I've been running lean agile teams for some time, focusing on building loosely-coupled and visual experiences that empower business teams. Monitor, Analyze, Act is one current theme of digital dialogue. My teams run ongoing streams of user-centric design - bring concepts out early for feedback, iteration, and experience improvement. UI testing is central.
This month we started a partnership experiment with Pivotal Labs in Chicago. This week I learned I still have room to learn, and that's a breath of fresh air!
"Synth" - processing interview feedback to drive better design
The little things add up to an accelerated outcome.
Realization number one: Don't demo! Hand the keys to your audience and let them drive. Up to now, our teams have brought wireframes to our stakeholders and stepped through the experience (as WE understand it). Precisely what do we miss by doing that? We miss this point of getting intuitive UI. Driving from our end makes assumptions about how the users will navigate and consume information when we're not in the room. Taking the risk of letting the user drive allows all of us to see what is or is not intuitive in real-time, which moves "good UI" iterations from a jog to a run.
Realization number two: Don't lead the witness! Up to now, our teams tended to lead more with statements rather than open-ended questions. "This is what the wireframe is trying to say - what do you think?" More effective: "What do you see? What do you think it means? If you click on that visual, what do you think will happen?" Now the user is more engaged, more mindful.. When the experience works counter to expectation, the UI feedback is more concrete. When the experience works to expectation, the user experiences more delight...more enlightenment.
With little changes, you've let your stakeholder talk....he or she holds the pen. Now your stakeholder is on your side. Just try to get them to stop driving your experience!
Capturing more robust and more design-enriching feedback from UI testing.