A Spork in the Road

The communication gulf between designers and users can sometimes seem as wide as the one between species. Last night I was pondering the lessons my dogs teach me about user testing and usability planning (and the same principles apply when writing user documentation):

1. Unreasonable expectations: My dog isn’t going to “hold it” because I’m on the phone and it’s an inconvenient time for her to need to go outside. Neither are my users going to put extra effort into understanding a non-intuitive interface.
2. Shifting responsibility: It’s ridiculous for me to be annoyed with my dog for not understanding my instructions to her when I’m the one who hasn’t taken the time to train her properly. Likewise, it’s ridiculous for me to be annoyed with my users for ignoring a key section of a site if I didn’t design for them to find it easily.
3. Understanding the “other”: Dogs aren’t humans; they think differently, and I have to learn about their thought processes before I can communicate with them. That means reading books as well as spending time with them with an open mind to discover their way of doing things, rather than immediately trying to control their behavior. Users aren’t designers; they approach websites with different assumptions and will not stop to figure out what I did wrong and then explain it to me. I have to study how users think by doing my research (such as reading Steve Krug’s superlative book Don’t Make Me Think) and doing lots of good user testing.
4. Accepting Limitations: My dogs are never going to do my laundry, or serve out the right portion of food into their bowls at 6:00, or offer workable solutions for climate change. They are, however, going to be affectionate, fun, and will huddle for warmth on chilly days. Users aren’t going to spontaneously understand a labyrinthine menu structure, or sign up for updates from a site they don’t even understand, or send detailed and useful critiques of why your site isn’t useful to them. They will, however, act predictably if you’ve done your homework, and they will certainly tell you what’s not working if you do your user testing and can listen openly to their feedback.

Frustration is the enemy of clear thinking! Accept responsibility for doing your job right, and let your users be as “stupid and mindless” as we all are when faced with a new system, without resentment.