UX Researcher

UX methods and tools have always changed. I've been practicing UX for 20 years, spending most of that time at NN/g. When I was hired, my welcome present as a new NN/g researcher included (besides a pile of books) a stopwatch — because back then, time on task could only be collected manually. I used that watch exactly once. Soon, the earliest unmoderated usability-testing platforms (like UserZoom and UserTesting.com) arrived. We started using them for quantitative user testing (and for qualitative testing also). My stopwatch was no longer needed — these systems would automatically record the time, way more accurately than I could with that watch. That was just one of many shifts I've experienced. Another came with the pandemic. Before then, most of NN/g's usability testing was done in person — it was hard to find a tool that would allow participants to record their screens remotely. But once Zoom became a standard part of daily work life, we found ourselves rarely running in-person user studies — not because those sessions aren't valuable or often more effective than remote ones, but simply because remote studies are far more cost-effective and could reach participants located anywhere around the world. With each change in available tools, our jobs and techniques had to adapt accordingly.

Nielsen Norman Group