It’s amazing what you can accomplish, if you don’t care who gets the credit. (Harry Truman)

So, here’s my problem with collaboration … What? You're against collaboration? How can someone be against collaboration? (Don't worry - I'm not.) Now that I've got your attention, though, do please read on ...

Let me start off with a little story about when I used to teach. 

I used to teach tech writing at the local university. It was a night class, so I got a mix of traditional undergrads and working adults. The differences between the two tended to be pretty jarring. 

The traditional students were generally okay, but I found a lot of them tended to zone out. (I also got some who never came to class and then were shocked that I gave them an F on their mid-term grade!) The adults, though, were pretty much thoroughly engaged the whole time – asking questions, answering questions, sharing their own experiences, never missing class, coming on time …

What’s this got to do with anything? Well, I also used to give group projects, making sure I got a good mix on each team. Can you guess what happened? It wasn’t always the case, but I did find that the adults were likely to do all the heavy lifting, while the undergrads tended to sit back and let them do just that.

After a semester or two of frustration, I finally instituted a new scheme where members got to grade their peers, and individual grades on the project were a combo of the group grade plus the grade from your peers. It definitely improved the situation (though there were also some students who were in for a little life lesson as well).

Of course, in the real world, that kind of thing tends to weed itself out pretty quickly. Adults tend not to change jobs in the way that students might change classes, and that kind of behavior can catch up with you pretty quick.

In fact, I’ve tended to see just the opposite. Indeed, there are plenty of successful careers out there of people who were definitely part of the mix, but who also simply took undue credit along the way. And as one of those hard-working adult types, I always kind of resented that. 

These days, though, I’m much more apt to let it slide. Maybe it’s just being happy seeing something work for a change. Maybe it’s being more forgiving of human foible. Maybe it’s just the wisdom of age. Maybe it’s just not giving a flying … you know what.

Why is this worth a blog post though? Well, collaboration certainly is all the rage these days. Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever had someone interviewing for a position who, when asked what kind of culture they preferred, didn't say "collaborative." I think it just goes to you show you, though, how something as mom and apple pie as "collaboration" may have more to it than appears on the surface.

President Truman (and aide) doing some early 

in-home usability testing with consumer hardware

Too much Design Thinking and you're jumping off cliffs. Too much "Research Thinking" and you'll never get out of bed. (Joe Grant)

The pendulum swings again. Right now, we seem to be pretty firmly in cliff-diving mode. Not too long ago, though, we were all in a definite can’t-get-out-of-bed state.

Yup, traditional user research did tend to be kinda slow. Now, that may simply reflect how much slower things were back in the day, but it also definitely reflects how much academia influenced research way back when. Indeed, there was a time when all researchers had PhDs, wore white lab coats, worked in on-site labs, and wrote 30-page papers for each month-long test they ran. But all that simply reflected how they had been trained academically. They just took what they knew and applied it to a different situation.

Usability engineering was, in fact, a reaction to some of the issues with that approach. The “engineering” part meant that researchers weren’t doing pure research anymore, and that practical applications – and means and methods – would give corporate clients a lot more bang for their buck.  So, quicker, faster, more focused, more actionable, more affordable …

These days, though, that’s probably not enough. Overall, there is a huge emphasis on speed – in Agile, in Design Thinking, in Lean UX … heck, in life in general. 

I guess the question here, to me at least, is whether things might be going a little too fast. I’m personally familiar with Design Thinking projects where research meant chatting a few people up at the local food court, and evaluation meant stopping people on the street to show them a couple of screens. 

Yup, that’s cliff diving alright. Hope you’re a really skilled diver. That water looks like it’s a long way away. And those rocks sure do look like they could hurt a body. You are a professional, right?

Hopefully, one day, the pendulum will be a little more in the middle. Who knows, though. By that time, something else will come along the pike, and the pendulum will be swinging in a completely different direction. 

Joe's been doing UX for 30 years,

and is currently working at Enterprise

I just like to know. (Winnie the Pooh)

Researchers are like that. They really do just want to know.

And that makes them a little bit different from everyone else they work with. They have no axe to grind, no dog in the fight, no skin in the game … whatever cliché you happen to favor.

Honestly, they just want to know if something’s going to work or not. Everyone else seems to have an agenda. The designer is probably just pulling for what they came up with. Their manager, on the other hand, may simply not want anything to come up that might make them look bad. The business probably has some pet idea that they want to make sure gets baked in somehow. Developers might want to make use of some cool widget they just saw somewhere. And the executive vice president … well, who knows what they want or are thinking? (Hopefully, they’ll just go away.)

