May 22, 2016 at 22:22How not to create a product for people who do not exist
The article contains a free translation summary of the presentation by Arthur Bodolec , product designer on Facebook, formerly design co-founder in Feedly.
This article will be useful to those associated with the design of interfaces. The material seems important to us, because many say "communicate with your users", "listen to your users." Arthur Bodolec talks about how he does this, shares practical steps from his experience.
This article is a free translation compendium, so inaccuracies are possible. We will be grateful if you help make the article better.
First-person narrative, italics - our comments.
Today we’ll talk about how to do design listening. Hearing is a key design skill.
You all start your projects in the dark. As soon as you find an idea, you see the light. It becomes clear to you what the product should be, you are getting closer to how it should look. You start coding with your friends like crazy. You hope that a year after the launch, you will go public. In reality, this does not happen.
Users go to the site and do not understand what it is about; they cannot find the necessary functions. Maybe they don’t know what they need to look for. You begin to study user behavior, do iterations. The sad thing is that you have already spent 6 months launching the product and only now you are beginning to understand how they use it.
I suggest studying user behavior before launch. And tell you how I do it.
The first problem you face is finding people to talk to. You can start with friends. But this is not the best choice, often they are not your audience.
If you make a product for home owners and talk with friends who have never lived in their own homes, there will be many opinions, but they will not be super useful to you. Although it’s still better than not talking to anyone, try to filter your friends whether your audience or not.
Facebook, Mail, Twitter
Use your Facebook or Twitter account. Ask subscribers to help, they can be your audience.
If you have already published the project and you have letters from users, write to them. Ask for 15 minutes of attention to find out how and why they use your product.
Message Boards
If you cannot use these tools, refer to Craigslist ( craigslist.org, a well-known classified site ), where you can post a short assignment. This is a great place where they do not know about your product, but there is your target audience. I’ll briefly describe how to work with services like Craigslist. This is what the announcement looks like:
In the video, Arthur talks about craigslist.com, in our realities, job completion services where people are looking for a side job can be useful.
Put the price in the heading and write what the task is. People looking for a part-time job will understand that this is testing a product, it costs $ 50 and it’s in Palo Alto.
- Do not say anything about your product in the ad.
- Tell me how long it will take and that you will need to sign an NDA so that there are no surprises.
- Warn that a video will be recorded.
For applications I use the Google Form. If a person wants to send an application, he goes to the form and answers 5-10 questions. It helps to understand who he is. For example, you make a product for people who like to read. By asking the right questions in the form, you will find out whether those who answered them really love to read. This will help you get an idea of your potential target audience.
You compose a sheet with the criteria of the people you want to hear. These questions will help you formulate your criteria and submit questions to the Google Form.
It is important for me that users do not use Feedly. I want to see how they use the service for the first time. For example, if a user answers the question: “What readers are you using?”, He answers: “Feedly”, I will not include him in the interview sheet.
Then you make a list of criteria for those with whom you do not want to talk.
I do not want to talk to designers, programmers and project managers, because they are experts. Their opinions will not be useful in terms of ordinary user scripts.
You formulate and submit all these requirements in the Google Form, and then publish it. When applications arrive, you highlight in green those that may be of interest to you. And after that you can ask the authors of these applications questions, test the product, etc. You can use all these tools - Facebook, Twitter, mail, etc., to find the right people, those with whom you can talk. You select the criteria that are relevant to your product.
You have selected people, now be sure to understand them. Even before I make a new feature or start designing something, I collect stories.
It is necessary to collect real stories from real people. Often the problem is that inside the company or startup, you are accepted to represent one or more characters. You begin to think of who they are: he has two children, a car, a house, he uses this or this product ...
And then you begin to create a design for people who do not exist.You imagine that they exist, but this is not so. You can guess a few things, but the bulk will be unrealistic. What you need is real stories from real people. And each time, discussing a particular function within the team, you can always return to Georges you spoke to and ask him questions.
This thesis seems to us the main idea of Arthur's speech. Many materials say that we must imagine the characters, imagine their needs and scenarios of interaction with the product. In practice, it may turn out that we initially come up with a character convenient for ourselves, convenient cases and the needs we need. Which are divorced from reality. And on the basis of this we are building a product. Product for people who do not exist.
Arthur suggests taking real people as a basis.
Now I will show you the key questions that I ask users to get interesting stories.
First of all, you need to understand who they are.
I ask: “ Have you used any services before Feedly? ". In your case, you may ask how they solved their problem before your product.
