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How To Find Out What Users Really Experience

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How To Find Out What Users Really Experience


by Stefan Rssler on December 9, 2015 4 Comments

Did you ever notice that user experience is a lot like health?
User experience designers are doctors. Developers are surgeons. Users are of
course patients, and bad user experiences are like a disease.
I want to dedicate this article to the people who are creating these user experiences.
They are the ones who caused the disease in the rst placeby designing a bad user
experience.
They carry the disease. The good news is, they also carry the cure.

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The disease

The not-so-almighty user experience designer


If you run a website or work at a company and help them run their site or any other
software, you are a user experience designer.
You may or may not think of yourself this way, but your decisions contribute to what
users experience. The same is true for everyone on your team.
The question is, what is your contribution to this experience?
Forget about the idea of an almighty user experience designer.

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There is no savior coming to rescue youyou have to do it yourself.


Its good to have a person whos carrying the job title user experience designer.
Its also ne to consult outside experts.
But, its even better to have people who really care about their work. No matter if
they call it design, development, customer support or anything else.
And you could be one of them.

Have you ever seen a real user experience?


Its almost funny
We have huge amounts of data and many ways to make sense of it, but most of us
have never seen a real user experience.
In theory we know everything about UX. We have graphs, numbers, and all sorts of
representations to understand what our users experience.
Yet, real user experiences are something only few of us have ever seen.
The funny thing is, that its not some miracle, that only occurs on a full moon after
youve sacriced baby kittens.
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No! You just have to watch someone using a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, or
whatever crazy device they just came up with.
Observing people is the easiest form of usability testing and its all it takes to see a
real user experience.

Usability tests dont guarantee great user experiences!


Weve done hundreds of usability tests for our clients before we started Userbrain.
Heres what we typically do:
We get people to use, for example, our clients website and observe them to nd out
what works and what doesnt.
After weve analyzed the test videos, we create reports and presentations to
communicate our ndings to our clients.
No matter how good these reports are, theres one important truth about them. A
report can never show you what users really experience.

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Executive summary we provide our clients with, to inform them about our usability ndings.

Please dont get me wrong, usability reports are useful.


Youll get a list of your websites most severe usability issues.
Often times you get suggestions for improvement.
Maybe you even get highlight clips to see where users struggle.
You get statistics about eectiveness and eciency, and you may even get
satisfaction ratings.
In short, you get plenty of data about your usability problems. And you may even
know how to x them.
But you dont know much about your real user experience.

Data cannot show real user experiences


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Whenever someone is doing a usability test for you, they have to communicate their
ndings.
They need to tell you what theyve found by showing you the data.
But data only represents the truth. Its not the truth itself.
If you want to see what users really experience, you have to observe them yourself.
Not only where they struggle; you have to observe everything they do.
What are they looking for? What do they want right now? What are they thinking? Do
they understand what were presenting them with? What kind of atmosphere did we
create for them? Did we create an enjoyable/comfortable/ecient experience for
them? How does it make them feel?
Not on some articial scale, but in their own words.
Not in general, but in every moment.

You need to do your own usability testing!


Experts will always tell you that usability testing is complicated.
Their income depends on your perception of these tests as too hard to do by
yourself.
And its true.
Usability tests and reports we do for our clients are actually too complicated to be
done by anyone.
But thats because were trying to translate our understanding into data.
We want to explain our ndings to our clients.
We want to transform feelings into words and statistics, and thats not a trivial thing
to do.
It took us years to come up with a useful blueprint for communicating our usability
ndings.
But theres an easy way around this complexitydo your own tests!
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Even if youre doing it completely wrong, usability testing always works.

Observe what users experience by yourselfdont leave it to


others
You have heard about various usability methods?
You know the dierence between formative and summative testing?
Youve even learned how to moderate a usability test?
Then please forget about it for a second.
Theres only one important thing, if you want to nd out what users experience.
And thats to observe what they actually experience.
Just sit back, relax, and watch them do whatever they do!
Take notes if you want, but dont interrupt their experience.

Dont interrupt the experience!

Fade into the background


Were sometimes inviting people for in-person usability tests.
Its typical to ask burning research questions during these sessions as well.
And its ne to combine usability testing with user research, but its not the same as
observing a real user experience.

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You will nd insightful answerstheres no doubt about it.

Fade into the background

But your questions are not part of what people usually experience.
How do you avoid these disturbing questions?
An easy way is to prepare a specic task scenario to engage your users.
Give them something to do and observe how theyre doing it.
Let them focus on this task and remind them to think out loud and say everything
they have on their mind.

