Perception is Reality: Lessons Learned from User Research
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(Note: This talk was given by Dorian Freeman on Wednesday, April 12, 2017 at Harvard University.) Talk: How are the apps and websites you work on perceived by the people who use them? As content editors, designers, researchers, and developers, it’s hard not to focus on specific details in isolation rather than looking at the larger context. This makes it even more important to remember the mental models and expectations people have as influencing their perception of usability of your products. What affects perception? How do you measure it? What happens if perceptions are not what you had anticipated? Bio: As User Experience Lead (Academic Technology / HUIT / HPAC / HWP), Dorian Freeman focuses on the user experience of the administrative interface of OpenScholar. She is founder of the Harvard UX Groupcommunity of practice, created to connect user experience practitioners at Harvard, now at close to 90 members. She also runs a working group to manage the community of practice, and currently teaches an IT Academy UX Fundamentals course* open to all staff. She joined Harvard in July 2013. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorianfreeman Twitter: @dorianshmorian
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Perception is Reality: Lessons Learned from User Research
- 1. PERCEPTION IS REALITY LESSONS LEARNED FROM USER RESEARCH DORIAN FREEMAN | W3ABCD | APRIL 12, 2017
- 2. “Watch what they do, instead of listening to what they tell you.”
- 3. WATCH WHAT THEY DO • Behavioral research • Quantitative • The HOW • Examples: • A/B • Eye tracking • Analytics • Usability testing: task success, time on task
- 4. LISTEN TO WHAT THEY TELL YOU • Attitudinal research • Qualitative • The WHY • Examples: • Contextual inquiry • Interviews • Feedback • Open-ended comments
- 6. THIS IS NOW
- 14. THE RESULT
- 15. PERCEPTIONS CHANGE OVER TIME “I need to remember that, from my users’ perspective, they don’t have that magic perfect product in their head. They can only compare to their current reality. If I make improvements over what they’ve got now, no matter how far it is from my ideal, I’ve made their lives better.” - Nadyne Richmond
- 17. SO WHAT DO WE DO? • Look for pain points • Find small changes • Create some peaks • Find stress cases • Don’t stop listening
- 18. THANK YOU!
Notas del editor
- Hi! I’m Dorian Freeman. I’m user experience lead in HUIT/Academic Technology/Harvard Web Publishing/ Harvard Public Affairs and Communications. I’ve been at Harvard nearly 4 years. I also run the Harvard UX group community of practice, and facilitate the IT Academy User Experience Foundations class. I thought I’d talk with you today about something I’ve been thinking about. Perception is reality.
- “Watch what they do, instead of listening to what they tell you.” You’ll hear this a lot from user researchers, because often someone using your app or website will tell you an interaction is easy, but as you watch them, you might find they have in fact created a complex series of steps as work-arounds to make up for problems in the flow. However, if you had listened earlier on, you would have heard about the problems. My argument today is that you need to be sure to do both: watch and listen.
