User research methods: Empirical intuition and the use of data to speak

This blog from a very small design case to describe in addition to experience and intuition, data research can be validated, modified, and even subversive design. Design through experience and intuition

One of the most valuable assets of an interaction designer is his experience and intuition, and in most cases where the current design needs to be quickly judged, the interaction designer relies on his experience and intuition. In the world of the Internet, the most valuable possibility is the data. Google has built its position on data, and Twitter is starting to mature with data, and every interaction designer can use data to compensate for the lack of experience and intuition. This blog from a very small design case to describe in addition to experience and intuition, data research can be validated, modified, and even subversive design.

Design through experience and intuition

The picture above is the real environment for this design case, from the Yushu donation page in Qinghai. This is a very simple donation form, the user selects the amount, and then clicks OK to submit the form. As shown in the figure, let the user have 4 specific amounts to choose from, and there is a other amount can be entered, and the default choice of 50 Yuan, is based on my experience and intuition to design. I want most users to agree to this default amount and submit the form directly to the button, so that for most users, the donation can be done with just one click. To select more than three users of a given amount, two actions are required, and three actions are required to select a user other than four of a given amount (choose a different amount > fill in a number > click button). The distribution of 50, 20, 10 and 500 is based on my understanding of the amount of renminbi and the idea that the conventional is too distributed to ensure that the middle is high and both ends are small.

Experience and intuition may not be reliable, design data monitoring to verify

These ideas are probably not what the user is really doing. Perhaps most users feel that 50 is too little, or that 20 and 10 pieces don't matter which one you choose. In order to make this amount more in line with the user's expectations, reduce the user's choice of the amount of operation, I was at the beginning of the design and front of the students conceived in the site to add buried point, monitoring the path of user operations, statistics of the different choice of the proportion.

The idea of data monitoring design is to bury the site in the user's operation, the user clicks will send a request to the server, the specific design is:

Finally click on the end of the button to determine the user's different path by clicking on the previous one

The default path is to click the button directly after the user enters the page

The user enters the page after the operation several times finally chooses 50 yuan to 50 path

The user enters the page finally chooses 20 yuan to 20 path

The user enters the page finally chooses 10 yuan to 10 path

The user enters the page finally chooses 500 yuan to 500 path

The user enters the page and finally chooses another amount as a custom path

Look at the actual data.

The image above is the result of a partial capture of the real data. Visible by icon in the number of donated pens in a few days, the custom amount has occupied a high proportion of more than 40%; The default amount is only about 20% of the proportion; the whole is not completely too distributed, the choice of 500 yuan is small enough, but the choice of 10 people occupy 20%.

Combined with this period of time, the average donation amount is 80 yuan, can be adjusted for the previous design, adjust the amount set and the default amount set. The specific design adjustment is not detailed (the donation platform two is still under development, temporarily inconvenient release). This case is only a small point that can see the role of data research in interactive design, experience intuition and the use of data should be both hands and hard hands.