Then the key question: “ Why are you using our product? Or why would you use our product? "
This is the most important question of all and is the hardest to ask. Because, as a rule, people answer not what would be useful. I will show you an example. Usually I write to users on Skype:
- Why are you using Feedly?
They always answer me: “ To read all my subscriptions in one place".
But that doesn’t really help me in the design. Therefore, using the user's answer, I ask again:
- Why do you need to read all these subscriptions?
Answer:
- Oh! To have access to this information.
Again not very helpful. Therefore, you repeat the reception:
- Why is it important for you to have access to this information?
And then users start saying interesting things:
- To be inspired by a new book .
- Improve my professional skills .
- Be aware of the latest changes in legislation .
Now I understand who these people are, why they use Feedly, and I can ask my questions further. This helps to create design and features for real needs.
After hearing about a service, ask how the user uses it. For example, Twitter. You can receive information on both Feedly and Twitter:
- You say you use Twitter, what is the difference between Twitter and Feedly? Why are you using both services?
And users begin to explain to you how they think:
- Feedly is where I get information, Twitter is where I discuss it.
It is very important to know how they see your product, how they see other products. It is important to draw up this card, namely their perception, and not yours. Listen carefully to these things.
If you have enough time, ask more questions:
- What upsets you?
- What one thing makes you happy when you use Feedly?
- If you could leave one function, what would it be?
It is very interesting that if you ask which one function to leave, they name the most insignificant feature. Often the answer will surprise you very much. It is important to step out of your perception of the product and listen to the user. Often you will hear what you do not expect.
When starting a new feature, ask users about it.
When starting a new feature, even before you start drawing something, take people and check this scenario on them. Only 3 questions:
- Who are they?
- Why do they use the product?
- Why do they need this feature?
As a result, you get real stories. Which show how people use this or that feature. It’s good to have 10-20 such stories. You can hang these phrases on the wall to keep them in front of your eyes when creating a design. You will get many stories, very specific and real, and then you can categorize them.
Testing an optional product with millions of users. You can test the drawn layout as well. You need to get at least some feedback. Are you shooting in the right direction?
There are 2 main methods here.
First: discovery method.
The idea is that you want to test your first experience with a product or feature. You want to know here: do they understand your product or feature?
You sit down the user in front of the product and watch how he understands it. Will it really go through the scenarios that you asked. Will he be able to find the key features that you created.
Key point: you do not interfere in this process. Just give them the opportunity to "get lost," let them go. When they start asking, “Why is it here? Why is that?" - do not say anything, just give them the opportunity to "get lost." Answer the questions: "I do not know."
Second: feature method
Key point: ask people to do certain things in your product. Find a feature, buy a product, change a profile, etc. Will they be able to do this?
Can you find _______?
How to start _______?
Before the interview, you simply make a list of what the user has to find.
I combine these two methods. I plant them in front of the product and do not say anything, and then I give tasks and ask specific things. During the interview, it is important to convey a few things:
“You can't do anything wrong.”
- Do not be afraid to criticize and offend our feelings, we want to learn.
- Think out loud and tell us what you want to do and how you feel.
- The screen and sound will be recorded.
- No one will say “this is obvious!” Do not be afraid.
It is very important to ask them to think out loud. It is important for you what they think.
Your actions:
- Do not talk about your product, do not configure users.
- Let people use the product and get lost.
“If they did something wrong, ask them why they did it.” Do not try to guess. We often guess.
- From general questions, go to narrowly focused.
- If something is not clear, explain.
“Ah ha” moment
You will have a lot of information, but you pay attention to 2 things:
- “Ah ha” moments.
- Confusing and misleading interface elements.
What is an “A-ha" moment? One of those moments was when I tested mobile applications. We saw that when people see familiar sites that they often read, they have an “a-ha” moment (they say “a-ha!”). At this point, they understand why this product is needed. Therefore, it is important to monitor such “a-ha” moments.
You can conduct interviews or testing in the office, remotely or through special services.
In the office, an interview takes from 30 minutes to an hour. 5 people take part, one after another, but not at the same time. I do testing in the office using such a device (for recording):
Remotely via Skype, an interview takes 15-30 minutes. Feedly has a database of devotees who help with testing. I rummage through Skype and ask: what do you understand from this screen? You don’t have to say anything, just show the design and ask what it is. It turns out much faster to do design iterations, without coding and production.
The usertesting.com service is such a useful service that we do many tests with it.
Arthur paid a lot of attention to working with this service. There are services for testing products, most of them in English. If anyone has experience with such services, please share.
Thanks to Arthur for this video! If you find inaccuracies or errors in the article, write to us.
