Jens Oliver Meiert

7 Additional Ways to Focus on Users

Published on Sep 10, 2007 (updated Jun 13, 2024), filed under . (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

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.

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on November 9, 2024.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)