Open-access handbook · v0.1.0
The Criminologist's Guide to User Research of Apps and Tech
An open-access handbook for criminologists who want to study how people actually use justice-tech — and for the UXR teams building it.
The handbook
Four parts, one path from criminology to UXR
Part 1
What is user research, actually?
A practitioner translation of UXR for people who already know research — with a side-by-side concept table mapping criminology methods to UXR equivalents.
Part 2
What criminology already knows
A curated, annotated bibliography of justice-tech UX studies: inmate tablets, parole apps, BWC, predictive policing, e-filing, victim notification, and more.
Part 3
What should be studied
15–25 prioritized, understudied UXR questions in justice-tech, each with users, methods, feasibility, and seed citations.
Part 4
UXR as a criminology-adjacent career
Plain-market reality: salary bands, what translates from a criminology PhD, a 6-month pivot plan, and the candid downsides.
Criminologists already know how to study people. The job is to translate that craft into the rhythms of product teams without losing the rigor.
Interactive
Two tools to make the pivot tangible
Self-assessment
Is UXR right for you?
~18 questions across five sub-dimensions. Composite score, personalized next steps, and a share-card you can post.
Skills translator
From criminology to UXR framing
Type a research skill or experience; get back a UXR-flavored translation and a sharable result card.
Use & reuse
Free to read, fork, and remix
Everything on this site is licensed CC BY 4.0. The source is on GitHub, each versioned release is archived on Zenodo, and the citation page gives you the DOI plus BibTeX, APA, and Chicago entries.