Become the silent observer


Experts call themselves moderators whenever they are facilitating a usability test.
What a huge mistake if you aim to observe a real user experience.
A moderator, however skilled he is, will always inuence the user experience.
Instead of being a moderator, you can fade into the background and become a silent
observer.

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Forget about yourself and your own agenda and focus on your user.
Try to empathize and see the world through her eyes.
What is she experiencing right now?
How does this aect her mood?
Is there anything you should change to improve her experience?
How does this relate to what other users may experience?

Heres why it works


Watching videos of someone using your site or app, gives you an unparalleled
understanding of what people experience.
You begin to understand your users, empathize with them, and learn how they
interact with you.
Youll know what theyre feeling and why they do what they are doingor why they
refuse to do it.
And if you keep observing them and build your business (or whatever youre making)
from a place of empathy and a desire to create better experiences for them, those
values bubble up into everything you do, and that never goes unnoticed by your
user.
Your website shouldnt be optimized just to make people click what you want them to
click. Your website needs to make people feel like they belong. When they do, they
want to return and to become members, customers and advocates.
Bernadette Jiwa

Understanding what people feel and Why is far more valuable than we think.
Thats why we made Userbrain, and thats why we oer easy usability testing on a
regular basis.
Understanding what users really experience is like taking care of your patients.
Its one thing to look at the graphs and numbers, but its something dierent to really
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know how theyre doing.


You can request a free demo from Userbrain if you want to see how well this works for
your site. And you can always email me at stefan@userbrain.net if you have any
questions. Thanks

4 Comments

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Rolf

5 months ago

Hi Markus, hi Stefan,
thanks for sharing your thoughts.
However, I strongly disagree with the metaphor you chose. The user is certainly not
the patient. It's not the user who has to be cured. "Health" is the norm, diseases
would be specic exceptions. Good "user experience" on the other hand is not at all
the norm, nor is it a unique occurrence, it can indeed occur in various shapes, colors
and functions. Sorry, but I think that just does not support a straight line of thoughts.
Also, it seems like the article got a bit out of hand. The title suggests you will present
a specic method to assess user experience. Instead the article goes on and on
about the general concept of ux, the imagined role of the ux designer, broadening the
concept basically to anyone involved in a digital project. And in the end you say:
we're doing user tests. You know, content also contributes heavily to user
experience. And not keeping a promise, in your case not delivering what your title
promises, does not really work in its favor.
I know it is a blog, so preliminary thoughts are of course allowed. And I imagine the
process of writing was probably interesting in an exploratory way. But I would
recommend not to share this type of stu in a professional network where people
know their stu. No hard feelings, just saying. You do not want to be noise, do you?
Have a look at Brad Frost's website: http://deathtobullshit.com/

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Stefan Rssler

Mod

> Rolf 5 months ago

Thanks for your reply, Rolf :)


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I appreciate your thoughtful comments and really liked the message on


deathtobullshit.com. Then I turned bullshit on and it made me laugh out loud
:D
Thanks!
I don't know where you're coming from. You mention a professional network,
which will probably be LinkedIn or something along these lines. Please tell me
if that's true, and we will rethink our promotion strategy for blog posts like this
one.
And you're right. I really enjoyed the process of writing the article. It was big
fun and I hope you enjoyed your read, even if you don't agree with the health
metaphor. I could go on now forever and try to explain, why I think the
metaphor is valid, but I can totally understand your point. And that's enough
for now :)
To be honest, I wasn't thinking about usability experts when I was writing this
article. I choose to get a bit out of hand with it, because I wanted non-experts
to realize their power and how easy it is for them to nd out what users
experienceif they do it on their own. And still, it's good to know that experts
like you are out there listening, even if our signal is still noisy to you. I hope
you keep coming back in the future, and tell us whether we're getting better or
not.
Thank you!

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Rolf > Stefan Rssler

5 months ago

Hi Stefan,
I got here from a Xing Group for digital experts, Markus posted it there.
That's probably why I had high expectations when following the link. I
think the post probably works for sta dealing with online maintenance
within an organization. But for someone to really learn something from
this post, you would have to believe the reader has never applied user
tests or any other type of qualitative user research.
Maybe I was a bit grumpy last night when I wrote my comment. Sorry
about that.
64

Shares

bradfrost.com is generally someone to keep an eye on.


Good luck with your enterprise!

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30

Stefan Rssler

Mod

> Rolf 5 months ago

Thanks for the info :)


16

You're right, the post is clearly aimed at people with no (or little)
experience with user testing and qualitative research in general.

12

And thanks for mentioning bradfrost.com again. The guy looks


very interesting!
Thanks and good luck to you as well :)

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