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So what exactly is user research like at YouTube? Sometimes it means letting users design their ideal experience. For example, last year we used a method called FIDO (first utilized by Fidelity Investments) where we cut out different elements of various video sites, stuck them on magnets, and had users arrange their ideal organization of the elements (see below for an example). Other times we use a more standard research method called a usability study, which entails seeing whether a user can or can't complete certain standard site tasks in a usability lab.

So what exactly is user research like at YouTube? Sometimes it means letting users design their ideal experience. For example, last year we used a method called FIDO (first utilized by Fidelity Investments) where we cut out different elements of various video sites, stuck them on magnets, and had users arrange their ideal organization of the elements (see below for an example). Other times we use a more standard research method called a usability study, which entails seeing whether a user can or can't complete certain standard site tasks in a usability lab.

During discovery, we review the baseline analytics to look for potential problem issues. We then collaborate with the analytics team to conduct the goals analysis, connecting high-level user and business goals to measurable user behaviors. During design, we collaborate with the optimization team to identify and generate design variants for A/B and multivariate testing. And then post-launch, we supplement analytics data with user surveys and usability testing, providing the "why" for the "what." Then we repeat steps one through four.

The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is "Googley" - and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.

More than anything, Google prefers to make design decisions based on what performs well. And as a company, Google cares about being fast, so we want our user experience to be fast. That's not just in terms of front-end latency-how long it takes the page to download-it's also about making people use their computers more efficiently. A lot of our design decisions are really driven by cognitive psychology research that shows that, say, people online read black text against a white background much faster than white against black, or that sans serif fonts are more easily read than serif fonts online.

. Our User Experience Research team has found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously. To help us get some insight into this split-second decision-making process, we use eye-tracking equipment in our usability labs. This lets us see how our study participants scan the search results page, and is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds.

With a marketing person, 90 percent of the time is spent trying to do everything to shape the buying decision," said Earl Powell, director of the Design Management Institute, a forum for industrial designers and the businesses that use them. Designers are "more committed to the user experience. That experiential component has an emotional resonance: It sticks

There are three key areas to consider in design and benchmarking when undertaking such a substantial airport redevelopment project. First, we considered our passengers and how we engineered their journey through the airport. Taking into account everything from walking times to way-finding and immigration, our airport design has ensured the optimal journey.'

The score itself is what most people are interested in - the difference, expressed in a percentage, between those people who are very likely to recommend your brand and those people and the beauty of it is that it can reflect the different levels of engagement and loyalty that customers feel to different types of brand.

What separates a healthy, effective design practice from the horror stories we hear about when talking to others in the industry. We came up with two lists; the first list (below) talks about doing certain actions in the right order. The second list is one of relative values. While all of the items on both sides of this list have value, we value the items on the left more than the items on the right: