Week4 Reading Response
The Product Person #37: Talking to Users
Anthony Diké Jan 5, 2021
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This short article resonated with me because I found my way of the interview was wrong. I have always tried to clearly explain my project and design goal to the users. However, this article says we should be good listeners first rather than talking about our ideas and hypotheticals. To extract useful data to improve your product and marketing, we have to focus on understanding our customers.
This article suggests five useful questions for any user interview. I think these questions are very helpful especially when we design something that helps solve a problem and make a change. The five questions include the hardest part of the issue, the time it happens, the reason that the user finds it hard, the user’s effort to solve it, and the thing that the user does not like about the solution. These are basically about the user and the problem. By asking those questions, we can gain context and clarity about when and how often the problem is encountered, whether the user tried to solve it, and where the current solutions fail.
I have been working on garments for disabled people and tried to listen to their experiences regarding clothing barriers. But I had my own design goal and often failed to focus on their true needs. For example, when I was working on a multi-purpose raincoat for wheelchair users, I started by explaining my design ideas to the disabled model while she might have needed a well-tailored evening dress. I think I have to be a good listener and observer first to collect useful data from users and make my design more successful.
