On 28/03/2008, Kristof Versluys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What people tell they do & What people actually do = completely different > > Listen to your customer. Get him involved. > But even better, see him use a product/website/... > Give him simple tasks. Ask him to describe what he's doing.
I say take it up a level. You're right what they do is the key here NOT what they want. My focus has been on finding out what they do not even mentioning the product or website. This sets the 'universe' that the product/site exists in. To me this is the basis of any final solution, even redesigns. The users are going to use it to do something - how does that fit with their world. It's very contextual and I find it scares many folks as they expect us to start by testing the website and I totally ignore 90% of the time when talking to users. So the 'faster horse' thing is spot on. I try never to ask the user 'what do you want on the website' but instead 'what would make what you do easier'. There's then a series of steps to get from that to actual interaction design which can be squeezed into suprisingly short amout of time and radically improve the quality of the end project (and make it much simpler). > Pay attention to the underlying issues; > if he/she wants a faster horse, you don't have to build or find a faster > horse. > Extraction: you now know they want to go faster Get the questioning level right, I've found, and you can get them to tell you that they just want to go faster. In short let the users set the scope and what functionality is important to them and what information they need and when - we can do the rest :) -- Stewart Dean ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
