Interactive design experience: Designers to participate in the dialogue with the user itself

Article Description: why not think about the above problems and whether we will encounter them when we do the design?

Referring to user interviews, it is basically that we ask questions and users answer questions. If a slight refinement, the interview can be divided into two stages, namely, interview stage and experience stage. The main purpose of the interview phase is to derive valuable questions from the user's experience and cognition, and the experience phase is to allow the user to experience the part of the design we give, to inspire their evaluation, to observe their experiences, and to look for problems.

Let's assume that the ideal user interview, if shown in the graph, should be:

The host is in charge of the control field, leaving a lot of conversation space to the user, and the user is subject to the theme, each of which maps directly to the demand.

But the reality is brutal, users will not be so in tune with us, many times due to our own problems, the effect of the interview will be greatly reduced. Experienced people may use their own strong control ability to hold the entire interview firmly, but for most inexperienced interviewers, they will encounter some of the following problems.

One, the embarrassment of warming up

In most interview programs, the task of warming up is to set up user background information. We usually also faithfully perform the duties of retrieving background information from the user. Actually warm up the original intention is lets the user open the Chatterbox, lets the user enter the state. This is the beginning of the entire interview, confirmed the entire interview tone and atmosphere, many times the user will be interviewed mistaken for an investigation, or thought that this is a satisfaction survey, and even thought is the headquarters sent to solve the user confusion of the Commissioner ... This has to do with talking skills, but there are a few points to cover: your identity, your position in the team, the purpose of the interview, the role we want the user to play, and some background questions. Allow users to start a conversation within a certain topic, that is, to provide ideas for users to open the topic, but also to avoid late digression.

Second, too long a question

In an ideal situation, of course, our problems cannot be very long. But when the user doesn't understand our problem, we have to start a long explanation.

Too long a problem is easy to let the user wander, or even distracted, the user will not try to understand after the stop listening, and the interviewer in the organization language to help users explain the problem, often there is no way to quickly back to the problem itself.

So in the setting of the problem, we must pay attention to whether the problem itself is easy to understand, if the problem is too complex, it is necessary to consider the decomposition.

Third, guide users to come to the answer

• Accept only the answers to your preferences:

Many of the questions we first heard were "worthless" and we skipped or did not record them carefully. Sometimes, the problem that users show is the opposite of what we expect, and we quickly find a reason for it: users don't understand our products very well. We need to be aware that the user's answer is not equal to the user's needs, many seemingly useless or inconsistent with "common sense" in the answer contains very important information, and in the short interview, we will not immediately find. Even this may show that the target user we originally categorized did not cover the immediate user.

• Be cautious to "encourage":

Encourage users to be cautious, although users are encouraged to talk about sex, but the encouragement itself is a tendency to guide. For example, the user is careful to ask a question, we nod approval, which itself implies that he needs to use our "stance" to answer the question, it is easy to cause the user to follow the results of our will answer. We can show a lot of interest in the user's problem point, and hopefully he will go on, and this kind of encouragement is more neutral than the encouragement of acceptance.

• "Sell" to the user:

Sometimes the user because does not understand and so on our product quite DOJ, as the designer we will accumulate many many grievances, many users put forward the point we have done, but we have to endure the user a lot of "useless complain". So at such times, we can not help but start to teach the user. The guilty user immediately apologized and shivered. The bullish user pulls up the front line, and we fight for another 500 years. In any case, this will leave the problem out of the question itself, and the user will be worded according to our attitude rather than thinking about his own problems.

• Misinterpret the user's answer:

Many users of the problem will be ambiguous, at this time the moderator should repeat the user's question to confirm, or simply said that the user's problem is not very clear. It is easy for us to interpret the user's words and then toss them to the recorder or ask the user back. Through the host understand the answer is probably not what the user would have meant to express, but the user itself may not be very clear of their own answers, in the host "help understand", will directly echo. So the problem itself will be biased.

• Run by a strong user:

We meet a lot of people who like to dominate the conversation, and they often pull the interview off the line. We should draw the conversation back to the main line by the gap between the talks, which is their panting stall. In vain, we should evaluate whether the user really understands the topic we are discussing. By insinuating the topic back to the main line, if they are too far away from our target user positioning, give up early, save time cost, conduct the next interview.

• Treat users as designers and expect them to provide effective advice:

Accuracy is not equal to accuracy. We usually like to ask you about our xxx have any suggestions? Or what would you do if you were to design xxx ...

Users do not have the expertise to provide solutions that are one-sided even if they are well researched on the product. As one of our colleagues used to do interviews with bank users, they were asked to use yellow on their credit cards. In fact, the user's real intention may be that the bank's color is too dull, not to become yellow he will be satisfied. Playing the role of designer also consumes a lot of time to think and language.

We should also let the user describe his ideal experience or an unsatisfactory use experience. This will give the user more accurate information.

Interactive design meditation says: "Interaction design is a series of conversations created between people and products, systems, or services." "User interview is a more direct" design "dialogue, designers not only participate in the design of the dialogue, but also to participate in the dialogue with the user itself.

Why not think about the above problems and whether we will encounter them when we do the design?