Now, that’s not to say that a usability engineer might not have some predictions. But, like a true scientist, they will put those aside and, instead, root for real knowledge. I am actually right a surprising amount of the time (hey, 30 years, 4000 users), but the times I’m not are the ones I remember and enjoy the most. 

And that’s because I am adding to the corpus of knowledge. Now, that can mean something at a pretty low level (that page really does need some online help, and my team really needs to know that) but at a pretty high one as well (help really adds a lot to a system, but it needs to be contextual and speak the user’s language - and pretty much everyone in UX needs to know that).

The whole idea, though, is to keep it humble. In fact, I am much more psyched about a test where I was wrong than one where I was right. How often does that happen among the rest of the team? I’ve actually found some experienced designers who are right there with me all of the way. For the rest of them, though, I think they could take some advice from lowly ol' Pooh Bear.

By the way, here’s the full passage:

Pooh was sitting in his house one day, counting his pots of honey, when there came a knock on the door.
“Fourteen," said Pooh. "Come in. Fourteen.  Or was it fifteen? Bother. That's muddled me."
"Hallo, Pooh," said Rabbit.
"Hallo, Rabbit. Fourteen, wasn't it?"
"What was?"
"My pots of honey what I was counting."
"Fourteen, that's right."
"Are you sure?"
"No," said Rabbit. "Does it matter?"
"I  just  like to know," said Pooh humbly, "So as I can say to myself: 'I've got  fourteen  pots  of  honey  left.'  Or fifteen, as the case may be. It's sort of comforting."

Hmm, had no idea Pooh was a quant.

Winnie the Pooh meets technology - 

Technology wins

People’s minds are changed through observation, and not through argument. (Will Rogers)

Yup, that Will Rogers. You know, the cowboy humorist? Western actor? Newspaper columnist? Radio personality?  Vaudeville performer?

Kind of like Mark Twain, though, Will Rogers had so much native sense that his downhome sayings can be applied to almost anything – even something as esoteric as usability and UX. To tell you the truth, I’m a little surprised that this quote was actually so direct. Surely, this must have been translated from something with an “ain’t” sprinkled here and a “fixin-to” sprinkled there. Honestly, it sounds more like something Jakob Nielsen might have said.

Be that as it may, it is, quiet honestly, the whole secret of our profession. You know, it seems like everybody’s got an opinion about design – from the designer, to the writer, to the IA, to the developer, to marketing, to the developer, to the VP … But you know whose opinion really matters?  The user’s!

And how do we best get their opinion?  Well, people have come up with quite a number of different ways to do so.  I’ve touched on those in a number of different posts:

• Surveys – “The most valuable question could be the one that’s not asked.” (Anonymous)
• Voice of the customer – “Just because no one complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.” (Benny Hill)
• Analytics – “Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” (Samuel Clemens) 
• A/B testing – “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” (H.L. Mencken)

What’s really best, though, is good, old-fashioned usability testing.  I don’t think there’s a better way to get rich, unbiased, and convincing data to take things out of the realm of conjecture and guide discussion down real, practical avenues that can lead to solutions that will really mean something for the customer. 

And, guess what?  As a usability engineer, you get to do just that!

Will Rogers also said:

• "It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that ain’t so."

Our product is a slot machine that plays you. (Ramsey Brown)

Oh dear! That’s not good.

And just in case you think you may have misheard that, I’ll have you know that Mr. Brown is the CEO of the aptly – and rather bluntly – named Dopamine Labs. Yup, this outfit aims to “hack user engagement and retention using models from neuroscience,” “change … human behavior with unprecedented ease,” and “rewire user behavior and drive your KPIs.” Charming.

Of course, there’s all sorts of palaver about using it only for good … But it does sound, though, like their honesty may have provided us with something of an honest-to-goodness smoking gun when it comes to the motivation behind tech addiction.

I mean, we’re all familiar with the classic quote, “If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product.” Now, that's not exactly something that can be traced back to Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg, right?

But here, we have a quote that we can trace directly back to a VC-funded Silicon Valley outfit. They’re certainly no Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat ... at least, at this point.

What is he actually talking about? Why, intermittent reward, of course. What’s that? Well, it’s a psychological principle that dates all the way back to B.F. Skinner. It basically states that if you never get a reward, you’ll give up; if you always get the same reward, you’ll eventually get bored; but if you get a reward seemingly randomly, you’ll get hooked. It’s the idea behind slot machines … and email, and Facebook, and all sorts of social media and tech in general.

