Blog Posts | Papers

Jobs to be done: A useful framework for driving customer value (2021) An article on how of Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) focuses product makers on customers’ needs and goals, co-authored with Microsoft colleagues on the Microsoft XC Research blog.

Tech users’ battle to stay in touch: Too many channels, too little time (2021) An article about my foundational UX research on the communications of high intensity (extreme) users on the Microsoft XC Research blog.

Tea and the Dunning-Kruger Effect (2020) An article explaining a cognitive bias through the story of my experience changing from hating tea to enjoying tea.

How to Start a UX Research Practice During a Pandemic (2020) A how-to article based on my experience starting research with SchoolClosures.org (see case study).

Perception, Learning, and Affordances: The Importance of Perceptual Learning in User Experience (UX) (2019) A discussion of Eleanor Gibson and her husband J.J.’s work in perception psychology and its relevance to UX.

How Do We See So Many Colors on a Digital Screen? (2015) A discussion of how digital screens make use of the fact that the human eye (typically) has three different cone types that contribute to normal color perception.

Signal Detection: Decision Making in Uncertainty (2015) A discussion of signal detection as theory, statistical model, and research method. Signal detection is designed to separate the ability to detect something from bias.

How to Take Good Notes: Go Low-Tech (2015) A discussion of a research paper on how students who took notes by hand scored higher on a test. Students were not allowed to use their notes on the test.

The Psychophysics of Algebra Expertise: Mathematics Perceptual Learning Interventions Produce Durable Encoding Changes (2014) A research paper reporting on a study of how learning changes the way we see equations: we are able to see them better - even when they are shown briefly - with more expertise.

Perceptual Learning of Abstract Musical Patterns: Recognizing Composer Style (2016) A research paper reporting on a study of whether composers have unique, learnable styles of composition (see case study). We found that users were able to successfully learn composers’ styles, demonstrating empirically that composers’ styles exist.

The Language of Music: Common Neural Codes for Structured Sequences in Music and Natural Language (2018) A research paper reporting on a study comparing how the brain processes musical syntax and natural language syntax. We found that the brain processes them in the same brain areas.