I Feel Your Pain

by KEVIN SILVER :: MAY 6, 2008 :: COMMENTS (0)

It's amazing what people tell you when you're conducting user research. It can be a virtual outpouring of angst, desire and need. I recently experienced this while conducting user research for a large web application redesign project.

Most of our user interviews were conducted over the phone, but we did have ample opportunity to speak with the core user group in person at several meetings and at a conference (annual meeting for the core user group). By the end of the end of the conference two things came to mind: our table at the conference should have mimicked Lucy's psychiatric help booth and I really felt like Spock's half-brother Sybok. For those who don’t remember or haven’t seen Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Sybok had a gift to release the pain of people he encountered making them feel euphoric and content.

During the conference, I spoke with numerous end users of the application. The conversations ranged from discussing the various systems that the new application would be replacing, to the roll out schedule, and then to their pain. Yes, their pain. This is a very beleaguered user group that needs all of the help they can get. Their day to day work is rapid and jam-packed with a ton of stuff to do.

By the time the conference had happened, I had already conducted a fair amount of the research. I was already empathetic to their concerns. In our presentations at the conference I alluded to this. I told them that we are trying to make their lives easier by designing the application for them and we’re here to listen. This opened the flood gates. In ensuing conversations, I would lean forward and listen intently while taking notes and interject when I knew a certain issue was already on our radar to address. After our conversation, the person would seemingly walk away somehow refreshed and reassured.

It was at this point that I felt like Sybok. I had released their pain. Actually, I had internalized their pain, observed it and planned on designing it out of their lives. This experience taught me the true benefit of being an emphatic listener during user research. You start to develop a meaningful connection with the end user. The personas you develop begin to ring true and add real value to the design process. You are reminded of the users' pain every time you are making a design decision. It just makes me think that our main job as designers is release the users' pain.

Of course, I'm leaving out the insidious side of Sybok–he used his gift to brainwash the people he talked with. Maybe this is at the heart of a product that provides an exceptional experience. By fully understanding our users' pain, we can design an application that has a great user experience and keeps the users coming back for more!

tags: DESIGN, DESIGN RESEARCH, DESIGN THINKING, INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE, INTERACTION DESIGN, USER EXPERIENCE, USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN, USER RESEARCH, UXD

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