Mustafa Can Özdemir: UX evaluation does not have to be complex or expensive

His work focuses on user experience evaluation, human-computer interaction, and designing digital solutions that support users without unnecessarily interrupting or overwhelming them.

What motivated you to focus your work on user experience evaluation and human-computer interaction?

My journey into UX evaluation began with a curiosity about human attention in digital environments. As a heavy technology user myself, I became fascinated by how digital advertisements influenced decision-making. 

I began applying similar techniques and methodologies to push notification research, which became the focus of my current work. 

At the core of it, my motivation is about creating technologies that deliver timely and relevant information while respecting people's cognitive flow. Ultimately, how can we provide time-sensitive information to users without having to disrupt or distract them more than we should? Or, in other words, how can we provide better notification experiences?

In your experience, what do organisations most often misunderstand about UX evaluation?

Organizations often overestimate the quality of their product or service while underestimating the value that UX evaluation can bring. They also tend to see evaluation as costly, complex, or something reserved for large budgets.

The reality is quite different. Even simple evaluation methods, conducted at the right moment, can surface critical insights that inform and improve product development. A handful of user tests, done consistently throughout the design and development process, can save enormous amounts of time, resources, and rework down the line.

Perhaps more importantly, UX evaluation should not be an afterthought. However, a lot of organizations nowadays approach design and development without evaluation. Therefore, the sooner the evaluation is conducted, the more effective the end result becomes. If you are designing something for users, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get their feedback and opinions before you launch?

What challenges do digital teams face when trying to integrate user-centered thinking into their everyday workflows?

One of the most fundamental challenges is that teams often struggle to clearly define the problem they are actually trying to solve. Without an accurately defined problem statement, evaluation efforts can become unfocused or misaligned with real user needs.

There is also a cultural dimension: user-centered design requires a certain organizational willingness to be challenged by evidence. Ultimately, being able to translate user insights into actionable strategies becomes a challenge for such organizations.

How do you help participants choose between different UX evaluation methods when working with real digital services?

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of evaluation methods, tests, scales, and questionnaires available to practitioners. In my experience, what matters most is not knowing every method in exhaustive detail, but developing the judgment to know which method is most appropriate for a given situation and goal.

In this course, we focus on a curated set of widely used, well-validated methods, and we work through the logic of selecting the right one based on the underlying problem or objective at hand.

The goal is always the anchor. Are we trying to identify usability issues? Understand emotional responses? Measure task efficiency? Benchmark against a previous version? Each of these calls for a different approach. By grounding method selection in the research objective rather than habit or familiarity, participants learn to make informed, defensible methodological decisions.

What practical capabilities do participants gain from your trainings that they can immediately apply in their own projects?

Participants leave this course with both a conceptual grounding in UX evaluation and a practical toolkit they can apply immediately in their workplaces. They will gain familiarity with widely used methods and understand how to use them.

Participants will also gain the skills to lead UX research processes, from problem formulation and selecting appropriate methods to conducting evaluations and synthesizing actionable reports.

The goal is not to produce researchers who can discuss evaluation theory, but practitioners who can walk into a project on Monday and start asking better questions when designing technologies.