If you know where they are coming from and what they want you can design better experiences for them. I think therefore I am; I believe, therefore I feel.
What is user perspective?
Perspective is where you’ve been, and your stored emotional reactions to events in your life. It colours and shapes how you respond to events now and in the future. This point of view solidifies as we get older, meaning in many cases we tend to get set in our ways and we repeat certain behaviours and emotions.
Perspective can make an easy experience difficult and vice a versa and it can be wildly different for people depending on their life experience. What we do as designers is get as close to understanding these points of view as we can, because they lead to uncovering motivations.
User perspectives change as their needs change.
What is user motivation?
Motivation is the why that drives you to do things. A user needs to get a task done, and they are driven to complete it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Hopefully there’s some delight along the way that makes them want to repeat that task that’s been designed into the system. This is what I would call “frictionless” usability.
We see varying degrees of achieving this frictionless state. More often than not, and this is why we designers are valuable, a workflow starts to squeak and slow down as its oil, lubrication, usability starts to weaken and we need to discover why. Over time a workflow can be outstripped by user need and this adds friction.
Poor usability leads to poor motivation, and the user perspective starts to turn negative. “Why can’t I do what I want to do without all this fuss and stress?” Motivation wanes and the user creates quick fixes to get their jobs done, but they are dissatisfied with this state of affairs.
What does this mean?
Your perspective = motivation because the two feed each other. If you hate making presentations, it could be because you dread the process and the end result; having to give a talk in front of people. Knowing you might not have time to practice so you have to add notes to your slides. Will you be able to see those notes when you need them?
How do you investigate this cycle as a designer? User testing with empathy as the goal is key, while keeping in mind tracking repondent’s emotional state. You will begin to see the highs and lows, and these friction points will help you make design decisions. If friction is reduced when you test again, congratulations you’ve just improved usability.