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π Nightmare public transit UX, trends in the research industry, Figma's AI stuff, & more
Published about 1 year agoΒ β’Β 4 min read
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Dearest gentle reader, β (Oh I'm sorry...did you not binge S3 of Bridgerton last week as well?)
Greetings from the weird span of time between Canada Day + Independence Day (a week where I typically choose not to work in order to uh...honour...both my Canadian and American clients π). Hope everyone has a great one.
We also took our new pizza oven on its maiden voyage for π¨π¦ day.
Here's what's coming at you in this edition of R4A...
β¨ Research Magic: A lesson on usability methods from the guy who missed the bus.
ποΈ Events: Email marketing, customer journeys, & user interviews.
π Tools & Resources: Stuff for freelancers & UXRs.
π Hot Links: Good stuff about browsers and bad stuff about Figma.
β¨ A lesson on usability methods from the guy who missed the bus
A particularly daunting section of Chicago's L train map
My very first usability testing session took place in-person, on a beautiful summer day. This was way back in 2013, and I couldn't believe I had landed such a cool job (I was Centralis' newest UX Specialist, fresh out of grad school).
Our client was a regional transportation authority (i.e., the people in charge of public busses, trains, etc.), and our research participants had to use the maps and signs within and between transit stations to figure out how to get to a particular destination.
Thinking about this project really makes me miss the good old days, when in-person research was much more common. But I digress.
Anyways, one of our participants -- a cheerful, middle-aged man -- had a task that involved trying to find a particular bus stop. He quickly succeeded in making his way to the bus station, but then spent nearly 45min trying to figure out which of the 5 stops was his. I swear we circled around the bus station more than 10 times, and when our time was up, he confidently asserted that stop #2 was the right one, when the correct answer was actually #4.
If this were real life, he absolutely would have missed his bus. It was honestly really hard to watch.
At the end of the session, we asked him a few closing questions. One of them was something like "How did you feel about that experience?"
I was bracing myself for him to absolutely rip into us about how we led him on a wild goose chase.
But...that's not what happened. He said something like "Oh, that wasn't bad at all! I actually think it was pretty easy to figure out where I was going." I was dumbfounded -- had he already forgotten all those confusing moments he had experienced over the last hour? He hadn't even ended up at the right bus stop!
Why am I telling you this story?
Because it's important to keep mind that actually watching someone use something is by far the best way to learn about its usability. The hour I spent with this participant taught me so much about how the maps and signs were failing to support him in finding where he was supposed to go, but if you were to just listen to his self-report of the experience, you'd think a) he had found the correct bus stop, and b) it had been a piece of cake -- neither of which were true.
There may be times when it does make sense to collect usability metrics or self-reports -- but if you do, I hope you combine them with actual usability testing. Observing those moments of confusion when they happen, rather than ask about them later, is a much better way to get an accurate picture of where people are struggling with using your product.
ποΈ Events
July 10: UX best practices for email marketing
In this session featuring superstar UXR consultant Amanda Stockwell, you'll learn a bunch of great UX tips for email marketing. Use code AMANDA10 for 10% off!
July 11: Bringing a customer journey mindset to your team
Marie will talk about how you can leverage the structure and insights generated from the customer journey to empower your internal teams to become business experts.
"You're not just evaluating the design and the usability and its efficacy in solving a customer problem, you're also starting to evaluate whether the problem exists at all."
User Interviews' 6th annual report on the state of the field includes data from over 750 researchers. It's a surprisingly engaging read, and I bet you'll find a few things in there that you didn't expect.
Judging by the comments, this one really struck a nerve with some people. I wasn't at Config...what do YOU think?
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π Hot Links
Brooke Sykes: Coming back to Firefox as a user researcher
β "When I started working on Firefox, a colleague likened a browser to a doorway β you walk through several a day, but donβt think much about them. Itβs a window to the internet, but itβs not the internet. It helps you search the web, but itβs not a search engine. Itβs a universal product, but many struggle to describe it."
Scott Riley: On AI and the commodification of design
β "I want to be very clear that I hate this. I hate that Figma have gone down this route, I hate that theyβre acting like every other corporate entity once they corner a market and see themselves as a future monolith."
Thereβs a tendency to equate being βgood at technologyβ with being βa smart personβ β and itβs easy to lose sight of the fact that these are learnable skills, which some people have more time than others to learn because of privilege.
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β Cyd Harrell, from A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide
Okay, that's all for now -- hope you enjoyed it, Reader! Have a great couple of weeks (and a lovely 4th of July if you're in πΊπΈ) and I'll see you again soon.
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