Human Factors + User Research Strategist + Facilitator
design + user advocacy
Field Notes from Inside the Room
series:
Vol. 1: Think About It...
Five foundational principles of UX research and experience design advocacy – the ones that sound obvious until you watch a team ignore them. These hard-won reminders for anyone doing this work when it matters most.
"These are yours." Download the full Field Notes from Inside the Room, Vol. 1 PDF. Share it with your team, use it in your next session, or just keep it handy as a reminder.
If this set of “Field Notes” (Vol. 1) resonated – or if you'd like to talk about my take, or your own, or about research, facilitation, or bringing design thinking into your organization – I’d enjoy talking to you.
If there is a customer experience mantra, this is it. “You are not the user.” From my time at Boeing, our halls and our calls were filled with expertise… we all knew people who used work at an airline, or used to serve in the military, or maybe they’d been working with our exact target persona for years. And that’s a fine place to start. But things change. Fast. After six months or so in any company, you begin thinking through that lens. It is inevitable. It is human nature. This is why we talk to users... the people who actually do the job we’re interested in. So, for all the hopefully obvious reasons, get out and talk to the people that do the job, or use the tool – and don’t use this golden opportunity to just validate your ideas… investigate the challenge! And while we’re at it, one user isn’t enough. You want to seek out several users at least (same role, different experience, different demographics), otherwise you run the risk of a designing an application for one person, or in our case, one airline. If you take anything away from this, remember “You are not the User! Or if you’re looking for a new tattoo… this is a good one.
What is the False-Consensus Effect? This effect refers to people’s tendency to assume that others share their beliefs and will behave similarly in a given context. Only people who are very different from them would make different choices. The false-consensus effect was first defined in 1977 by Ross, Greene, and House. They showed that unlike scientists, “layperson psychologists” (that is, all of us who are put into the position to guess how others would behave) tend to overestimate how many people share their choices, values, and judgments, and perceive alternate responses as rare, deviant, and more revealing of the responders. Much in the same way, we, designers, developers, and UX researchers assume that people who will use our interfaces are like us. We have one example of someone using the interface: it’s us. And maybe our colleagues. And we make generalizations based on that example. So only someone who’s stupid or very different than us could actually fail to figure it out. Wrong. We are wrong believing that, but it’s important to understand that we are no worse human beings for doing so. It’s deeply weaved into our nature to believe that others are like us. So, what’s a fallible human being to do? And how about a fallible designer or software developer? The answer is simple. Learn about this bias. Acknowledge it. And then do something to overcome it. When it comes to user interfaces, the answer is simpler than in other avenues of life: Test. With real users (not your colleagues). Know who your users are and how they respond to your designs by watching them use these designs. Don’t make assumptions. Acknowledge your vulnerability and establish checks. Don’t validate; instead investigate. Study with your actual target users whenever the slightest doubt is involved. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/false-consensus/
I routinely include a two-part Assumptions and Obstacles exercise in my research and workshop strategy. It's a crucial and under-explored vulnerability in most team's approach to product or service design. Assumptions can prevent us from chasing improvements before we've even started – because we've already decided that an improvement or innovation is impossible. But what if it's not? Surface them first. Ask your team: What assumptions are you laboring under about the current state of this project? What are you taking for granted as fact but honestly can't be certain about? Current state and future state assumptions are entirely different animals and must be addressed individually. Assumptions come in all flavors; Some can be technical, others are perceptual – they can be about user needs, pain points, organizational constraints, or what your infrastructure can and can't support. Many are never spoken aloud. That's the problem. If you want to have a genuine discussion about Assumptions, honesty is essential. It can feel uncomfortable to lay assumptions bare in a group setting, so establish early that you are in a safe space – a place where all assumptions, opinions and concerns are welcome, because the assumptions that go unexamined are the ones that do the most damage (more on Safe Spaces and HiPPOs in another Field Notes set). Once you’ve surfaced your Assumptions, do something with them. Tear down the inaccurate ones. Relearn and redirect. Honestly analyzing your team's assumptions can reveal hidden but conquerable dependencies, help shape requirements, and point everyone toward innovations that seemed impossible five minutes ago. The goal: make the invisible visible.
This is such a common mistake, and it is so easily corrected by embracing design thinking… leave your preconceptions and your ego at the door. Talk to users, understand their tasks and their challenges, and design the right solution for them based on the data. Data doesn't take sides. It doesn't play favorites, and it doesn’t have a political allegiance, or a career to protect. That's exactly what makes it your most powerful tool in a room full of opinions. Sure, during usability testing and user interviews you may learn you've made a wrong turn — but that's good news. And you've learned it in time to pivot. This is why human-centered design must precede and accompany all phases of the product design process. Stay ahead of the revelations and you've eliminated costly rework – this is especially problematic when coding has already started and the team is emotionally and financially invested in a direction. And when someone demands a course of action on a hunch, you don't have to argue. Let the data decide. Ask a representative sampling of your users, and the resulting data will be the only argument you need. Data doesn't have an agenda. But it will absolutely take a side.
Storytelling is the through-line of a mature design thinking process. It's not about fiction – but it's all about characters, their desires, and their challenges. If the idea of storytelling makes you uncomfortable, or you think you've outgrown it, I'd push back on that instinct pretty hard. Storytelling is not a soft skill. It's a strategic instrument. Engage your active listening and your empathy to get started. Customers tell us their stories during the Empathize and Define phases of design thinking, and then we design tools and technology that reflect their workflows – their stories – back to them. Not only do we get it right, but we show them we're listening by getting it right. One of the most powerful phrases in any research session is deceptively simple: "Say more about that." It's not a question – it's an invitation. It keeps the door open without leading the witness, and it almost always surfaces something you wouldn't have thought to ask about directly. Listen. Don't sell or defend. And when in doubt – say more about that. Storytelling in product design, innovation, and leadership is the powerful differentiator between innovators and everyone else.
It's important to remember that the definition of "products" is expansive. As we design APIs, services, and applications, we need to think about the totality of user experience – including those without a traditional interface. No-UI encompasses the research and design of transparent or non-visual interactions… AI assistants, conversational interfaces and chatbots, haptic and sensory feedback (like when your smartwatch vibrates to signal a notification), vocal and auditory interfaces (Siri, Alexa, and their growing successors), and increasingly, ambient AI that anticipates needs before a user even articulates them. This is no longer a niche consideration. As AI reshapes how people interact with technology, often removing the interface entirely, the question isn't whether there's a screen to design – it's whether there's a user whose experience matters. Unless you’re building a machine that only talks to another machine, …there is! So whatever you're working on, whatever your next great idea or project is – you may not need a traditional interface, but there's always an experience, and always an impact on the user. Consider that entire journey through the lens of design thinking: research, interviews, data, benchmarks, validation, iterative design, and more. No UI. You still need UX. Make it better.
Field Notes from Inside the Room
series:
Vol. 2: Facilitation & Workshops
The mechanics of running a room — reading energy, managing the X-Factor, building psychological safety, knowing when to push and when to hold back. This is where your design sprint and Innovator Days experience lives, and it's an underserved topic on LinkedIn compared to research methodology.