falling in love with your product's users, for fun and profit

(Really, you can blame pretty much anything)

Discuss among yourselves the extent to which this may reflect weaknesses in the education system.

1. Dealing with the general public all day is hard.2. In Glasgow, “which name, please” and “what’s your name, please?” sound pretty much alike.

I was shocked. SHOCKED.

aka “this is why we can’t have nice things”. Go read that Verge piece about Kathy Sierra. Go. Now.

It’s hard to keep on making gross generalities about people if you’re interacting with them one-to-one.

Applies to lots of things. Teaching, UX … 

You don’t actually have to fall in love with your products users. But you could try this. (c)Russell Davies (@undermanager)

(We didn’t just watch. We sat with them, too.)

Create the most perfect form in the world and within about two minutes, users will find a hole.

Learn about your users’ mental models of what the thing you make actually does, or is like.

I’ve been working on one of the ‘exemplar’ projects, in the Home Office.

Remote testing is harder than in-person testing, but it is still an absolute goldmine of user insight.

Think about who your product’s users are, in terms of their knowledge (of the area, not just your

product) and the extent of their buy-in.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: turn all the other users into knowledgeable evangelists

(Not an exhaustive list.)

Consciousstigmatiser

Aware sympathetic

Concernedfriend

Worried-about-myself

individual

Unawaresympathetic

Blissfullyignorant

Unconscious stigmatiser

Passivestigmatiser

Reactive supporter

supporterActive

Campaigner

Evangelist

Ambassador

Advocate

Supporter

Aware and sympathetic

Unaware

Aware but stigmatising

Knowledge/experience

Engagement

You don’t have to get all formal about applying this model. Quick and dirty can be just as useful.