven Approach?

Many methods and tools have been proposed to assess the User Experience (UX) of interactive systems. However, while researchers have empirically studied the relevance and validity of several UX evaluation methods, few studies only have explored expert-based evaluation methods for the assessment of UX. If experts are able to assess something as complex and inherently subjective as UX, how they conduct such an evaluation and what criteria they rely on, thus remain open questions. In the present paper we report on 33 UX experts performing a UX evaluation on 4 interactive systems. We provided the experts with UX Cards, a tool based on a psychological-needs driven approach, developed to support UX Design and Evaluation. Results are encouraging and show that UX experts encountered no major issues to conduct a UX evaluation. However, significant differences exist between individual elements that experts have reported on and the overall assessment they made of the systems

A Bermuda Triangle?: A Review of Method Application and Triangulation in User Experience Evaluation

User experience (UX) evaluation is a growing field with diverse approaches. To understand the development since previous meta-review efforts, we conducted a state-of-the-art review of UX evaluation techniques with special attention to the triangulation between methods. We systematically selected and analyzed 100 papers from recent years and while we found an increase of relevant UX studies, we also saw a remaining overlap with pure usability evaluations. Positive trends include an increasing percentage of field rather than lab studies and a tendency to combine several methods in UX studies. Triangulation was applied in more than two thirds of the studies, and the most common method combination was questionnaires and interviews. Based on our analysis, we derive common patterns for triangulation in UX evaluation efforts. A critical discussion about existing approaches should help to obtain stronger results, especially when evaluating new technologies

Requirements gathering for tools in support of storyboarding in user experience design

Storytelling is often used support communication in early User Experience (UX) design, and the resulting stories are frequently visualized in the form of storyboards. However, storyboarding, the creation of storyboards, has also been identified as an important obstacle to the adoption of storytelling in UX design. Most UX designers do indeed not possess the drawing skills needed to produce professionally-looking storyboards. A problem that can be potentially overcome (or at least ameliorated) by using alternative (digital) storyboarding tools. A study into the user acceptance of existing tools is introduced in this paper. The results show that while traditional tools like pen and paper are still very much valued, digital tools are getting increasingly popular. We identify important limitations of existing tools and formulate requirements for future storyboarding tools