Field Note Archive
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Heuristics as Reflective Practice
What if the heuristic is right, but the interface still fails? This article explores how evaluative tools can obscure as much as they reveal, and why reflection, not rule-following, is the real work of UX research.
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Silent Data: What We Don’t Capture
What if the most human parts of user behaviour don’t show up in the data? This article explores what pauses, silences, and gestures can teach us, and how analogue methods help us notice what digital tools often miss.
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Writing UX Research for Humans
Many UX research reports feel unreadable not because the findings are unclear, but because the writing flattens them. This piece explores how phrasing, tone, and narrative shape what gets heard — and what gets lost.
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UX Research and Sensemaking
When user findings conflict, it’s tempting to resolve the tension quickly. But what if contradiction isn’t a problem to fix, but a pattern to follow? This article explores sensemaking in UX research as a patient, interpretive process — one that holds ambiguity long enough for structure to emerge.
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Triangulation in UX Research
Why does the call for rigour so often collapse into a checklist? Triangulation promises rigour. But too often, it delivers repetition. Researchers reach for it not to surface contradiction, but to secure consensus, three methods, three data types, one tidy insight. It becomes less a practice of inquiry than a form of pre-emption: anticipate critique
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Stakeholder Listening as UX Method
A fictional scenario drawn from real research patterns, this article explores stakeholder listening not as admin, but as method. When user insights fail to land, it’s often not a matter of evidence, but translation, of making meaning legible across internal systems of power, fear, and decision-making.
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The Ethics of UX Research Tools
We often ask participants to be transparent, but not our tools. This piece explores how platforms — from sentiment analysis to AI summaries — quietly shape meaning before we begin. What ethical questions should we ask of the systems we rely on?
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Metaphor as Frame, Not Verdict: Rethinking the ‘User Journey’ in UX Research
Introduction — The Tension Metaphors are shortcuts to understanding. They compress complexity into something we can name, point to, and discuss. In multidisciplinary teams, they give everyone—from engineers to product managers—a shared reference point. They orient attention and provide a common language for navigating ambiguous problems. But this same clarity can close things down. Once
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Designing at the World-Minute: Lessons from Stefan Zweig for UX Decisions
Some moments decide everything. Drawing on Stefan Zweig’s Decisive Moments in History, this piece reframes high-stakes “world-minutes” for UX, with six vivid tests to design the moments that matter most.
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The Shape of Letters: From Calligraphic Hand to Pixel Grid
From the sweep of a calligrapher’s brush to the precision of a pixel grid, letterforms carry the traces of their tools, cultures, and makers. This essay explores how global traditions, shifting materials, and human agency have shaped — and continue to shape — the evolving language of typography.