Talking to customers is what user experience professionals claim to do day in and day out. Learning the lanugage of our customers in order to talk about what we do is key to translating what we do to the general public. An 8th grader should understand it. If you were to step back, what is the experience your customers have of you? Do you know? What is it you are selling? Why are they choosing you? What is your value? These are all questions we claim to ask of our client’s users (aka customers) but do we ever ask ourselves.
I always struggle with explaining what I do. Often getting blank stares and perplexed looks when I say, “I do user experience design.”
This always leads to conversations between ourselves that go something like this, “So how do you explain what we do?” “I do x.” “Oh yeah that sounds really good. I usually say y.” “Hm, I might need to implement some of that.” However, who we are not talking to is our customers.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon says we should obsess over our customers but how many of us actually do? We talk endlessly about user experience but do we take that internally to consider the experience of our own users (aka clients)? Do we go out and talk to them? Ask them candidly, “do you understand the value of what I sell?” How confident are you that your clients can explain in plan language just what you do and what value you bring to their organization?
Spend time learning the language of your intended audience. Figure out how to translate what you do into their language. Build rapport with them through the language you utilize to explain what you do.
Games are invading the real world — and the runaway popularity of Farmville and Guitar Hero is just the beginning, says Jesse Schell. At the DICE Summit, he makes a startling prediction: a future full of points in the making. While brushing our teeth, getting enough sleep, everything we do we collect points for tax breaks, special incentives by companies. In one case there are points for the amount of soda we drink because we are not that far from every can of soda having a CPU and small camera to monitor our behaviour.
I’ve missed a couple weeks due to deadlines at work but here’s the next installment of UX Video of the Week. This one is a lot of fun to watch and only 5 minutes out of your day for some amusing commentary (by the girls in the video) and inspiration. Here Anab Jain and Louise Klinker, both graduates of the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions MA program, show a nice example of the use of video for prototyping. (The project was also featured in Bill Buxton’s book “Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design”.)
If you don’t know Jeff Parks, you should. A former cognitive rehab therapist, Jeff, is now an Information Architect and consultant based in Ottawa, Canada. He shares some interesting insights into “being human” in the following video:
The Following are the Key Takeaways I got from the Video:
“Behaviour is a function of the person and their environment.”
You cannot sum up behaviour as easy as a bunch of numbers. “The experiences in our life ultimately determine our perspective. It is the culmination of experiences that ultimately shape our unique reality.” Not just one event.
Business/IT tends to care more about their processes and code then the user. Much like in family feud, the user stands in the sound proof booth and they know the answer but can’t tell the people who are up on stage (business & IT). We don’t take the time to talk to our users. Take the time to find out about the people you are designing for.
Seek First to Understand Then be Understood:
Find the reconcile force… Write out all the things you disagree about then move forward on all the things you agree about. This is where personas and wireframes come into play as a tool. They are tools to communicate ideas. Move forward from there with the how. (How do I get buy in for my ideas?)
No One is an Expert:
The industry is only ten years old. How many ten year olds do you know that have the answers to everything? According to Malcolm Gladwell it takes 10K hours to master anything.
Most of our work is about conveying meaning to others for others. By focusing on data points, we miss the emotion and the perception. (ie the Human Side AND the opportunity to connect.)
If you seem stuck then the answer may not be logical. Draw, do something creative, it’ll free up your mind and help you think outside the box.
Trust is predicated on an understanding of what it is that you are trying to communicate. Trust is the biggest issue on the web, in the marketplace, in business, in government… it’s everywhere today. The web is a conversation but do you know WHO you are talking to?
We define the people we meet by WHAT they do not WHO they are. Human experience and what we remember cannot be put into a number.
“Designers have imagination, empathy, and intuition, which is just as legitimate as statistical data and are grounded in knowledge and principles. Design is an argumentative process and as the design must be argued for so too must the data. Neither is the final answer or truth; instead there’s a process of discovery and understanding.” – Uday Gayendar, VOIP for Oracle, Adobe, & Cisco
The only way to truly understand someone is the ability to connect with them in a balanced way.
“…no one will remember you for the car you drove of the things you owned. In life, what matters most at the connections you make with other people and the personal impact you had on their lives…” – William Oliver, Farmer (My Dad said something similar to me when a close personal friend died unexpectedly: “No one will remember you at the office.”)
We have so much potential and yet we squander it on useless data points.
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