I remember when the participant sighed when going through their work steps. That was the moment I knew we had some work to do. “Why is this so hard?” It’s a hard pill to swallow, but as a UX designer it would be silly to not take it on board.
Too much context switching kills usability
For our user research and testing we had 15 participants. We were testing our application from the user point of view and their jobs to be done. Most participants were unable to easily get their work done without multiple screens and monitors. They suffered from too much context switching!
This is why we do user research! To find out what’s really happening. It’s one of the best ways to stop guessing and start knowing.
As we gathered the data this same theme was continuous. One job was taking multiple monitors and browser tabs to complete. The reliability and the validity of the results were consistent. We saw the same result multiple times. Our findings all pointed to the need for streamlining of the user workflows.
Eliminate steps for better usability.
We mapped their user roles to our understanding and made updates where needed so our personas could get updated. We were able to make short and long term plans based on the information and insights we gained.
Any business can benefit from user research
No matter what it’s size, your business can do user research. I believe you should do it consistently. Don’t assume because the customer uses your product that it works well. Users tend to get used to applications and don’t complain even when usability is really bad! Users are quite capable of working around problems and unless there’s an open channel for feedback there’s not much they can do.
Stakeholders and managers sometimes question the value of user research, with good reason – without good reporting and validation a user research exercise is mostly pointless. However, it brings the odds of an actionable result up from 50% (a coin toss) to closer to 95% (your mileage may vary).
User research can happen before, during, and after a product is created so it can be continuously improved.
