7 Additional Ways to Focus on Users

Published on September 10, 2007 (↻ October 17, 2021), filed under (RSS feed).

Smashing Magazine just published my article on 20 [Alternative] Ways to Focus on Users, and not only do I like to point to the article, I also like to extend it. A quick bonus level, so to speak.

  1. “A day in the life”: Compile the activities and conditions that users experience over an entire day in order to derive design decisions for everyday life products.

  2. Competitive product survey: Conduct and compare competitive product evaluations in order to determine product standards and to specify requirements.

  3. “Quick and dirty” prototyping: Sketch design ideas in order to uncover and test the underlying concepts.

  4. Rapid ethnography: Spend as much time as possible with people relevant to the topic in order to understand their behavior.

  5. Scenarios: Illustrate and describe the context of use of a service in order to identify and evaluate the essence of a design idea.

  6. Try it yourself: Sometimes missed, use the products you are designing in order to get a minimum understanding of the experience that users make.

  7. Word-concept association: Let people associate words with (design) concepts in order to cluster user perceptions and to range in features.

Toot about this?

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on September 30, 2021.

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma. I love trying things, not only in web development, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (where applicable) or a message.