In 2015, I embarked on the journey of buying my first home. At that time, I wrote a blog post critiquing the UX of real estate websites through a, somewhat sarcastic, persona named ‘Kayla’ and listed out ‘her’ (my) user needs and how they weren’t being met. Discover how real estate websites have evolved from 2015 to 2024 through a personal lens. Spoiler alert – it still sucks, but it sucks a little less.
In this blog post, I evaluate how current real estate platforms address user needs such as viewing new properties, staying within budget, accessing accurate information, and managing inspection schedules. It suggests key improvements and practical recommendations for improving real estate website UX.
Sometimes it feels that UX Research has become synonymous with surveys. They’re cheap, easy & can reach large amounts of users. Sounds great, right? Wrong. Surveys are not enough
I took a pause and then answered four things I am sure they were not expecting. My tips are about how to improve the health and happiness of your work life.
After just 0.1 second users start to perceive a delay if your app isn’t doing The Thing™ that they just told it to do. We needed to buy 8.5 seconds. We had to manipulate (percieved) time.
There are predictable questions I get asked over and over again when someone finds out what I research, and that I have 2 microchips inside my body. These same questions pop up on social media every time I appear on TV or in the news.
Some people refused to believe the reality of how these chips work, and there’s no point trying to change these minds; the “the Government is secretley tracking you with a microchip you received at birth, it’s all about the New World Order and they’ll switch you off if you don’t comply” crowd.
This post is not for them. This post answers the FAQs for people genuinely interested in learning about the technology and educating themselves on the reality.
As with everything, practice makes perfect, and while I’ve conducted hundreds of sessions, I hadn’t conducted any with blind users. Armed with secondary research as preparation, I felt pretty confident going into them and learned some lessons along the way to improve next time. Here’s what I learned
At SEEK we’ve been experimenting with the SUPR-Q. We had a few hypotheses from our first study that we’ve explored through our second SUPR-Q Study. These are:
Tool limitations may negatively impact scores
Drop off could be addressed by improving the survey design
Even with addressing 1) and 2) the NPS would likely still be lower when measured as part of the SUPR-Q than an individual NPS rating, and skew towards aesthetic feedback given the questions asked.
There are predictable questions I get asked over and over again when someone finds out what I research, and that I have 2 microchips inside my body. These same questions pop up on social media every time I appear on TV or in the news.
Some people refused to believe the reality of how these chips work, and there’s no point trying to change these minds; the “the Government is secretley tracking you with a microchip you received at birth, it’s all about the New World Order and they’ll switch you off if you don’t comply” crowd.
This post is not for them. This post answers the FAQs for people genuinely interested in learning about the technology and educating themselves on the reality.
According to Tile, Australian’s spend an average of 29 minutes per day searching for something they have lost. To get around the fallibility of human memory, people have taken to ‘life hacks’ so that they can’t forget their pass. Some individuals have gotten small microchips, the size of a grain of rice, underneath their skin for the guarantee that as long as they have their hand (which for the record, none of them have forgotten) they cannot forget their keys.
At SEEK we’ve been experimenting with the SUPR-Q. We first ran it as part of a usability test in face to face research (n=5) to trial, and then went full scale using an on site Hotjar poll (n=1,811) to get a more representative sample for our first benchmark. The SUPR-Q (Standardized User Experience Percentile Rank Questionnaire) is an 8 item questionnaire developed by MeasuringU that is used to measure the quality of the user experience. What actually impacts users likelihood to recommend?
I appear in this article by Kate Stanton. This article was first published on Pursuit. This post only shows my section. Read the full article to read about Bionic Vision, Intelligent Transport, Robots and Cyborgs and the Bionic Spine.
Are ghost buttons really as bad as they've been made out to be? Ghost buttons are often touted as low-affordance, and it’s true of many of the examples we see — buttons with poor contrast placed over images making them difficult to use and confounds A/B tests. We say we are comparing ghost buttons and ‘normal’ buttons but we are really testing accessible vs inaccessible buttons, high vs low contrast designs, high affordance vs low affordance designs (and it’s not a surprise that ghost buttons lose). What happens when we test an accessible ghost button against an accessible solid button?
As technology becomes smaller, the way we carry it has progressed from luggable, to wearable and now towards devices that reside inside the human body, or insertables. We demonstrate this trajectory towards devices inside the human body, and carve out insertables as a specific subset of devices which are voluntary, non-surgical and removable.
We often make assumptions about blind users, however blind users are not homogenous. They differ as much as sighted users in terms of technical ability and search strategies. Just as not every sighted person is tech savvy, not every blind person knows how to use a screen reader well, or utilizes all the power features. This literature review explains the online and search behaviours of blind individuals
We use colour as a signifier for people, places and things all the time. Probably more than you realise. About 8% of Australian males and 0.4% of females are colour blind. Like all people with ‘disabilities’, there are certain things colour blind people can’t do. Design can help make the world more accessible to ensure they can do everything those with ‘normal’ vision can. I explore ways to deign for colour blind users, which often improves the experience for everyone.
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