Article — — 2,559 words

Business — User experience — User research

A basic diagram of a desert, with multiple sand dunes visible in the distance. The furthest-away sand dune has a blue flag on top

I have long been an advocate of agile ways of working. One of the things that originally drew me to user experience was the opportunity to have evidence-based ways of understanding the changes you need to make. So I was surprised whenever I encountered people who believed that user experience methods ran counter to the principles of agile.

Linknote — — 239 words

Business — Service design

Work:

From 40 sets of ideas to one in 20 minutes — A collaboration experiment with the Web Publishing Community — Website and Communications Blog

Liberating Structures leaflet designed by Open Change

Here’s another post I published to my team’s blog over the summer and forgot to link to from here.

Back in June, I ran an experiment in mass remote collaboration at our Web Publishing Community. This was, of course, at the height of lockdown, as we were adapting to the new reality of a prolonged period of working from home.

[I’d come away from the Service Design in Government conference](https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/website-communications/three-highlights-from-service-design-in-government-2020/) in March really keen to try out [liberating structures](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/), following an excellent [session run by Open Change](https://www.openchangeacademy.co.uk/liberating-structures).

Liberating structures is a set of workshop tools designed to include everyone and generate innovative ideas. These are ideally carried out with people who are physically together, so it was a little awkward when I wanted to try them out just at the moment everyone was required to be physically apart.

But some liberating structures are possible to run remotely, so I decided to introduce a large number of colleagues to a foundational liberating structure — [1-2-4-all](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/).

Through this session, we collaboratively sifted through ideas generated by over 40 participants, before coming to a consensus on the one strongest idea.

[Read the blog post for the full details of how it worked — and what went wrong](https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/website-communications/from-40-sets-of-ideas-to-one-in-20-minutes-a-collaboration-experiment-with-the-web-publishing-community/).

Linknote — — 197 words

Business — User experience — User research

Ignore the customer experience, lose a billion dollars (Walmart case study) — Good Experience

This case study would be seen by some as a reason not to understand users at all. “If I asked users what they wanted, they’d say faster horses. Hurr hurr.”

In fact, like the idea of faster horses, it demonstrates how important it is to understand your users in the right way, not just pay lip service to doing so.

Badly-designed user research leads respondents to certain responses. This is often unintentional — avoiding bias is difficult.

Sometimes it’s intentional. Perhaps the survey designer has a pet idea. They might (subconsciously) skew the questions in a certain way to get the answers they want.

A classic example is asking someone if they would like a certain feature to be added to a product. The answer is almost always: “Er, yes, I suppose so.” People think they like choice, so more features sounds good. But in reality, too many features — or too much choice — leads to choice paralysis and greater frustration.

The lesson isn’t to ignore user research. But be aware of your biases. Be wary of surveys as a methodology. And don’t simply ask people what they want. Instead, understand what they do, and why they do it.

Linknote — — 200 words

Business — User experience — User research

Undemocratising user research — Saswati Saha Mitra — UX Collective

A magic triangle: "Choose two between sustainability, scale and quality"

This piece really challenged my thinking.

In my job I am currently trying to figure out ways to make quality user research scale across the organisation in a sustainable manner. It’s like one of those triangular diagrams outlining three goals: “you can have two of these things”.

Working in such a large organisation, central resources inevitably have their limits. My desire is to empower others to carry out their own user research. Our role becomes an education role. How we do that remains an unsolved problem. Various attempts have yielded variable results.

But Saswati Saha Mitra, reflecting on her experiences of trying to democratise user research, suggests that it is a bad idea.

A researcher is a dynamic thinker who has to adapt their methods and questions based on who is in front of them, how much they have already learnt and what new areas could be probed on. This did not happen. We got a lot of verbatim and videos which after a point became repetitive and did not add more to the analysis. This then led to analysis paralysis.

I’m inclined to continue trying to empower others to conduct user research. But this article is food for thought.

Linknote — — 79 words

Business — Human-centred approaches

McKinsey: CEOs have no clue what chief design officers do — Mark Wilson — Fast Company

Picture of a hipster drinking coffee with headphones hanging of a massive Mac screen. I guess that's what a designer is.

Talk about designers “having a seat at the table” generally leaves me cold. But this useful article explains why it can matter — but why designers have a duty to do more than simply be at the table.

Evidence has long suggested that companies with a strong design focus are more successful. The example of Logitech outlined here bears that out.

But if some CEOs don’t understand the value of design, it’s up to designers to articulate it properly.

Linknote — — 74 words

Business — Web

Opera: Phantom of the Turnaround — Hindenburg Research

Screenshot of one of Opera's predatory loan apps from the Google Play store

If you still have the Opera web browser installed anywhere, now might be the time to stop.

With its browser business in decline, cash flow deteriorating (and balance sheet cash finding its way into management’s hands…), Opera has decided to embark on a dramatic business pivot: predatory short-term lending in Africa and Asia.

The article goes on to outline evidence of some seriously dodgy practices. What a sad end to the Opera story.

Linknote — — 56 words

Accessibility — Business — Human-centred approaches

Accessible polling cards: Keeping it low-tech — Lizzie Cass-Maran — Website and Communications Blog

Polling cards of different colours and shapes

How do you make participation in workshops and training sessions as accessible as possible? My colleague Lizzie Cass-Maran has created these low-tech voting cards (using letters, colours and shapes to include as many people as possible) that are easy to make yourself — and a lot less fiddly than some of the technology solutions out there.