I’m trying to put together a list of books in the UX and design space that have good coverage of the analysis of design and user research data. Here’s what I have so far (and please post any additional ones you think might be good).
Books:
- Mental Models by Indi Young, Rosenfeld Media
- Card Sorting by Donna Spencer, Rosenfeld Media
- Observing the user experience by Mike Kuniavsky, Morgan-Kaufman
- Handbook of task analysis by Dr D. Diaper
- User and task analysis for Interface Design by Hackos & Redish, Wiley
- Design Research Now contains an essay by Wolfram Jonas, Birkhäuser Basel
- Measuring the user experience by Tullis & Albert, Morgan-Kaufman
- Contextual Design by Beyer & Holtzblatt, Morgan-Kaufman
- Analyzing and Interpreting Ethnographic Data by Margaret LeCompte, Alta Mira Press
- Creating Breakthrough Ideas by Squires and Byrne, Bergin & Garvey
- The User is Always Right by Steve Mulder & Ziv Yaar, New Riders Press
- Design Research: Methods and Perspectives edited by Brenda Laurel, MIT Press
Articles on analysing design research:
- Demystifying Data Analysis by Rachel Hinman, Adaptive Path Essays
- Analysis, plus Synthesis by Lindsay Ellerby, UX Matters
- Contextmapping: experiences from practice by Sleeswijk Visser, Stappers, van der Lugt and Sanders (PDF)
Couple of points: I haven’t read all of these, so can’t vouch for just how well they actually cover analysis; these are mostly recommendations from others. And, I’ll keep adding to the list as more responses come in, but feel free to add to the list via comments.
I have a good book called “Analyzing and interpreting ethnographic data”. Ethnographer’s toolkit, Margaret D LeCompte and Jean J Schensul
I’ll have a look through my delicious links. I taught a workshop on this a couple of years ago and probably found some resources then…
But I do agree that most texts treat analysis as a black box.
There’s a good intro book called “The Design Researchers Handbook”, can’t remember the author though
Squires and Byrne, “Creating Breakthrough Ideas” is at first glance an Anthropological volume. After reading and referring to it on a regular basis, I find it overarching and priceless for all design-planning, user research, analysis-synthesis, and implementation activity. Addresses products, services, digital, non-digital. The common core . . . making the invisible visible, and designing for increasing integration of all the above.
Can definitely recommend ‘Measuring the user experience: Collecting, analyzing and presenting usability metrics’ by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert.