What are emerging areas for applying user research that you are excited about? In this video, I share a bit about what's been interesting to me of late. What about you?
(link to Interviewing Users, second edition, in the next post)
Agile was intended to address the problem of waterfall software development: delivering the wrong thing too late.
When "Agile" teams only want to code something once – no acceptance that usability testing might reveal a failing that necessitates another iteration – it's just more waterfall development with Agile-flavoured rituals and ceremonies.
Qwerty keyboards are laid out to keep the arms of a mechanical typewriter from hitting each other as you type, because letters that are more commonly used side by side are farther apart on the "keyboard".
Thumb typing has different constraints. There's probably a case for a different keyboard layout, now, to reduce common typos.
Who would research new layouts and the demand? One of the O/S publishers?
We need an equivalent of "this is not financial advice" for design: "this is not based on research."
I've seen countless well-meaning teams say "we will do it this way and then come back to this decision" - and they almost never do. That's because unless you carefully document decision provenance, coming back to the right decisions is impossible.
AI has already been used to run scams, rip off artists, destroy search engines, and drown publishers under an avalanche of shit.
Now AI boosters found a new thing to enshittify: #UserResearch .
"AI research is better than nothing" is the latest in a long series of "bad research is better than nothing" arguments that miss the point of research in the first place.
In situations where you don't have access to users for #UserResearch, #AI is not "better than nothing."
AI is a pacifier. It's far worse than nothing for the product (because the team is fooling itself into thinking they learned something) - but it truly is better than nothing from the perspective of management, because the designers stop bothering them about doing things the right way, and get back to wireframing.
There is a contradiction at the heart of lowercase-a #agile - it wants to simultaneously deliver value (be right) and learn (be wrong). As a result of trying to do both, it often succeeds at neither.
The remedy is to untangle discovery from delivery - with #UX methods that are more effective at managing rapid feedback loops.
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I often heared (and said myself) that "what users say is a problem is not the actual problem".
This makes it appear that the problem UxD finds is the actual problem whereas the problem the user names is the one that is not actual and at best a shadow of the actual problem. (Obviously that is great for researchers like me to sell the "actual problem")…
There is a consistent undercurrent in business thinking: the belief that there are Thinkers and Users, and all relevant knowledge on Users can and should be obtained by asking Thinkers, because Users lack perspective. This has obvious parallels to "empathy" in #designthinking where people gather in a room to make assumptions about what people outside of that room might want.
Needless to say, these approaches lead to bad decisions. There is no such thing as a user proxy.
Nothing kills the vibe of a user interview faster than when the interviewer listens to an answer and responds with "okay... next question..." without a hint of active listening
We're exploring ways to improve our research processes, using methods which encourage a panel of users to share perspectives through discussion and debate.
This has helped us gauge views on the future of travel, media, car ownership and technology:
People are getting fed up with all the useless tech in their cars
For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, with most of the ire directed toward in-car infotainment, writes Andrew J. Hawkins in The Verge.
"We need designs for this feature" is understood as a business need, but why is "ok so we'll need to interview 15 users" often framed as a #uxDesign need?
Designers aren't asking to talk to users because they're lonely. They're asking to talk to users to get the data they need to design the features the business wants.
#UserResearch is a business need. When business argues against doing it, it argues against achieving its own objectives.
– Wise: UX without borders
– The rhythm of your screen
– 60 ways to understand user needs that aren’t focus groups or surveys
– Accessible numbers
– What languages dominate the internet?