97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 46. Design for Users, Not Usability Studies

Aaron Parker

Usability research is a fundamental part of user-centered design, but it can be a double-edged sword. An increase in usability research can correspond with a decrease in creative risk taking. Over time, we learn what patterns test well, and we start to rely on those patterns more in our design work, resulting in safe but potentially uninspired designs.

It’s easy for this risk-taking aversion to sneak up on you. I once worked with a client whose business I’d gotten to know really well. I’d spoken to somewhere between 150 to 200 of their customers—running interviews, testing designs, and so on. It had gotten to the point where I probably knew their customers better than they did.

It was a few weeks into the project when our attention turned to the website’s navigation. I put together a few different designs and was confident they would test well based on past usability studies. Another designer, however, decided to go with something much more creative. He’d designed a full-screen navigation system with a lot of room for images and copy. I wasn’t keen on it, and I adamantly gave him many reasons why it wouldn’t work. When we tested it, however, the participants loved it.

That’s when I realized how safe my work had become. Instead of pushing boundaries, I was trying to fit within the established mold. I wasn’t using ...