Think about the last assignment you received. Maybe it was a brochure, or a website, or a signage system of some kind. On the surface your client was asking for a brochure, website or signage, but why did the client want those things? Maybe it was to advertise their services, sell a product, or direct customers to their business. In any case, are those the things that would best accomplish the clients goals? Better yet, are those methods the best way to engage the client’s customers, the people who actually use those services and products?

As designers we are problem solvers. It’s our responsibility to dig deeper into our assignments and find the real underlying problems we are tasked with solving. Part of the puzzle is accomplishing the goals of our clients, the other half is meeting the needs and desires of the end user. We are problem-solving for the users as well, discovering and designing the the best way for them to engage products, services and interactions of all sorts.

Changing Your Mindset

Shifting the focus outward, from your perspective to the user’s, can be difficult to understand. How do you think like someone you don’t even know? It’s not something that happens overnight, but takes a conscious effort to practice a different way of thinking. How do you change one’s mindset to focus on the users?

• Ask questions. Lots of them, and most importantly “why”. Who is the target audience? What are their wants and needs? Why is it important or why does it matter? Ask your audience what the real underlying problem is, ask what their needs are and develop a solution that keeps them in mind.
• Keep an eye for detail. Often it’s the little things that make the biggest difference to users.
• Respect the user. We’re all busy people, we all have specific needs depending on the situation, and most of us have very little time to spare. Be understanding of people’s needs, time, resources and especially patience.
• See the entire situation as well as each individual piece. Understand how users will interact with the project as a whole, as well as how individual people will react to the bits and pieces throughout the process.
• Put yourself in their shoes. How would you react in a given situation? Imagine the users’ feelings and have empathy for their experiences.
• Observe. Listen. Sit back and watch how regular people use a system or interact with an environment. Seeing first-hand how people react is a valuable part of the process.
• Use your common sense. Have a basic understanding of human behaviors and emotions. Knowing what frustrates or confuses you is the first step to understanding how someone else might feel using it.
• Look past the assignment to the underlying problem. What is your client trying to accomplish, what is the message, why is it important, and how will you help users make the most of the experience.
• Simplify. Make things simple, clear and intuitive. Reduce confusion by reducing features and choices. What are the absolutely necessary elements or features, and what would be nice to have (but can be thrown out)?
• Perhaps the most important: you are not the target audience. Neither is the client most of the time. Get past what you think would be cool, what the client thinks they need, and focus on really understanding the people who’ll be frequently interacting with the end product.

It takes a shift in perception and might be hard at first to put yourself in the mind of your audience, but the benefits are worth it. A user-centered approach brings about a better connection with your audience and results in a more successful product or service.

What Questions to Ask

The best thing you can do to start gathering data about your users is to ask questions. Ask a lot of questions, of your clients and of the users themselves. So what questions should you be asking?

• Who is the target audience, more specifically who are they as individuals? What do they do? What sort of lifestyles do they lead?
• Who are the most important or prominent types of users? Who are primary, secondary, tertiary and auxiliary audiences?
• Why are they important to the client? Why are they the target?
• What do the users need to know? What are they looking for or trying to accomplish?
• Why does the audience need to know that information? Why is it important to them?
• What scenarios can you place those users in?
• What information or features will meet their needs?
• How do you want your users to respond emotionally? Will you reassure them, inspire them, or motivate them somehow?
• What are their physical needs or requirements? Where will they interact with the piece? Will they read or study in one sitting or over time? Will they need to read it once or repeatedly? Will users speak languages other than English? Are they sight-impaired, color blind, deaf or physically disabled? What other accessibility concerns will you need to address?

There are certainly more specific questions you can ask, but will differ depending on the project. Understanding these basic insights will help form the basis of your user research.

Taking Research Further

Aside from asking some basic questions of your clients or users, there are a few different ways user research can be conducted, depending on budget. These can take place at different stages in the creative process, but done continually, and successfully, can improve the quality and success of the finished piece.

Start from a solid creative brief

This is important in any creative process, in any scenario. I’ve talked about the benefits of a creative brief before, and I’m sure most everyone has come into contact with them at one point or another. Starting from a solid brief will form the foundation of the project, and shared understanding between clients and creatives of what the goals are, what’s needed, and what will be delivered. Don’t drive without wearing your seatbelt, don’t create without a brief.

Focus Groups

Focus groups can be a little tricky. Some people value them, some people don’t, and they’re admittedly an old school method. There is a tendency for results to become skewed — when people know they’re being tested they’ll answer differently, or at least align with the dominant personality in the group. When done right, through one-on-one research or ethnographic observation, they can yield some valuable behavioral data and observations of natural human interactions.

Personas

Personas can be valuable in situations where the budget may not allow for much qualitative research. It may sound like playing pretend, but can actually help you and clients get into the mindsets of potential users. What you do is basically take the general audience information you’ve gathered so far and create 3–5 “personas”, profiles of potential (but fictional) individuals within that audience group. Name them, give them jobs and lifestyles, and imagine what they’d say or how they’d behave — a housewife in her 30s will think very differently than a middle-aged CEO. By using a little bit of common sense and knowledge of human behavior you can gauge how different segments of users will interact with a product.

Scenarios

Scenarios are taking the idea of personas one step further. Once you have profiles of potential users, start to think about how they’ll interact with the product, what information they might be looking for, and possible alternative uses or routes to get there. By plotting out how a user will use a product and move through the information, you can anticipate potential pitfalls and prevent any hang-ups.

Usability Testing

Probably the best research tool is conducting usability testing. This is done at later stages in the project, when things are near complete but still need to be beta tested, so to speak. Putting a real product in front of real users and observing how they interact has obvious benefits. That research can then be used to further refine the product in its final stages and increase its chances of success when released to the public.

Benefits of User-Centered Thought

The idea of user-centered design, user experience or usability are becoming hot topics in the industry, and it’s easy to see why. By focusing on the end users as individual humans there is the potential to create a better connection to the people we serve, who use these products and services every day. Instead of merely selling a product we are now creating a relationship with the audience. User research provides us with better informed directives and actionable ideas, and allows designers to see new opportunities that may have been outside their personal experience. Lastly, user-centric thought makes it easy to find and develop new and better solutions to the problems we (and our users) face, now and into the future.