12 Steps to Keeping Your Projects User-Centered
Be passionate as the voice of the user to internal partners – legal, design, IT, business, and sponsors. You work for the user first. “I am the Lorax – I speak for the trees…”
Think about everything from a user’s perspective. Practice empathy and develop the ability to immediately forget everything you know on a dime. Remember, you are not the user no matter how much you resemble the personas you’re working from.
Speak plainly. Say what you mean. Kill marketing copy mercilessly. Elminate jargon. If you can, call things what they call them. If you can’t, at least be clear and direct. Be aware of common industry terms. Don’t try to create an enterprise-specific glossary. Legal may hate you, but that’s cool. Remember, you’re the Lorax.
Organize information the way that makes sense to users – not the way our enterprise or our systems organize it. This will be hard work. Machines and companies don’t think like people.
Don’t just design what users say they want. Users don’t know what they want – they only know what they don’t want. User feedback is important, but letting designers craft innovative, cohesive experiences is more important.
Observe real users in real situations. When you do get user feedback, watch more than you listen. They’ll often say one thing but do another. Research, interviews and usability testing can be useful, but there’s no substitute for watching and listening to real users.
Don’t ever fight for a bad experience. If something is a bad experience, don’t sugar coat it. Admit it and commit to improve it. We can’t fix everything at once, but admitting there’s a problem is the first step to fixing it. Sometimes you’ll have to compromise, but don’t rush to that position.
Don’t try to do too much at one time. Redesigns are hard. Continuous improvement is much easier. Eat the elephant a little at a time. You have to make it not suck before you can make it great.
Don’t try to do too little either. It’s the nature of our partners to want to keep scopes small and ambition low. Know when to push for bigger, more substantial changes. Often, the changes that can make the biggest impact are the hardest and most expensive to make.
Let users guide your prioritization. Above all, relieve their pain. Then simplify their experience.Then work on what will delight them. A delighting event in the middle of a bad experience still equals a bad experience. Make it not bad before you make it great.
Have an appropriate sense of urgency. Every day the experience languishes, the harder it will be to change it. Work vigorously and efficiently to ensure rigamortis doesn’t set in.
Be responsive and thoughtful. The best service design will fall flat if we don’t do what we say quickly and with a good attitude. Respond quickly. Follow up thoroughly. Don’t pass the buck. Don’t just expect this of reps – practice it every day with your team and your partners.
So fight the good fight.
