This includes how social norms, cultural contexts, and group dynamics affect the way people perceive and use technology in their daily lives.
Community factors and Group Think
For example, a sociologist might study how different communities adapt to new technologies or how social factors like age, disability, and socioeconomic status impact technology use.
“Group Think” relates to Jakob’s Law. It states: “Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
Lean on Jakob’s Law. This assumption, and others, helps you design in a way that’s easier to understand.
Empathy is not only the search to design with empathy but also the search for a universal understanding. It can be applied to make a solution work for more people.
By understanding these social dimensions, designers and developers can create more user-friendly and inclusive technologies that better meet the needs of diverse user groups.
By understanding these social dimensions, we become more understanding and empathetic.
Personas bring us back to the social reality
I’ve seen this play out in real time during Design Thinking sessions when the conversation has gotten too technical, and considering the user persona brings everyone back to the problem and how to solve it for them.
Use sociology in usability to think about the end result first—imagine your user persona doing their work successfully, and build backwards from there.