Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. were asked recently on the Userability Podcast (Episode #14 – Growing in UX) what they might recommend to the caller as “a course of study to become a user experience designer.”
Amongst the great advice shared in the episode, there was a comment by Jared that particularly stood out to me (quoted below, to the best of my ability):
“Look at the people around you… Look at how they respond to certain types of products and services. Look at the things that get them really frustrated and then look at the things that get them really excited… the type of things they want to tell you about without prompting. Then ask yourself – what did the designers of those organizations do to explicitly get those reactions: was it an accident or was it intentional? How would you take the same thing they did to apply it [to your product] for the good stuff and how do you not do the same things for the frustrating things? Once you are doing that regularly, you are now talking strategy.”
Jared’s suggestion seems parallel to an exercise that my former UX manager made a part of our weekly team meetings: an exercise he called “Usability Moments.”
Each week, our team was given one simple task: Be prepared to talk about a situation that occurred in the past week that created a good user experience or a bad user experience. We were asked to explain what we thought caused the good/bad experience and also if we had any ideas about how we would improve the experience (if it was bad) or replicate that experience in other areas (if it was good).
This exercise provided a great arena for collaborative discussion and, in some cases, collaborative design.
But perhaps more importantly, the real genius of this exercise is that it began to shape my perception. At first, I had to look back each week to intentionally think about the usability of something I encountered, but then slowly and surely, I began seeing examples of good or bad user experience as I was encountering them. Each observation now comes with a whole lot of additional questioning: Why is this happening? What would change this experience? What are the costs and benefits of the proposed changes? In short, the exercise helped me move from “casual observer” to “thoughtful investigator” – a shift that would benefit any UX researcher.
Given this exercise’s success in helping me improve my ability to critically think about the user experience, it should come as no surprise that I would highly recommend its use within any UX team to build observational expertise and critical thinking. Luckily, it appears that Jared Spool would do the same.