This article will be useful to those associated with the design of interfaces. The material seems important to us, because many say "communicate with your users", "listen to your users." Arthur Bodolec talks about how he does this, shares practical steps from his experience.
This article is a free translation compendium, so inaccuracies are possible. We will be grateful if you help make the article better.
First-person narrative, italics - our comments.
Hearing is a key skill.
Today we’ll talk about how to do design listening. Hearing is a key design skill.
You all start your projects in the dark. As soon as you find an idea, you see the light. It becomes clear to you what the product should be, you are getting closer to how it should look. You start coding with your friends like crazy. You hope that a year after the launch, you will go public. In reality, this does not happen.
Users go to the site and do not understand what it is about; they cannot find the necessary functions. Maybe they don’t know what they need to look for. You begin to study user behavior, do iterations. The sad thing is that you have already spent 6 months launching the product and only now you are beginning to understand how they use it.
I suggest studying user behavior before launch. And tell you how I do it.
First problem: who to talk to?
The first problem you face is finding people to talk to. You can start with friends. But this is not the best choice, often they are not your audience.
If you make a product for home owners and talk with friends who have never lived in their own homes, there will be many opinions, but they will not be super useful to you. Although it’s still better than not talking to anyone, try to filter your friends whether your audience or not.
Facebook, Mail, Twitter
Use your Facebook or Twitter account. Ask subscribers to help, they can be your audience.
If you have already published the project and you have letters from users, write to them. Ask for 15 minutes of attention to find out how and why they use your product.
Message Boards
If you cannot use these tools, refer to Craigslist ( craigslist.org, a well-known classified site ), where you can post a short assignment. This is a great place where they do not know about your product, but there is your target audience. I’ll briefly describe how to work with services like Craigslist. This is what the announcement looks like:
In the video, Arthur talks about craigslist.com, in our realities, job completion services where people are looking for a side job can be useful.
Put the price in the heading and write what the task is. People looking for a part-time job will understand that this is testing a product, it costs $ 50 and it’s in Palo Alto.
- Do not say anything about your product in the ad.
- Tell me how long it will take and that you will need to sign an NDA so that there are no surprises.
- Warn that a video will be recorded.
For applications I use the Google Form. If a person wants to send an application, he goes to the form and answers 5-10 questions. It helps to understand who he is. For example, you make a product for people who like to read. By asking the right questions in the form, you will find out whether those who answered them really love to read. This will help you get an idea of your potential target audience.
Choose the people you want to talk to
You compose a sheet with the criteria of the people you want to hear. These questions will help you formulate your criteria and submit questions to the Google Form.
It is important for me that users do not use Feedly. I want to see how they use the service for the first time. For example, if a user answers the question: “What readers are you using?”, He answers: “Feedly”, I will not include him in the interview sheet.
Then you make a list of criteria for those with whom you do not want to talk.
I do not want to talk to designers, programmers and project managers, because they are experts. Their opinions will not be useful in terms of ordinary user scripts.
You formulate and submit all these requirements in the Google Form, and then publish it. When applications arrive, you highlight in green those that may be of interest to you. And after that you can ask the authors of these applications questions, test the product, etc. You can use all these tools - Facebook, Twitter, mail, etc., to find the right people, those with whom you can talk. You select the criteria that are relevant to your product.
Collect real stories
You have selected people, now be sure to understand them. Even before I make a new feature or start designing something, I collect stories.
It is necessary to collect real stories from real people. Often the problem is that inside the company or startup, you are accepted to represent one or more characters. You begin to think of who they are: he has two children, a car, a house, he uses this or this product ...
And then you begin to create a design for people who do not exist.You imagine that they exist, but this is not so. You can guess a few things, but the bulk will be unrealistic. What you need is real stories from real people. And each time, discussing a particular function within the team, you can always return to Georges you spoke to and ask him questions.
This thesis seems to us the main idea of Arthur's speech. Many materials say that we must imagine the characters, imagine their needs and scenarios of interaction with the product. In practice, it may turn out that we initially come up with a character convenient for ourselves, convenient cases and the needs we need. Which are divorced from reality. And on the basis of this we are building a product. Product for people who do not exist.
Arthur suggests taking real people as a basis.
How and what questions to ask
Now I will show you the key questions that I ask users to get interesting stories.
First of all, you need to understand who they are.
I ask: “ Have you used any services before Feedly? ". In your case, you may ask how they solved their problem before your product.
Then the key question: “ Why are you using our product? Or why would you use our product? "
This is the most important question of all and is the hardest to ask. Because, as a rule, people answer not what would be useful. I will show you an example. Usually I write to users on Skype:
- Why are you using Feedly?