- “Watching what they do” is behavioral research (studying behavior), and in some cases you can put numbers behind it- it can lean more into the quantitative realm. Researching people’s behavior is very valuable in learning about HOW they actually use the app or website. Some examples are: A/B testing, eye tracking, analytics, and usability testing such as task success and time on task. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/
- “Listening to what they tell you” is attitudinal research (studying attitudes). It is qualitative, opinion-based, subjective, and can give you insight into perspectives, context, emotions, expectations, how people view themselves, your website or app, and the world (their mental models). It can tell you WHY they behave the way they do. Some examples are: contextual inquiry, interviews, feedback from support and other sources, and open-ended comments in usability testing. This research gives you insight into someone’s perception of the experience. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/
- When I was a kid, this was my main means of communication to people who were not in the same location as me. It was heavy, often stuck to a wall, and had a round dialer, which took quite a bit of effort to turn. I remember so clearly the feeling of holding the heavy phone in one hand, the cord with the other, the handset nuzzled between my shoulder and my ear, the tug when I reached the end of the cord. When you walked away from it, you no longer had a connection. Disconnected. Unconnected. https://img0.etsystatic.com/003/0/6620830/il_fullxfull.361866372_e5e7.jpg
- Contrast to now, when most of us always have a device close by which tracks our every move, and can either connect us in an instant, or is continuously connected with almost anyone in the world. (GO BACK to phone image)The interesting thing is, the slow dial, the lack of constant connectivity, we were fine with it. We had the ability to communicate when we were near a phone, and that was amazing, and we were grateful. Of course the immediacy to handle an emergency wasn’t there, if you weren’t near a phone. But that was all we knew. Would the people in this room be fine with that situation now? http://cdn2.expertreviews.co.uk/sites/expertreviews/files/styles/parallax_large/public/2017/01/best_smartphone_2017.jpg?itok=VxzGJgor
- So what changed? Our perceptions were changed due to the disruption caused by the invention of cell phones and then smart phones. The way we perceive the world has changed. It’s no longer enough to only have intermittent availability to that constant connection. To us now, the mental model of everyday life includes that connection, and to imagine living without it elicits an almost physical reaction. Is it essential? Maybe to some who are in life-threatening situations, yes, but for most of us, is it really? In a way, Perception is Reality. What we perceive is our reality. No, cell phones are not essential. Most of us will not collapse if we lost our cell phones. But man, it sure feels like a huge loss when we do. What is the perception here? Try to tell someone they don’t need a cell phone. What will they say? What is their reality?
- Here’s your question of the day: How are the apps and websites you work on perceived by the people who use them? It’s hard not to focus on specific details in isolation rather than looking at the larger context. This makes it even more important to remember the mental models and expectations people have as influencing their perception of usability of your products. Here are more questions- Do people see each feature of your software or application as distinct, important and valuable tools that help them achieve their goals? Do they notice the care we put into the typography, the spacing around an error message, the subtle animation in a transition that guides them to the next step, or even the fact that a particular feature ‘works as intended’? Do they care about the flow from one screen to the next? Do they care about any of it? If they do care, at what point do they care, and in what situations? - Mostly they care when something stops them (or slows them down) from doing what they want to do. People don’t use your apps or websites to use your apps or websites. They use them as a means to get something done. If something is getting in their way, in the larger context, and is blocking them from moving forward, if something isn’t aligned with the way they perceive that things SHOULD be, THAT is when they care, and they care A LOT. Can you blame them? http://www.mockeri.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/EmoticonFlash4.jpg
- And to bring it closer to home, what about those times when we create interactions that are for their own good— for example to make sure their connections are secure, to prevent identity theft, and phishing attacks— and we have no other option but to slow them down and make them take an extra 15- 30 seconds to authenticate twice, to accomplish their goals? How do they perceive that? By now, everyone should have the HarvardKey Two-Step dance going, and the DUO app installed. How difficult is it to use? No judgment here. I’m not saying that Two-Step is bad; on the contrary, it’s done wonders for our security. I was involved in the user research of the “sign up for Two-Step” flow. Have we gotten to the point where yes, it stops us a little, and maybe we whine about it, but we’re used to it and accept it, like the telephone experience I had as a child?
- Now think about this. Has anyone seen this yet? [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beZQlrb8ZuU This video is hilarious! But there is a thread of truth here. It is telling us something. What do you think it is? In this moment for this student, THIS is the perception of the 15-30 seconds we have to spend on authenticating. Think about the stress level the student is experiencing. What happens if his assignment is not submitted on time? How does that affect his day? His career? His life? To the student, the stakes feel MUCH higher in this situation. When do you get stopped by Two-Step? What situations are you in? How does that affect your day- your career- your life? And, whose perception of reality is more real, yours or the student in the video? So, which mental model do you design for? Do you change the application, try to change people’s points of view, or wait for their perceptions to change? What would you do? Again, doing qualitative, attitudinal analysis, with things like interviews, contextual inquiry, and usability testing helps measure perception. The SUS -the System Usability Scale- is another way to measure perceptions as well. SUS measures the perceived usability of an application, but it doesn’t give you details like talking to someone would. You end up with a lot of insight from the things the participants tell you. Looking at videos created by students is evidently another way to get feedback.
