The Importance of Observation
As designers, we often come to the table with assumptions that we have all the tools and knowledge necessary to make sound recommendations for design solutions. Sometimes, we forget what it means to be a good designer. Observation is a valuable trait any ‘good’ designer practices with regularity. We observe human behavior, emotion, reactions, interactions and so on.
User centered design principles have taught us that observation can be critical in finding nuances within a problem were trying to solve. A great example that I often think of is the use of surveys to collect information. Surveys can be a great tool in collecting preference and demographic information to inform the experience but it can’t be the catch all of your research effort. Surveys can direct us to the ‘what’ but not the ‘how’ or the ‘why’.
I once read a case study of a large financial institution that allowed its users to manage assets online (as many online banking and loan systems do). They conducted surveys and combed customer feedback to gather responses on what could make their product/service more appealing to existing customers. The majority response they got was an idea of “personalization”. Customers had expressed a great deal of interest in having highly customizable settings.
The team for this organization went on to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to build what their customers said they wanted from the service.
All of the new functionality bombed.
Upon observation of customers using the service, the team had found that while people were quick to idealize their common tasks and work flow, they weren’t willing to do the work to set up all of those custom settings! The result was a highly expensive feature set that ended up being scrapped due to incredibly low use.
Another great personal example comes from some user research we conducted here at Pikimal. We were running usability tests with participants on the v.1 of our tool. When the session had ended, we followed up with informal interviews. One of the questions I’d asked participants was very open-ended, “Would you use this site?”. We collected an array of responses but some struck me as being incredibly misleading without proper context.
For instance, one participant said “…yes I would, I like the site very much, very ‘user-friendly’ and ‘easy to use’…”. The reason I say this statement is a rather dangerous one without proper context (and observation) is because upon review and reflection of the session, that particular participant had failed several tasks as we had them defined. That person had actually introduced holes in our intended interaction, yet felt completely satisfied with the result! It would have been chalked up as a success had we gotten that response without proper observation.
Indi Young in her book Mental Models provides us with a quick and easy reference guide to research techniques, what they’re good for and when they should be used.
Close, considerate observation can glean powerful insights to the solutions we seek to provide.
