Reflections on User Research Smoke & Mirrors article

First, I found the series of posts to be insightful and interesting. It touched on many different topics covered within this module and thus some of the thoughts hit home.

The article started with comments on the use of eyetrackers. I've never actually thought of using an eyetracker but could see how the authors "pitfalls" made sense. If you know that someone is looking at something is that enough? I agree that it is solely not enough. You don't know why the user is looking at it, if it is interesting or confusing; two different conclusions that would lead to contradicting results.

I really enjoyed the sections on user research. This is a topic that we covered and focused on in this course: ethnography, card sorting, etc. As a result of this course and other design projects, I feel that user research is a must. I've had design projects completely change do to the feedback and response we receive. A perfect example is the final project for this module; we started expecting to create a credit card solution and ended up creating an online game.

The author of the blog hints that user research gives experienced designers results that they would feel are obvious. This is a point I disagree with. However, I wonder if this is because I am not an "experienced designer". I find that user research gives me insight and a perspective that I could get from nowhere else.

The blog continues to say that user research is useful as a business strategy. I felt that this was a great point! Even if the required design changes are evident, a designer might need the research results in order to push the company to implement the changes.

Another interesting point I felt the blog mentioned was in response to the IDEO video. I watched the IDEO video in one of my design courses and found it to be inspiring. It was slightly unpleasant reading the authors critical remarks; the video is idealized and probably staged but nonetheless designing should be a constraint free process as demonstrated in it. I feel that this is important and especially when innovating a new solution as demonstrated in the video.

All in all, I enjoyed the blog series and particularly enjoyed the opinions shared, whether I agree with them or not. It was a fun read and I would recommend it to anyone in any design industry.