Desirability vs Usability- which is the most important in UX?

By Frank Spillers

on August 14, 2020 - 6:32am
woman smelling kale at a supermarket

Summary: Getting to the bottom of your desirability criteria is more important than understanding usability. Since usability metrics are based on successful task completion, they come second after first clearly representing user tasks, needs, and goals. Desirability criteria should be defined first, then usability considered and tested next. Understanding desirability and what users truly want and need can differentiate a design, product, or value proposition fundamentally, with impacts on business results like conversion, engagement, and user adoption.  

Why participant recruiting is non-trivial, and why nobody is talking about this

By Frank Spillers

on November 8, 2019 - 11:18am
user shaking hands with interviewer

Summary: Recruiting participants requires careful consideration of the users you want to involve in your study. While recruiting is commonly performed and is necessary for gaining fast access to your users, be careful of the quality of your recruits. Poor recruits mean poor insights. Aim for high quality recruit targets to keep your data sparkling clean. 

WEBINAR: Desirability First: Understanding customer value, insights and opportunities

By Frank Spillers

on August 2, 2019 - 12:19pm
webinar cover slide- desirability first

The holy grail of maximizing return on investment in UX is to understand customer value. Engineering teams often define MVP based on an internally focused set of priorities. Marketing and business teams often use market research to focus group customer perceptions. Both of these approaches miss a major innovation in UX methodology. 

If you dissect UX, it has two sides: “Ease of use” vs. “Do I even want your feature?”. Most teams chase ease of use, because it seems to be the goal of reducing complexity, and it is. However, desirability or, “Are you solving core customer problems?” is more important. 

In this webinar we will learn how to ground your UX efforts with a Desirability First approach. We will see how this essential aspect of your UX/UI process is critical to business and design innovation. We will discuss this single most important element of your UX strategy and how to bring tangible business value to your UX efforts from user research. 

Find your hidden killer features, they may be vital to your user adoption strategy

By Frank Spillers

on June 13, 2019 - 3:11pm
user alarm clock phone
Summary: Killer features are generally understood to be ranked highly on value proposition for users. However, there is a class of features that run under the radar of most sites, apps and experiences. These are features that bring users back, often without their conscious knowledge. They might even seem insignificant, but they provide some value that makes re-visiting worthwhile. Finding these features is an extremely worthwhile pursuit for product managers. 
 

Identifying hidden "killer features"

A "killer feature" is a concept software developers use to describe a high value or money-making aspect of a site, app or experience. Typically, these are either a) identified by experienced UX teams in advance of launch, or b) discovered or appreciated by customers as evidenced through sales, engagement or adoption. 

[WEBINAR + eBook]: The Secrets of how to get the most out of your Diary Studies

By Frank Spillers

on January 25, 2019 - 1:50pm
diary studies- user flips through booklet

Summary: Diary Studies are one of the most under-utilized and least understood UX techniques. Diary Studies are slightly more complicated than user testing and require additional know-how in study design, moderation and deployment. In this webinar and complimentary e-book, you'll learn how to use diary studies like a pro, avoiding the pitfalls inherent in diary studies.

 

Why Diary Studies?

 

How your team defines "user research" can hurt your UX

By Frank Spillers

on July 5, 2018 - 8:18am
man at whiteboard looking frustrated

Summary: 'User research' has become a catch-all phrase to mean user testing in many organizations. User research has two main activities: usability testing and field studies. Defining your design research with only a validation exercise (testing) misses the essential discovery of user needs, pain points and desires that Ethnographic Field Studies provide. User research should always mean more than just user testing!

How are you defining user research?

Many organizations we work with and UX designers we provide training for, tell us they do 'user research'. Once we dig deeper, we find they are defining user research as user testing. This means only half of UX insights are actually making it to your team.  

The two main types of user research your team needs access to:

What's wrong with Focus Groups and How to Fix Them

By Admin User

on July 31, 2017 - 3:34pm
focus groups for usability

Summary: Focus groups are innapropriate as a research technique to gather usability or user experience requirements. This is due to the fact they are opinion driven and not behavior driven. As a research tool they have a place in market research or early on "market idea" testing. As a way to influence usability or user experience projects, they are useless and misleading. To fix focus groups, they should be either: a) Abandoned in favor of ethnographic field studies or, b) Blended with behavioral research aka user interviews and observations to provide richer insights. 

The Power of Rapid Ethnography

By Admin User

on June 27, 2017 - 10:59pm
Margaret Mead- Ethnography applied to UX

Ethnography is a technique developed largely by anthropologist Margaret Mead. It involves behavioral observation, contextual interviewing and analysis of users in their work, home or play spaces. The key strength to ethnography is context. Context provides insight into not only who users are (demographics) but what is important to them and what causes them to act and make decisions (psychographics). 

Ethnography goes by a few different names. The most common include: Contextual Interviewing, Field Studies and Task Analysis.  My personal contribution to the field, called "Cognitive Archeology"(PDF) involves an analysis of user behavior and environment with an emphasis on understanding decision-making, problem-solving and the interaction of tasks, values and beliefs.

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