What Do Users Need?

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:09:00 GMT

A simple question. What do users need? My mind starts thinking about it and I realize there are just too many answers to mentally fathom. Recently, someone on my team shared a great link to discussion results from a recent CIDM conference.

http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200811/third.htm

I thought the "What we learned" section contained a lot of great answers. Seems thorough but of course it can never be a complete list. Users' needs are ever evolving and ever changing.

However, one particular statement I've thought about before came up in the discussion.

Users need answers to their questions.

Obvious - Yes. Easy to execute - No. How can you ever provide all the answers to each individual's questions? The answer is you probably can't but you try to answer as many as you can and provide ways to answer the rest by other means.

In Documentation, we recognize that while we aim to help every single user, there are times where your particular situation calls for Knowledgebase or Customer Support. However, that doesn't stop us from trying. Your questions always provide us opportunities to improve our Help.

Here are the main lessons learned from the article...

Answer the users' questions and help them do their job.
Make it easy for users to find the answer.
Provide users access or links to related information.
Give users an easy forum for reporting issues and collaborating.
Give users information in a format that suits their work environment.
Technology is changing user expectations.

What do you think, does this sound accurate?

Trends in User Research Review

Lindsey Robbins — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:59:00 GMT

Conference: STC Summit 2008
Session: Trends in User Research
Panel: Jean Anderson, Todd Zaki Warfel, Ginny Redish, Whitney Quesenbery, Karen Bachmann (moderator)

I heard four main questions during the Q&A panel session:

1. How do I show value?
Answer – Back up your desire to do research with examples of past success. Fresh in the field with no past successes (yet), find examples of success from your colleagues in the field.

2. People in company use usability terms but don't know what they mean.
Answer – Don’t use your usability terms. Instead, use your process terms. Explain what you will be doing. For example, explain what an ethnography is and what you hope to gain by doing it. Then you won’t be discussing terms and wondering if the people in your company really understand what you will be doing.

3. How long do your usability projects take?
Answer – Doesn’t necessarily need to take a long time. Panel responded that they are able to get to what client needs and complete research very quickly. In order to do that, they go quickly to the questions:

Why?
What Do They Hope to Change?
What are the issues?
What are customer support, professional services, etc hearing?

4. What's New or BIG in the field?
Answer – Agile (scrum teams), Prototypes, Ethnographic based methods (but not strict), One-on-One interviews (because surveys tell you “what” but one-on-one tell you “why”), be flexible & combine techniques, use user forums, and remote usability tools.

Impressions of the Session:

Go and do usability testing, don’t worry about the details.
The value of any Q&A depends on the questions being asked. I can tell people are still relatively new to usability based on the first half of the questions in the session.
Don’t waste time. Go straight to the “why?” and then figure out what you need to do user research on.
One of the great values of listening to a panel is hearing some of their success stories. It’s then not as much about takeaways but rather hearing how other user research is successful. It’s encouraging.
It’s the same for user research as it is for fundraising. Just ask. Ask people if they want to participate in your research. Don’t make it more complicated.
Formal is not necessary. I think I could have a whole discussion on whether user research needs to be formal but I like the idea that you uncover the problem, figure out the best combination of user research required, and then go complete it. There isn’t any wasted time or dragging feet.

Also, they shared a great resource they found helpful on slideshare.net. It’s a presentation on How to Be a UX Team of One by Leah Buley at the 2008 IA Summit in Miami, Florida.
http://www.slideshare.net/ugleah/how-to-be-a-ux-team-of-one

From the Doc Side : user research

What Do Users Need?

Trends in User Research Review