Ep 225| 4 Reasons Why users are important in Design - 6 Steps to understand

In the world of design, we forget why users are important. We also get allude with the technology and the AI which is coming in order to create more user interface and different kind of an experience. But we are really not talking about what the user really needs. In every discussion of design problem, people tend to ignore this topic because we keep human as a last priority. It is actually a human centric design which integrates the technology cost, business viability, everything. Not the other way around. But nobody really cares about what the user wants and then how it can be mapped. Reverse that. Okay, let's jump in. When you take user understanding, first of all, how do you go to the user to understand it? Let me explain you the basics.

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A lot of people know business. Why it is very important because there are a lot of aspects to it. People talk about, have a business plan, I have a technology, I need to put it front. So Google Lens is one such example. It's actually a failure. The reason, because it was not socially trusted. And it's also not cost effective. Let's take HoloLens. It's very expensive, it's not cost effective. So people cannot afford it. Maybe the industries and the big players can afford it. Let's take user centered design. Okay, let's first see the technology aspect. 1984, you'll know Virgin Atlantic. It's actually terrible failure. It's not because of the people or anything, it's because of the technology. The technology barrier was there. People were not able to understand how the technology works. And then some technical error happened. There is something called cost viability. Sometimes the cost is a big factor, affordability for the people. Even though it's technologically front, everything is there. But because if the cost is not there, what happens? People tend to go in a big problem. So how do you really tackle this? How do you draw a circle between this business, this technology and the cost? Let me give you the only way to circle this and cross out the differences to understand user in a more easy way. If you understand your user better, your business will be impacted. Your technology can be leveraged, your business could be driven accordingly. This is a very, very important aspect. People ignore it. If you want to go and understand the people, first you need to understand a word called trust. You need to be very clear on building that initial trust with the people. Then and only you can go and understand the data behind why they're people, why they are requiring what they are requiring, how you can help them, what are the real needs. Okay, you can do it in multiple way you can observe their daily activities. You can have a diary or a scrapbook to note it down, what they're giving. And then you can ask questions to them. Asking questions is a very, very important thing. Art of questioning differentiates you as a designer because you will have generated a lot of insights, like let's say a very qualitative insight. And you will take quantitative insights. So advantages are huge.

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This is by observing the daily activity, you're not just noting down, you're not just asking questions and all, you're just observing also what's happening and how they're answering and how they're doing.

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Or you can do another way to understand, which is called activity. You can give them an activity. Hey, can you open this particular device and take it out? You will not demonstrate it. You'll just give them, while they do it, you observe. Okay? They'll figure it out. Okay, which way to open this way. So that means the user is getting confused with the interface. So the observation is very important. You can give an activity to do it, or you can deliberately do it using an interview process. You can go to the field, you can do online study, you can do a games, you can create an event. Also you can try to play a game and then you can observe from there online. You can use like phone method, zoom call teams. You can send out a questionnaire, make it easily understandable. It should be not more than five minutes. It will be very intriguing for them. So you can understand the zoom call could be not more than 30 minutes. Okay. Phone call not more than five minutes.

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So this could be a very clear strategy for you. So you can use phone method online method events. You can have an unplanned interview. This is very interesting, guys. This is the most, most important I would say, okay? Because people here miss it out very easily. You can have a lunch with them, you can have a tea breaks, you can visit their house, you can visit their office place. You don't have to tell explicitly. You can just tell five minutes before. Hey, I'm coming here. I just wanted to talk with you. I have, I just want to have a lunch with you. You can bring a very kind of a casual discussion that will give out a lot of insights in you. What people say and what people do is very different. They tell you, this is what I do, this is what I follow, this is what I am. But when you change reality, we are humans, we all tend to make that mistake. That's totally fine.

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You can watch in their tea breaks, you can visit Their house. You may be thinking this is the only way to understand the people. No, unplanned interviews are more, more interesting.

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You can dive deep upon qualitative insights. It depends upon the questions you ask. You can do it in teamwork. So, so there are multiple ways to do it. Okay, if you're doing a medical product design, you can have a group of nurses to ask a particular interview or conduct some questions and everything. You can have an individual discussion also with the doctor. Both of this can have you derived qualitative insights from your research. You can confirm it by doing secondary research. It's not like you're observing people. You're giving some activity and taking it out. It's also confirming with the statistics data. You can cross check with online sources. You can do a benchmarking analysis. You can understand comparative analysis. It's not benchmarking. Benchmarking is different. You do it with competitor and other things. But comparative is like, let's say if you're doing 10 people research, seven, eight people are answering one same answer. Three people are answering different. What is that making them? What does that answer? What they gave is a very different thing. So how do I take that insight and drive this project? Or is it ignorable? Sometimes it will be very irrelevant. Also you can ignore, maybe the way in which you ask the question may be different. Maybe the person understanding would be different. Maybe he's not in your target market. So, so that's why it's very important to compare that insight inside your research itself.

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This will lead to the fuzz. You can use very trustable websites like let's say unicef, like let's say National Informatics Center. All these are trusted websites where you can take all this information from them and take the data, take the research, take the insight. Because these people have a real time data put in their websites, okay? And you can use scientific journals like you can use Science Direct, you can use Springer, you can use something like Cambridge Papers, you can use Harvard Business Review. So research journals and other things will be there with you every time. You can take it out from the inside from there, okay? You're inferring the insight of the people and also the secondary research. And then you're understanding this is what my user exactly needs and you can get it, okay? The last important thing is buying data. This is most, most interesting. Guys. These people have did extensive research. McKinsey, Accenture, Forrester, Knockley. These people really keep a lot of data. You can pay them and get some data for your research. That's also a great way to get it because everything can't be available in online Google, ChatGPT and YouTube. Certain datas are with the confidentiality of the industries you can buy them. Let me tell you Naukri gets all of the information and the job related information from us, right? We create account in Naukri. They make their revenues 80 to 85 percentage by selling this data to the recruiters. That's their job. So you can get a premium Nakri account and also get to have some insights how people are getting hired, how what recruiters really wants, what they don't want, how I can structure your resume. See this is the power of having the data. So data is new oil. We all know that but this is what it is. Once if you're able to do the primary research once if you're able to do the secondary research once if you're able to do unplanned interview, observing activities, everything, then you will see what is really needed from a user. Once that need is clear then you can go and see the business viability. Then you can see how the technology is blending, then you can make it cost affordable and then you will see a huge difference happening in the success of your product. I hope this would have made a lot of sense for you. If you're resonating with me, type out in this comment what did you like about this video? What did you learn from this video and where do you differ? Are you going from a business angle? Are you going from a technology angle? Are you going from a use a centric angle and how does it make a big difference? And if you're able to do this then this will create a significant improvement in your thought process of your design. I wish you all the best. Take care and let me know what you think about this.