The dopamine connection? It’s the neurotransmitter that drives all this. Though many people mistakenly identify dopamine with pleasure, it actually drives seeking behavior. 

And this basic human chemical – one that we are largely unaware of, have no control over, but that drives large parts of our behavior – has been hacked by Silicon Valley to make rich people richer, with no real thought to any of the consequences or ethics involved. Charming indeed.

This is either B.F. Skinner or some kind of space alien

Just because it isn’t done doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. (Barry Glasford)

I was listening to something on NPR today about the new version of The Lion King, which just came out. In case you’re not au courant with all things Disney, the new one is all CGI, with absolutely no animation, unlike the first one. One of the panelists hated the new version, and used almost this same quote to justify his stance. Even though I haven’t seen either version, he made some excellent points, and I heartily agreed with him. 

Personally, I’m familiar with the quote from my own field, but I can definitely see where it could apply almost anywhere. In fact, a quick Google search led me to links related to the Bible, feminism, travel, self-help, and – OMG! – Disney’s new Lion King.

Interestingly, though, most of those results focused on the first part of the saying. Now, to me, there’s no real insight in that. That’s basically a, “Well, duh, so what?” 

The real wisdom is in the second part. In other words, this is really a matter of balance. So, in addition to being innovative and creative and ground-breaking and all, we also have to be aware of the possibility of conflicting goals (and unintended consequences as well).

I think that’s especially important in the field of UX. So, while designers, developers, and marketeers may have fallen in love with some new “kewl” way of doing things, the team really does need to ask itself whether that’s genuinely helpful, or right for this audience, or for this context – or whether it simply gets in the way (or is even impossible to understand or use). Otherwise, all you’re really doing is showing off.

A perfect example of this just happened recently at work - one of my designers came up with a scrolling marquee. Now, in our field, brokerage, this does make some sense. You’re probably familiar with old ticker-tape-style marquees outside and inside actual brokerage offices. So, this is really just putting something like that online. And there is at least one competitor who does that as well.

At the same time, though, there are also some good arguments against it – it’s distracting, there are accessibility issues, it can remind users of those cheesy marquees on amateur sites that date back to the 90’s …

Well, I wasn’t able to convince anyone to ditch it. But it did prompt this post. And we’ll definitely see who comes out on top after a little usability testing.

Writing reports doesn’t change anything. Acting on the findings does. (William Horton)

If there’s one thing that gets under a usability engineer’s skin it’s ignoring their findings. 

Now, I realize that UEs are also realists as well. Yes, we are smart enough to know that legitimate business decisions can trump all. And we are also aware that schedules and deadlines might mean some change will not make it into this release (though we do assume it will be in the next one). Finally, we also realize that some changes are harder than others (though there are, of course, those developers or vendors for whom every change seems difficult and costly). 

And experienced UEs also appreciate that negotiation is an inevitable part of any process. They pick and choose their battles. No use falling on your sword for a missing comma or a particular shade of yellow.

Those kinds of UEs also realize that not everything is worth changing. In fact, I think there’s no surer way of showing your greenness than by expecting that all issues are equal, and that you will get your way with everything that came up in the test just because … it came up in the test. 

(That last bit is especially a problem for UEs who think a report is a simple dump of everything that happened. I’m always amazed at the number of UEs who seem to feel obliged to report one-offs or simple, straight-up observations. Yeah, that’s interesting – especially if you’re a researcher – but may not be that actionable to your audience.)

So, all we ask is that you seriously consider what we heard back from YOUR USERS!  Don’t like our suggested fix? That’s fine. Do address it somehow though. Got a good reason for going with something else? No problem. Do tell me a little more about that though please.

I once did an audit (at a former company) looking at which clients actually acted on issues and suggestions from test reports and which did not. Interestingly, the one client who complained the loudest and dragged their heels the most were the ones who made the most changes. Conversely, the one who seemed the most enthusiastic, spoke our language, and got along with us the best rarely made any.

In other words, the latter seemed to think that simply running a test was what usability testing was all about. Maybe it was an exposure thing. Maybe it was interesting in itself, but not really worth getting all worked up about. Maybe it was just magical thinking. 

The former, though, realized that their job was just beginning after a test was over, and that they were actually going to have to roll up their sleeves and do some hard work. Funny … Looking back, I think I actually preferred working with those guys.