Take a minute and listen to Jared Spool. Because there’s a significant shift happening within the design community. We must stop thinking of our users as a target audience – a persona – and someone far away we meet occasionally in interviews and usability tests. We’re not working FOR them; we’re working WITH them, says Jared Spool. He suggests that the user should become a partner in our research rather than an anonymous critic. Where the product development team should look at the relationship with users in the long term and work together continuously. And if we are to work WITH them (rather than FOR them), how does that change our approach?
For us at FeedbackFrog, we manifest it by:
- When recruiting participants, we want to understand what motivates them to participate in usability tests so that you as a designer can work with users who are a good match for your specific needs.
- We have participants with whom we collaborate regularly, enabling our customers to iterate with their users.
- We have an extremely low no-show rate among participants, under 5%. We believe this indicates that participants want and find it rewarding to provide feedback and design products and services they use themselves.
- Do you want to know more about how to work closer to your users in your research work? Read more on our website or send a brief inquiry via our contact form.
