In “proper” research, you always…
Follow “Code of Conduct, Ethical Principles & Guidance” (published by The British Psychological Society)

Sadly, from my own experience not many UX practitioners are aware of it.

It also seem far to say that things like A/B testing or multi-variant testing weren’t that common so unless we did research up-front we had nothing to fall back on, and yes, we often got the blame for solutions that didn’t work even though we had banged our heads bloody saying that we need more insights to make this work. In most case I would advocate getting it out there are fas t as possible; learn from it and keep iterating it real-time.

For me UX has always been about making it look simple and being the glue between creative and technology but now we have more peers to work with. Not everyone has access to planners, creatives, user researchers, business consultants and strategists but personally I’ve grown very fond of the blended mind and I have to say that it has certainly enabled my team to create much better solution.

Anyway, today everyone talks about user experience so again we need to step up and (re)define the space we are working within – we must keep moving – society change, our clients demands things faster, technology certainly is pushing new boundaries and if we refuse to keep up we will still be banging our heads bloody.

Keep it up all you great people out there.

Marcus – Global Head of User Experience at LBi London.

I agree too! I’ve been writing articles on old and new research in psychology that applies to HCI, and giving talks on the topic. Good news: The articles and talks are very popular. The bad news: A lot of of what I consider the basic research is unknown to a lot of people who are designing interfaces. I’ve started on my next book which is this exactly! (100 Things Every Designer Should Know About People) which will cover foundational and new research in psychology applied to HCI.

So keep spreading the word. Thanks!

This education doesn’t necessarily need to have been gained through formal education, but anyone these days has access to research papers and great advocates such as yourself.

I would also say that we all, potentially, are born with the necessary skills to conduct user research; Empathy, active listening, a sense of curiosity and common sense are all key skills that should be developed.

In fact, one person come to mind that is one of the best researchers I have every had the privilege of meeting. As far as I am aware, he never read any books about the subject, has no formal education and never attends conferences. He felt that they all got in the way of clearly thinking about the subject at hand and impinged on his creativity.

My conclusion is that if reading psychology gets us closer to a better understanding of our fellow (wo)man all the better, but it’s not the only path.

I find the trendier end of the market (e.g. usually the practitioners who call themselves ‘UX’-something, don’t have a degree in a related subject and usually work for an agency) tend to dismiss research findings when they run counter to whatever design trend they happen to find attractive that month.

One particularly irksome example is the ‘we-want-to-design-long-pages-because-everyone-is-now -doing-really-long-pages-with-really-big-images’.

On that note, UXMyths j’accuse: http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll

Note the seven ‘studies’ they cite. Does a single one meet the criteria you stated in your article?

As someone who came to usability and UX from a web / IT background, I find a lot of my reading these days is specifically in psychology, and particularly cognitive psychology.

Totally agree with the fact that as designers/developers/UI professionals, we seem to be relying more and more on quick-fix lists and tips & tricks, rather than sound, grounded research.

Another thing that has started to worry me is the growth of the “trends” lists (such as “UI trends for 2011”) – surely things like this just end up becoming a prescribed destiny?