Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Observing Your Audience

In the previous two chapters, we established that most people are not product designers. They are hard-pressed to explain what kind of product they need to help them achieve their goals, and they are often unable to correctly evaluate their own feelings about a product. As a result, we can’t just ask people what they want. Instead, we need to figure it out on our own. Job shadowing and contextual interviews are two techniques we can use to do just that.

Who is your audience?

In this chapter, I’m glossing over who to observe, and how many people to observe. The reason is that, well, it depends. It depends on the complexity of your product, on the target audience, on the kind of application it is, and so on. Some basic guidelines: ...