getting personal: they why & how of designing for people

Getting Personal: The Why and How of Designing for People.

Meagan Fisher @owltastic on Twitter

“I find your lack of design disturbing.”

How can design take a fantastic idea to the

next level?

Job Responsibilitiesuser research, information architecture, brand design, user experience design, visual design, interaction design, responsive design, front-end development, content, marketing, and product strategy, and more.

It’s a lot of stuff.

Empathy.

“Fellow designers, let’s try to get through a day without saying ‘empathy’.”

@Zeldman

empathytenderhearted

compassionate

altruistic

sympathetic

kindforgiving

loving

What does empathy mean in the context of user experience design?

Develop an understanding of the feelings and needs of users.

This understanding comes from exposure to users.

With this understanding, we design effective solutions.

What determines the success or

failure of a design?

sans or serif?

animated?

mobile first?

bright or dark?

photography?

collapsible nav?

short or long?

subtle or bold?

responsiveness? accessibility?

How do we begin?

“Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem — the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible — his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.”

Charles Eames

Looking for Constraints

1. What are the business goals?

2. What will look best?

Coca-Cola

sugar, salt, & caffeine

what the hell.

“We did not understand the deep emotions of so many of our customers for Coca-Cola.”

Coca-Cola President Donald R. Keough

“They didn't ask the critical question of Coke users: Do you want a new Coke?”

Sam Craig, professor of marketing and international business at the Stern School of Business at NYU

Clear liquids were the flat design of the

90’s.

Let’s use every font this baby has.

“A lot of times as a leader you think, "They don't get it; they don't see my vision." People were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way, and they were right. It would have been nice if I'd made sure the product tasted good.”

David C. Novak of Yum! Brands, credited with introducing Crystal Pepsi




3. What do people actually want?

Isn’t this old news?

“We didn’t spend enough time talking with customers and were rolling out features that I thought were great, but we didn’t gather enough input from clients.… You have to pay attention to your customers and adapt to their needs.

VoterTide Postmortem

“…people didn’t really LIKE anything about our product. No one that used the service thought it was that cool.

Zillionears , “My Startup Failed. F@<#.”

“...we rarely had meaningful conversations with our target end-users. And while we had some wonderful advisors … we should have met with everyone we could get our hands on.”

Part Two of the HelloParking Postmortem

Real human needs are the most valuable

constraint we have.

Innovation.

“Innovation happens when you add value for the user. Teams with more exposure to how real people use their designs can more easily see opportunities for innovation.”

Jared Spool, Exposure Hours Drive UX Innovation

Why do designers resist finding and using this important data?

“It’s someone else’s job.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“It may raise inconvenient questions.”

“It’s expensive and time consuming.”

“I already know my users.”

Getting to know the user doesn’t have to be hard.

“Make friends with reality. Cultivate a desire to be proven wrong as quickly as possible and for the lowest cost.”

Erika Hall, Just Enough Research

How do we make friends with reality?

“Successful design teams have each team member spend a minimum of two hours every six weeks watching real users interacting with either their design or a competitor’s design.”

Jared Spool, Exposure Hours Drive UX Innovation

Ask questions to understand context.

Listen for unmet needs and goals.

Observe frustrations and successes.

Dispel your mistaken assumptions.

Get as close to a real person as you can.

In-person interviews achieve all of these goals.





Watch them use the product.

In-person testing Software: Silverback

✓ Record video and audio

✓ Record screen inputs

✓ Take notes

✓ View later and share with team

Absent real users, interview people

closest to your target audience

Don’t forget the competition.

Remote testing Example: UserTesting.com

✓ Recruit users or be paired with their testers

✓ Create tasks for testers, or use suggested tasks

✓ Screen and audio recordings

demo via usertesting.com

Remote testing achieves most of these goals.





Observation tools Example: FullStory.com, Inspectlet.com

✓ Screen recordings of current users in the product

✓ Great for making small changes to relieve immediate frustrations

recording from fullstory.com

Observational tools achieve some of these goals.





Analytics tools tell you what is happening, but not why.





Beyond tools and testing, listen to what users are already telling you.

Be easy to reach.

Hi Mary,

Thanks for signing up! My name is Courtney and I'm responsible for making sure your trial is an absolute success.

What are you trying to achieve with video? How are you defining success for your video project? With this information, I can point you in the direction of the features that will be most useful to you, recommend super helpful documentation, and brainstorm with you about the best ways to leverage our platform.

Shoot me a quick email, and I'll get right back to you.

Have a great day! Courtney

Hi Joseph,

I am reaching out to you because I would like to better understand your recent decision to cancel your video hosting account with us.

What ultimately led you to close your account? Did you run into any problems with the SproutVideo platform? Were there features that you were looking for that you could not find or that we didn't offer? I noticed you mentioned price was an issue - did you find another provider that offered better value?

Any feedback you could give us would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Tweet: “I can’t figure out how to use SproutVideo to password protect my videos.” TAGGED: SECURITY, PRIVACY PROTECTION, PRODUCT FRUSTRATION

Email: “It’d be awesome if I could charge for my videos through my SproutVideo website.” TAGGED: PAYMENT SYSTEM, VIDEO WEBSITE, FEATURE REQUEST

Make user exposure an ongoing part of your process

• Read a random sample of support tickets for 15 minutes every morning

• Get notifications for tweets people are sending to your organization.

• Ask a sales representative to listen in on a call once a week.

What do I get for all this empathy?

✦ Useful constraints

✦ Meaningful content

✦ Better critiques

✦ Iterative changes

User empathy gives our work purpose.

Be less terrible to work with.

Imagine if you interacted with coworkers this way.





Recommended Reading

• Practical Empathy by Indi Young

• Just Enough Research by Erika Hall

• Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro

• You’re My Favorite Client by Mike Monteiro

• UIE.com

http://UIE.com

Thanks! Meagan Fisher

@owltastic on twitter [email protected]