Timeless design? Participatory design? Ethical design?
The beauty of design is that it can take you wherever you want to go. I saw this video from PBS on FastCompany, and felt so inspired!
On FastCompany: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665711/watch-a-5-minute-primer-on-the-fundamentals-of-product-design
Stumbled upon this amazing video today that combines my two loves: cats, and UX.
How do we really show to our stakeholders that UX is important? How do we prove to them something that seems completely obvious to us, yet somehow intangible and “maybe not worth the time” to some stakeholders?
This video uses a cat as an example, but highlights the simple fact that it doesn’t matter if you give the stakeholders what they want, or if you create what you would want. If you don’t give the cat (your user) what they truly want, they aren’t going to use it. And if your user doesn’t use it, someone else is going to get their business.
If your stakeholders are cat people, show them this video. If they’re dog people, you might want to make a new video.
My favourite quote? “… I have to make jolly-well sure that I satisfy the cat first, remember that I’m not a cat, and find ways to play on the cat’s own motivations. Only then does everybody win.”
meow!
I recently attended Midwest UX see: www.midwestux.com.
I think I’m still absorbing and processing everything that I heard and saw, but a couple key quotes stood out for me. These are important takeaways, and I’m already seeing places in my day-to-day work where I can put them to good use!
In true Midwest UX style, I’ve taken a picture of my notes!
(Also thanks to Heidi and Darren for their hand-drawn presentation, and the cute style of drawing people. I’ve used them below shamelessly.)
People like to conduct surveys – they’re quick, easy, and give you a chance to collect data from a large sample of people. You might even get close to the elusive “representative” sample that we all so desperately seek. In an age where many companies’ users are across the globe, surveys are an attractive way to easily gain an understanding of who the user is and where their preferences lie.
Problem? Users lie. Like, a lot.
One infamous example comes from the Tucson Garbage Project run in the 1970s. Here, people were surveyed about their alcohol consumption. The researchers then went through the same people’s garbage to compare their reported consumption with their actual consumption. The result? People significantly under-reported their actual alcohol consumption. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Garbage_Project)
The thought here is that your respondents will probably respond in a way that will make them look as good as possible to others (EVEN if the survey is completely anonymous). So always take your survey results with a grain of salt.
This doesn’t mean that surveys aren’t useful, it just means that care has to be taken when interpreting results. If you find something interesting, do some more in-depth tests to try to verify. This is especially true if you’re asking people about how they will behave in certain situations. If they say they’ll do one thing, run a small scale study just to make sure they actually do what they say.
Here’s an example:
Janrain recently released results of a study asking users about their perceptions of site registation processes. Their findings (from http://www.janrain.com/blogs/research-study-consumer-perceptions-online-registration-and-social-sign) included:
From these results, they concluded that “Consumers inclined to use social sign-in are more valuable to companies; they are more likely to return to sites offering social sign-in, they spend larger dollar amounts on the site and have more favorable views about the brand.”.
But the problem here is that consumers probably have some clear pre-conceived notions about how they might be viewed differently depending on their spending habits. It’s probably very likely that what these users report isn’t going to be exactly the same as their actual behaviour (this is of course neglecting the glaring issue that it matters less what % of users spend “more” money, and matters more the actual amount of money being spent).
In the end, this survey is a good example of how survey results can provide some very interesting clues about user behaviour, but these findings need to be supported with some followup studies to determine if users who reported favouring social sign-in would actually act upon their stated values, and if users followed through on their reported intended spending habits.
