Chapter 3. Ask, âWhat Would the User Do?â (You Are Not the User)
WE ALL TEND TO ASSUME THAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK LIKE US. But they donât. Psychologists call this the false consensus bias. When people think or act differently from us, weâre quite likely to label them (subconsciously) as defective in some way.
This bias explains why programmers have such a hard time putting themselves in the usersâ position. Users donât think like programmers. For a start, they spend much less time using computers. They neither know nor care how a computer works. This means they canât draw on any of the battery of problem-solving techniques so familiar to programmers. They donât recognize the patterns and cues programmers use to work with, through, and around an interface.
The best way to find out how a user thinks is to watch one. Ask a user to complete a task using a similar piece of software to what youâre developing. Make sure the task is a real one: âAdd up a column of numbersâ is OK; âCalculate your expenses for the last monthâ is better. Avoid tasks that are too specific, such as âCan you select these spreadsheet cells and enter a SUM formula below?ââthereâs a big clue in that question. Get the user to talk through his or her progress. Donât interrupt. Donât try to help. Keep asking yourself, âWhy is he doing that?â and âWhy is she not doing ...
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