Watch out for places in your product where people expect something to be.
Example? iOS music player has several ways to show a playlist. Sadly, not all of them have a star rating available.
Consistency on its own isn’t the goal. Meeting and exceeding users’ expectations is.
Back in the day there was a very special game show on Russian TV. Called “Koozya”, it allowed the lucky kid who dialled in with a regular phone, to navigate an onscreen character with phone buttons.
Back then the very concept fascinated me. Today I admire the ingenuity of the people who created the thing.
More detail in Russian at lukmore.to
‘Undercover User Experience Design’ by Cennydd Bowles and James Box is a great thorough starter manual for a broad audience of junior to regular UX practitioners and those shifting into this field. The manual covers not only the undercover techniques, but the whole range of UX methods and approaches, following through all of the design stages, taking the perspective of both the ‘innie’ and an ‘outie’.
I think that Cennydd and James went a little too broad and got too much info into the book without providing finer details and more examples of ‘undercover work’.
All good though — an invaluable resource I wish I had on the table back a few years ago.
The title of the book should better match the broader scope of it.
Watching how people hack & create workarounds for your or competitor’s product is a good source of inspiration.
One of past Apple World Developers Conference keynote that highlights companie’s top achievements made me realise once again that truly useful innovations don’t always depend on inventing the new piece of hardware or writing an ingenious chunk of code.
Being able to use different signatures for multiple email accounts on an iPhone might be just as important and anticipated a feature to many users as the new revolutionary display.
Apple obviously invests heavily into finding this kind of shortcomings and improving them to make people’s everyday life and work easier.
It seems democratic and non-elitist to set it and forget it and let the users take over. But the tools we use (Wikipedia) and the brands we covet (Nike or Ducati) resolutely refuse to become democracies.
One of the world’s most acclaimed marketeer says you shouldn’t just do what people ask for.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Henry Ford
Henry Ford didn’t too.
Apple is well known to disregard users’ features requests and only improve things they personally want to in both software and hardware.
If you are in startups and innovation business, don’t let listening to users too closely block your progress.
If you were a doctor, just doing what patient asks you to isn’t enough. Know better.
You will know that true personalisation is here when digital magazines for women start showing clothes and models that match your sizing preferences.
