Conversation

UXR... have you ever done skilled, moderated usability testing of a design ... exposed major problems in the design ... had the fixes shot down (maybe someone wanted to be *bold*, or "just ship it") ...shipped it as is ...and it actually turned out fine?
25
52
Replying to
I guess it depends what you mean by “fine”. I’ve definitely seen teams ignore the results of usability tests. The issues they identified still happened. However the bulk of users managed to struggle through. They ended up slightly more annoyed, but task completion remained high.
4
21
Replying to and
But it’s a fair point: you can almost always find usability issues, and you’re almost always going to have to launch with some, and it’s not always obvious which are truly critical. On top of that, some issues are very time consuming or complex to fully solve. Experience helps.
2
10
True. Also "Shot down" is highly emotive language. An alternate framing is "weighed up the potential problems against the opportunity cost, and decided that even if there are inherent usability issues, it made business sense to launch anyway"
1
6
Replying to and
So true! It’s classic Fundamental Attribution Error First: if you saw the facts, you’d agree with me. Then: oh you see the facts but don’t agree? You must be too stupid to understand Then: oh you understand fully but don’t agree? You must be evil. Pure tribal thinking
1
15
When designers gripe that our colleagues refuse to prioritize UX issues as highly as we think they should, we need to update our beliefs. When they refuse to accept our assessment that the issues exist at all, they are burdening us with persuasion we should not have to do.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @andybudd @johncutlefish and @vgr
And a lot of design rhetoric goes towards, “how can I persuade others to see it my way?” Much less goes towards, “hang on, what if it’s ME that needs to update my beliefs?” Ironically, it’s when you come in truly open to you being wrong that you start to be able to influence
3
7
IME designers tend to resist thinking in terms of probabilities and risks if they are sensitive to them at all. Design is a binary to most of you — it either has integrity or is somehow philosophically compromised.
1
7
PMs and engineers more naturally think in terms of probability that something will matter and the costs if it does. Designers and infosec people tend to be on the other side. Everything is either perfect or a showstopper. PMs own risk so typically have their way.
2
5
Show replies
Strongly agreed, actually. The important distinction is between when the team decides that other considerations outweigh UXD (which is often) versus when the rest of the team decides that designers are wrong about what would be the best UXD (which happens too often).
Quote Tweet
Indeed, heaven forbid UX designers always get their way in shaping the product. That would be unbalanced and wrong. cooper.com/journal/2001/1? 4
Show this thread
1
2