Open-access handbook · v0.2.0
The Criminologist's Guide to User Experience (UX)
Making Criminal Justice Apps Work Better for the People Who Use Them
A CrimRxiv Consortium resource — making criminology useful. Find free, open-access criminology research at CrimRxiv.
Criminologists already know how to study people. The job is to translate that craft into the rhythms of product teams without losing the rigor.
The handbook
Four parts, one path from criminology to UX research
Part 1
What is user-experience research, actually?
A practitioner translation of UX research for people who already know research — with a side-by-side concept table mapping criminology methods to their UX equivalents.
Part 2
What criminology already knows
A curated, annotated bibliography of UX research on criminal justice apps and technology: inmate tablets, parole apps, body-worn cameras, predictive tools, e-filing, victim notification, and more.
Part 3
What should be studied
Prioritized, understudied UX research questions on criminal justice technology, each with users, methods, feasibility, and seed citations.
Part 4
UX research 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.
Interactive
Two tools to make the pivot tangible
Self-assessment
Is UX research 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 user-experience framing
Type a research skill or experience; get back a UX research 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 has a permanent DOI, and the about page has BibTeX, APA, and Chicago entries. Published by the CrimRxiv Consortium.