- Include words that you expect your users to use, words that would be relevant for your study goals, and any of your own new words
- Remove any words that are only relevant for functionality, content, or performance (such as, “Controllable,” “Too Technical,” or “Slow”)
- For survey formats, reduce the number of words to 25 or less to reduce respondent fatigue
- Randomize the order in which the words are presented to dilute the impact of lazy respondents who just choose the first five words presented to them
- Include negative, positive, and neutral words, aiming for around 40% negative
- Show participants a screenshot or a design mockup to reduce distractions that could arise from their evaluations of content or functionality

Compressing the Microsoft Desirability Toolkit to focus on visual appeal

- Report the top most-selected words using percentages rather than raw frequencies (for example, "71% of participants selected the word ‘fresh’ to describe the design")
- If you have multiple user groups , make sure you can identify those in your participant responses to look for meaningful differences between the sets of words preferred by the two groups
- If you’re evaluating multiple designs or multiple versions of the same design (for example, old and new), look at the differences between the sets of words chosen to describe the different designs
- Decide in advance what words correspond to your brand positioning, then count how many users include at least one of those words in their top-5 list.
- Use a Venn diagram to present how your results map to show how different designs are described differently or how different user groups describe a design differently


Analyzing responses from the Microsoft Desirability Toolkit

- Can help designers gauge users’ responses to the aesthetic qualities of a site
- Suited to the challenges of measuring intangible emotional responses
- Participants select product-reaction words that describe the site after a usability session
- Major benefit is that it introduces a controlled vocabulary for participants

Link to the full list of product reaction words in the toolkit: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/desirability-reaction-words/

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