User research & testing
user-centred design · UX research · qualitative interviews · usability testing · think-aloud testing · ethnographic observation · survey design · affinity mapping · personas · wireframing · service blueprint
- Skill
- User research & testing
- Methods
- qualitative interviews · ethnographic observation · usability and think-aloud testing · survey design · affinity mapping · service blueprinting
- Learned
- Interaction Design, DTU · Design, Users and Ethics, DTU · UX Design and Prototyping, DTU · Holistic Design of Engineering Systems, DTU · MSc thesis
User research is the part of a project I am least willing to skip, since every project where I have guessed what people needed has been corrected later by someone who actually does the work, and the correction has always cost more than the research would have. Here the thesis is the clearest case, as 11 interviews across the Danish police, military and emergency management produced 373 quotes, and the affinity map built from them moved the requirement away from a better jammer and towards a physical tool with a large area of effect.
Furthermore the part I care about is whether a finding survives contact with a number. Interviews tell you what matters and roughly why, however they do not tell you how widely it holds, which is why I try to follow them with a survey or a measured test, and the HappyLight survey is the example I would point at, since 52 of 62 respondents completed the quantitative questions and 53% of those rated festival lighting below 3 out of 5, at an average of 2.4.
Qualitative interviews
Interviews are where most of my projects actually start, and the format I use most is semi-structured, since a fixed script stops people telling you the thing you did not know to ask about. For the thesis I ran 11 across the Danish police, military and emergency management, including a walkthrough of one district's drone equipment, while for the Danfoss study I led the interviews in a team of eight split across DTU and Johns Hopkins, where focus groups ran alongside them in order to see which answers held up with colleagues in the room. It is important to note that interview data is personal data, so everything on this site is aggregated and nothing is attributed to a named person or unit.
Keywords
semi-structured interviews · interview guide design · focus groups · stakeholder interviews · expert interviews · aggregated and anonymised reporting
/images/drone-immobilisation/hero.webp
Rendered concept visual: an interceptor drone approaching a target drone entangled in cord under a parachute
Biologically inspired drone immobilisation
Sole author, designed, built and ran all 109 experiments
Finding the most effective way to stop a drone, through 109 experiments
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Map of Canadian universities identified for the recruitment partnership: Victoria, Calgary, Alberta, Windsor, Concordia, Dalhousie and Memorial University of Newfoundland
Attracting the next generation of engineers for Danfoss
Team of 8, led the interviews and co-wrote results and literature
A DEI and recruitment study for Danfoss Region Canada
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Presenting the innovation framework findings in a meeting room
Implementing a Radical Innovation Framework at GEA
Team of 2, everything done jointly, from the interviews to the framework
Why radical ideas stall inside a large manufacturer, and what to change
Ethnographic observation
What people say they do and what they actually do differ often enough that I try to watch as well as ask. Here the metro study is the clearest example, since the question was whether the signs, floor markings and announcements added during the pandemic changed passenger behaviour at all, and participant observation across several stations answered that in a way the three interviews and the 83-response survey could not have on their own. Furthermore at Herlev Hospital we observed how samples moved between the PCR lab and zone 3 and timed the interruptions, which is what made the problem costable at 98.8 staff hours a year.
Keywords
ethnographic observation · participant observation · contextual inquiry · cultural probes · time and motion measurement · observation and video analysis
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A pandemic-era 'Rejs med omtanke' information board beside the escalators in a Copenhagen metro station, showing mask, hygiene and distance icons
Do the signs actually work?
Team of 5, participant observation, interviews and survey analysis
An observation study of passenger behaviour in the Copenhagen metro
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Microbiology department storage room with a row of sample fridges and shelving
Cutting interruptions in a hospital microbiology lab
Team of 6, observation study, time measurements and the costed case
Observation study and costed business case at Herlev Hospital
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A wireflow diagram in Danish mapping the website's screens from the homepage through product configuration to checkout
A modular sorting bin and the service that sells it
Team of 6, ethnographic user research and the usability testing
Product and digital service designed together for 10 waste categories
Affinity mapping and synthesis
Raw interview material is not a finding until it has been sorted, and affinity mapping is the method I default to. The thesis produced 373 quotes, which were clustered in order to establish what a usable tool would have to do rather than what any single interviewee wanted, while the GEA bachelor's thesis built its own affinity map from close to 400 hand-written post-it notes. Furthermore personas were the right output for the licorice company, since the argument there was that it could scale production without losing the customers who buy it for being handmade, and a persona carries that constraint into a room considerably better than a transcript does.