- What do you do to make the people using your app or website more at ease in a stressful situation? Kenneth Berger, who was the first product manager at Slack, says you need to add some “peaks” to your “valleys”. His solution to the anxiety someone might feel by the “Are you sure?” message on an alert was to add a ‘shouty rooster’. http://68.media.tumblr.com/40b572cee34c3582e9f55e2dc6706421/tumblr_ni78rfKAZf1qea4hso1_500.gif
- MailChimp adds an animation before and a high five after sending email. These don’t all have to be shouty roosters and chimps, but adding some humor to break the tension is one way of creating a better experience. http://68.media.tumblr.com/40b572cee34c3582e9f55e2dc6706421/tumblr_ni78rfKAZf1qea4hso1_500.gif
- Sometimes we get surprised by listening. I recently did usability testing on a revisions feature we’re building in OpenScholar. We’ve had many requests over the years to have the capability of creating revisions. Being able to revert to an old version enables you to bounce back and forth in time. There may be a serious error on a page that has been published- where’s the undo? Or maybe you have a moment in time that repeats- maybe you could use the same content every year (probably with some date changes) for an event you hold yearly. The goals behind my testing were to: See if people could understand the feature quickly, even without documentation See how easily they were able to perform the steps required to use the feature See how they felt about the feature - how useful is it? Understand the context in which they would be using it I knew that we were not including something in the new feature that I assumed was a deal-breaker: the ability to compare two versions side by side, and to have changes between them highlighted- a regular part of any versioning feature.
- I asked all 5 of the study participants to rate the revisions feature on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most useful. The average usefulness rating was an 8; with the mention that it would be a 10 if the side-by-side comparison/highlighting was there. An 8! Why was it so high without what I assumed would be so essential? (Note: always great to test out assumptions!) They understood that they were going from nothing to something- from no capability for revisions, to finally having them. The overall relief at the fact that we were working on it at all made them predisposed to liking it. For the people who had been requesting it, the perception is that this is huge. What do you think will happen after 2 or 3 months of regular use? My guess is that the requests for the comparison will come in sooner rather than later. Their perceptions of usability will change the more they use it. (Again, it will be good to test out this assumption in a few weeks.)
- Perceptions change over time. Current reality is in constant flux. “I need to remember that, from my users’ perspective, they don’t have that magic perfect product in their head. They can only compare to their current reality. If I make improvements over what they’ve got now, no matter how far it is from my ideal, I’ve made their lives better.” Nadyne Richmond
- And then there is the memory element, from Daniel Kahneman’s TedTalk, The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory (he wrote the book Thinking Fast and Slow). He tells us that Perceptions can often be driven by the last part of an experience. “He said he'd been listening to a symphony, and it was absolutely glorious music and at the very end of the recording, there was a dreadful screeching sound. And then he added, really quite emotionally, it ruined the whole experience. But it hadn't. What it had ruined were the memories of the experience. He had had the experience. He had had 20 minutes of glorious music. They counted for nothing because he was left with a memory; the memory was ruined, and the memory was all that he had gotten to keep.”
- So what do we do to keep perceptions positive? Look for pain points- places where we block people’s progress. Pain points might feel more painful at the end of an interaction flow because those are more easily remembered. Think about what small changes you can make that will help people align with their own mental models or clearly explain the difference, if you are proposing they change those models. Change is hard for people! If you can’t get out of their way while they are trying to accomplish something, find a way to make that journey more pleasant. (Make sure you have peaks with your valleys.) Don’t forget about stress cases (edge cases). Do the research to find out what those stress cases are and see what you can do to accommodate them. Understand the full context of the situations in which people will use your software or app to get something done. Make sure you understand how perceptions are changing by staying in touch with feedback and talking to the people who visit your websites or use your applications, and adjust for those changes if necessary.
- Hopefully this has given you some things to think about. Thank you!