7 Additional Ways to Focus on Users
Post from September 10, 2007 (↻ August 5, 2017), filed under Art and Design.
Smashing Magazine just published my article on 20 (Alternate) Ways to Focus on Users, and not only may I point out the article but even extend it with a few additional methods. A quick bonus level, so to speak.
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“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.
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Competitive product survey: Conduct and compare competitive product evaluations in order to determine product standards and to specify requirements.
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“Quick and dirty” prototyping: Roughly sketch design ideas in order to reveal and test the underlying concepts.
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Rapid ethnography: Spend as much time as possible with people relevant to the topic in order to grasp their behavior.
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Scenarios: Illustrate and describe the context of use for a service in order to identify and evaluate the essence of a design idea.
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Try it yourself: Obviously but sometimes forgotten—use products you are designing in order to get a minimum understanding of the experience that users make.
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Word-concept association: Let people associate words with (design) concepts in order to cluster user perceptions and to range in features.
About Me

I’m Jens Oliver Meiert, and I’m a web developer (engineering manager) and author. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
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Perhaps my most comprehensive book: The Web Development Glossary (2020). With explanations and definitions for literally thousands of terms from Web Development and related fields, building on Wikipedia as well as the MDN Web Docs.
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