Keywords
affinity mapping · KJ method · affinity analysis · clustering and insight synthesis · personas · requirement derivation
/images/gea-radical-innovation/hero.webp
Presenting the innovation framework findings in a meeting room
Implementing a Radical Innovation Framework at GEA
Team of 2, everything done jointly, from the interviews to the framework
Why radical ideas stall inside a large manufacturer, and what to change
/images/drone-immobilisation/hero.webp
Rendered concept visual: an interceptor drone approaching a target drone entangled in cord under a parachute
Biologically inspired drone immobilisation
Sole author, designed, built and ran all 109 experiments
Finding the most effective way to stop a drone, through 109 experiments
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A brown paper-wrapped Bagsværd Lakrids salt licorice caramel bag on a table
Innovation tools for a Danish licorice maker
Sole author of the individual analysis, the group ran the investigation
Consulting analysis for Bagsværd Lakrids
Usability and think-aloud testing
Testing is only useful to me when it is measured against something stated in advance, since otherwise the result is an opinion about a prototype. On GoGreen we set explicit targets and scored four iterations against them, where account setup came in at 21 seconds against a 30-second target, wrong clicks at 0.67 against a target under 2, and first impression at 4.34 out of 5 against a target of 4. Here the standing support was the harder case, as it was tested across two prototype iterations with people who actually have the diagnosis, using think-aloud so that the reasoning behind a hesitation was visible rather than inferred afterwards.
Keywords
usability testing · think-aloud testing · task-based testing · targets set before testing · affordances and signifiers · iteration against test results
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Screens from the final GoGreen prototype laid out in sequence
GoGreen
Team of 6, first prototype UI, usability testing and the pitch
UX design and prototyping against measured targets
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The plywood standing support prototype, an angular Z-shaped frame with a lower plate for the feet, photographed on a plain floor
A standing support for people with sclerosis
Team of 4, interviews, one of two prototypers, and usability testing
An aid that takes the load without taking the exercise
/images/waste-sorting-bin-and-service/wireflow.webp
A wireflow diagram in Danish mapping the website's screens from the homepage through product configuration to checkout
A modular sorting bin and the service that sells it
Team of 6, ethnographic user research and the usability testing
Product and digital service designed together for 10 waste categories
Survey design and quantitative validation
Surveys I use in order to find out how far an interview finding actually reaches. For HappyLight that meant 62 responses of which 52 completed the quantitative questions, with 53% rating festival lighting below 3 out of 5 at an average of 2.4, which is what justified building anything at all. Furthermore the metro study ran a survey with 83 responses alongside the observation, and Forsøgskassen was tested in real classrooms, where it scored 4.2 out of 5 on enjoyment with only 1 of 23 pupils finding it dull. It is important to note that none of these samples are large, so I read them as evidence of direction rather than as statistics.
Keywords
survey design · Likert scales · response and completion rates · quantitative validation of qualitative findings · classroom and field testing
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Light pillar standing on grass at night, casting a warm pool of light downward and a blue zone glow upward
HappyLight
Team of 7, stakeholder mapping, interviews, data analysis
Off-grid wayfinding light for festival campsites
/images/metro-signage-behaviour/hero.webp
A pandemic-era 'Rejs med omtanke' information board beside the escalators in a Copenhagen metro station, showing mask, hygiene and distance icons
Do the signs actually work?
Team of 5, participant observation, interviews and survey analysis
An observation study of passenger behaviour in the Copenhagen metro
/images/forsoegskassen/hero.webp
A foam chemistry demonstration running over on a plastic-covered classroom desk, part of a Forsøgskassen experiment
Forsøgskassen - practical science teaching in a box
CMO, marketing, market analysis and the teacher validation interviews
A venture built on teachers' preparation time
Service design and wireframing
Research tends to produce a product and a service at the same time, and the sorting bin is where that was most explicit, since from 1 July 2021 every Danish household had to sort waste into 10 categories, and we designed both halves, being the modular bin itself and the website that lets someone specify and order one, with a service blueprint and a wireflow drawn alongside the physical design rather than after it. Furthermore GoGreen ran the same way, from a lean canvas and a user story map through storyboarding to a prototype UI that was then tested against targets.
Keywords
service blueprint · wireframes and wireflow · user story mapping · storyboarding · lean canvas · prototype UI
/images/waste-sorting-bin-and-service/wireflow.webp
A wireflow diagram in Danish mapping the website's screens from the homepage through product configuration to checkout
A modular sorting bin and the service that sells it
Team of 6, ethnographic user research and the usability testing
Product and digital service designed together for 10 waste categories
/images/gogreen/hero.webp
Screens from the final GoGreen prototype laid out in sequence
GoGreen
Team of 6, first prototype UI, usability testing and the pitch
UX design and prototyping against measured targets
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The investment game's start screen: a stylised map showing farmland plots, a bank building and a skyscraper, with Continue, Start New Game and Save buttons overlaid
An investment game built in my own time
Sole author, built in my own time outside coursework
Kotlin and Android Studio, written for the practice rather than for a course
Concept selection, requirement setting and the process these feed into sit under Concept development & process.