They always answer me: “ To read all my subscriptions in one place".
But that doesn’t really help me in the design. Therefore, using the user's answer, I ask again:
- Why do you need to read all these subscriptions?
Answer:
- Oh! To have access to this information.
Again not very helpful. Therefore, you repeat the reception:
- Why is it important for you to have access to this information?
And then users start saying interesting things:
- To be inspired by a new book .
- Improve my professional skills .
- Be aware of the latest changes in legislation .
Now I understand who these people are, why they use Feedly, and I can ask my questions further. This helps to create design and features for real needs.
After hearing about a service, ask how the user uses it. For example, Twitter. You can receive information on both Feedly and Twitter:
- You say you use Twitter, what is the difference between Twitter and Feedly? Why are you using both services?
And users begin to explain to you how they think:
- Feedly is where I get information, Twitter is where I discuss it.
It is very important to know how they see your product, how they see other products. It is important to draw up this card, namely their perception, and not yours. Listen carefully to these things.
If you have enough time, ask more questions:
- What upsets you?
- What one thing makes you happy when you use Feedly?
- If you could leave one function, what would it be?
It is very interesting that if you ask which one function to leave, they name the most insignificant feature. Often the answer will surprise you very much. It is important to step out of your perception of the product and listen to the user. Often you will hear what you do not expect.
When starting a new feature, ask users about it.
When starting a new feature, even before you start drawing something, take people and check this scenario on them. Only 3 questions:
- Who are they?
- Why do they use the product?
- Why do they need this feature?
As a result, you get real stories. Which show how people use this or that feature. It’s good to have 10-20 such stories. You can hang these phrases on the wall to keep them in front of your eyes when creating a design. You will get many stories, very specific and real, and then you can categorize them.
2 test methods: research and features
Testing an optional product with millions of users. You can test the drawn layout as well. You need to get at least some feedback. Are you shooting in the right direction?
There are 2 main methods here.
First: discovery method.
The idea is that you want to test your first experience with a product or feature. You want to know here: do they understand your product or feature?
You sit down the user in front of the product and watch how he understands it. Will it really go through the scenarios that you asked. Will he be able to find the key features that you created.
Key point: you do not interfere in this process. Just give them the opportunity to "get lost," let them go. When they start asking, “Why is it here? Why is that?" - do not say anything, just give them the opportunity to "get lost." Answer the questions: "I do not know."
Second: feature method
Key point: ask people to do certain things in your product. Find a feature, buy a product, change a profile, etc. Will they be able to do this?
Can you find _______?
How to start _______?
Before the interview, you simply make a list of what the user has to find.
I combine these two methods. I plant them in front of the product and do not say anything, and then I give tasks and ask specific things. During the interview, it is important to convey a few things:
“You can't do anything wrong.”
- Do not be afraid to criticize and offend our feelings, we want to learn.
- Think out loud and tell us what you want to do and how you feel.
- The screen and sound will be recorded.
- No one will say “this is obvious!” Do not be afraid.
It is very important to ask them to think out loud. It is important for you what they think.
Your actions:
- Do not talk about your product, do not configure users.
- Let people use the product and get lost.
“If they did something wrong, ask them why they did it.” Do not try to guess. We often guess.
- From general questions, go to narrowly focused.
- If something is not clear, explain.
“Ah ha” moment
You will have a lot of information, but you pay attention to 2 things:
- “Ah ha” moments.
- Confusing and misleading interface elements.
What is an “A-ha" moment? One of those moments was when I tested mobile applications. We saw that when people see familiar sites that they often read, they have an “a-ha” moment (they say “a-ha!”). At this point, they understand why this product is needed. Therefore, it is important to monitor such “a-ha” moments.
3 ways to test: in the office, remotely, through the service
You can conduct interviews or testing in the office, remotely or through special services.
In the office, an interview takes from 30 minutes to an hour. 5 people take part, one after another, but not at the same time. I do testing in the office using such a device (for recording):
Remotely via Skype, an interview takes 15-30 minutes. Feedly has a database of devotees who help with testing. I rummage through Skype and ask: what do you understand from this screen? You don’t have to say anything, just show the design and ask what it is. It turns out much faster to do design iterations, without coding and production.
The usertesting.com service is such a useful service that we do many tests with it.
Arthur paid a lot of attention to working with this service. There are services for testing products, most of them in English. If anyone has experience with such services, please share.
Thanks to Arthur for this video! If you find inaccuracies or errors in the article, write to us.