Reports and Presentations

Outline of Academic Research Article

This format assumes an experiment involving human participants. It adheres to guidelines set by the American Psychological Association (APA) but is used by many other disciplines too.

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Subjects
• Materials (or stimuli)
• Procedure
• Results
• Discussion

APA guidelines address other issues such as presenting statistical results and formatting a bibliography.

User Research Report

The format for these reports do not have a standard. They must be adapted to fit the audience. They must also give the reader flexibility in how the report is reviewed.

Principles for organizing a report

• Newspaper Style Reporting
• Focus on key findings
• Provide supporting details later
• Use formatting for efficient indexing

Useful section headers

• Executive summary
• Procedure
• Observations
• Conclusion
• Supporting materials (e.g. quotes, forms, procedural details, scripts, user profiles)

Presentation issues

• Newspaper style not so useful
• Pick points carefully
• Use real examples
• Allow for questions

Additional issues

• When possible, use facts and avoid subjective judgments
• Preserve confidentiality of participants
• Be careful with generalizations, qualify results