Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Job Shadowing

Since people don’t know what they want, a good approach is to simply observe what they do. The idea of shadowing is to visit users in our target audience at the place where they will use our product. The goal is to find out how our product will help them achieve their goals. This is a bit like doing a usability test, but instead of inviting people to test and telling them what to do, we visit them and observe what they do.

With usability testing, the goal is to find issues with the user interface. When you are shadowing somebody, the goal is to figure out what kind of product to create or how to change your product on a more fundamental level.

• Are there specific tasks that this person is spending a lot of time on?

• Is the person ...