User research? Nah!

U

I often feel that I am in a constant battle to persuade people that User Research is a good thing. There is this resistance. Why spend all that money when we can just make it and see if it works?

How about this? You are lucky enough to have won a pot of cash and you decide you want to build yourself the perfect house. You go to the architect. “Not to worry” – says the architect – “leave it with me”.

But, but!?

Imagine this expert architect not asking you any questions? Not just those relating to budget, location, climate, materials, timelines, deadlines, etc but also what or who the house is for. If I were in that situation I would like to be asked about how I intend to live in the house. “Do you cook? Do you socialise? Entertain? Do you have visitors? What about paintings? What would make it a total failure? What is the one thing you couldn’t bear to be without?”

Maybe that is too personal? How about public spaces?

It’s a museum. Surely there are human related questions there too? “Do we want people to just come through, see some exhibits and leave? Do we want them to linger? Study? Do we want people to meet each other in this museum? People they already know or can we encourage people to talk to strangers?”

Tell you what. I have these bricks, some marble that I want to use up, a piece of land with a spare corner on and I have some builders available in July. I want to build a shop that sells wigs.

Am I stifling innovation?

Or is it merely possible that people are far more likely to buy wigs if the shop has some mirrors?

Things get used by people in particular ways. Why not increase the odds of success by designing how people will use it rather than taking a chance that they will like the way you decide to use that budget you’ve been allocated?

About the author

Ivanka

Ivanka Majic works in technology. She was Head of Design for Ubuntu, service managed Digital Marketplace through to beta, was acting director of digital for the Labour Party. She lives and works in Brighton where she works with the council’s digital first team, does a bit of teaching at Sussex University, and works with her husband on projects like restaurantsbrighton.co.uk and the BRAVOs. She has also started a podcast with her friend Michael which you can listen to at grandpodcast.com.

7 comments

  • The analogy of arhcitects and building is a good one to help communicate about why you should bother with user research. And also a useful analogy for those organsations that don’t even want to bother with a design phase at all and let their engineers do all the work. Like letting your builders construct your home without involving an architect at all.
    P.s. When is the wig shop opening?

  • While I am deciding on the theme for my wig shop I thought I’d bring in some of the off line discussions with people.

    Apparently, it isn’t the architect that deserves all the respect anyway – it’s the structural engineer that makes sure it all works and makes it happen.

    Yes yes. If it wasn’t for programmers none of it would happen. You are very clever and very important.

    However.

    I would argue that design (of software interactions in particular) should be occurring or – at the very least – being validated in a multidisciplinary environment.

    User research is one of the disciplines that comes to the table. User research, graphic design, interaction design and implementation (and marketing and business consulting). It is possible for one person to cover more than one of these disciplines but it is very hard (she says getting all Cooperesque) for the programmer to also be the person who thinks about how the software will be used and by whom. I know more than one interaction designer who struggles with moving away from self-referential design and there is no subconscious motivation to make the thing easier to build in that scenario!

    Anyway – I like the architect analogy too – thanks Johnny. I wonder what sort of house my builders would come up with. I shudder to think!

  • Architect analogy is very good, but it doesn’t explain everything.
    It’s complicated process to design home/museum. Everybody knows this and everybody knows how important is to participate in this process him/herself (“I want my house in the way I want it”).

    Designing user interfaces (for any kind of product) is also very complicated and important process. But most of people don’t know this and don’t feel any necessity to spend time/money in this area. Creating interfaces LOOKS simple.
    You would immediately notice that something wrong with your house (living room is too small), but very often mistakes in interface design are not immediately noticeable, some people would never notice this.

    So, it’s probably depends on culture and level of common sense. As people more exposed to different user interfaces, user research would be considered as more and more important.

  • I think that one of the problems is that there are so many successful products and services out in the world and not much evidence to suggest that their success has come down to user research.

    I often find myself lacking confidence in selling user research when a company such as apple, who used it to great effect in the early days, seems to shun it now when it is at its peak in terms of successful product lines.

    I think we need more stories outlining how particular findings from user research actually led to an extremely successful contemporary product. Anybody got any?

  • I’m going to try and respond to both of you in one – so bear with me!

    I like the idea that we accept that making a house is harder than making an ‘interface’. I think you’re right. The perception is that if you know how to make a website you have all the information you need to make a good website. I can only guess that if all we ever wanted were wooden sheds with a door and two windows then the carpenter would be king!

    On the Apple front: Apple clearly know their customers. User research isn’t there only to help with the usability and the ‘making it easy to use’. Making it easy to use isn’t always what the users want or need. Sometimes people do want to think. User research can help you understand what is right for your users and what it is they do or don’t want to think about.

    I recall hearing that the iPod ‘tested badly’ but they ‘decided to go ahead with it anyway’ (this is based on whisperings and is just as likely to be total nonsense). I have tested things that, on the surface, appear to test badly by some definitions (took people ages to do, to find, etc) but the end effect was positive and so I have recommended that things that would fail some sort of timed quantitative testing are kept in. It is all about appropriateness and context.

    I can’t give you a list of great products but:
    • The Early Learning Centre followed a UCD process to redevelop their very successful site.
    • Moo used UCD to inform the design of the flickr moo cards thing and that seems pretty cool.

    There are some designers who instinctively know what makes the experience of using a product a ‘good’ one. Why not increase the odds of success by understanding what will actually turn your users on?

By Ivanka

About Author

Ivanka

Ivanka Majic works in technology. She was Head of Design for Ubuntu, service managed Digital Marketplace through to beta, was acting director of digital for the Labour Party. She lives and works in Brighton where she works with the council’s digital first team, does a bit of teaching at Sussex University, and works with her husband on projects like restaurantsbrighton.co.uk and the BRAVOs. She has also started a podcast with her friend Michael which you can listen to at grandpodcast.com.

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