Little changes have big effects
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Implementation counts. Revolutionary products did not necessarily invent something new but they made it better, user-friendly. Sometimes only a slight change can bring an immense difference to the user and change behaviors.
People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole
Theodore Levitt
This is one of the famous UX quotes, together with the even more famous quote attributed to Henri Ford “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – We are often fighting the assumption that user research is easy and that we should just ask what people want, what their “requirements” are… which can lead to totally different results.
To create something big, start extremely small
Seth Godin
Start small and iterate is a culture. It’s a mindset that cultivates openness to feedback and a new way of building solutions. Small can be scrapped, big is hard to justify.
Most people don’t know how it works exactly but will confidently say they do
on “How do you use the zipper exactly?”,
Yuval Noah Harari, 21 lessons for the 21st century
The context of this quote is group thinking and individual ignorance. However this experiment makes me think that the difference between what people believe, say and do can be significant. Participant observation can be a valuable technique for some projects and asking the right questions in a user interview is key to get the insights you need.
What’s on your mind?… And what else?… Is there anything else?…
Interview tip from Chris Do
This is a great tip to set yourself comfortably in the role of a listener, open your ears, open your mind and just write down what the interviewee tells you…
…and to finish up with a bonus one from Chris Do
We all want to be loved. It comes down to two things – we want to be understood and appreciated.
Chris Do