rave
User Research Has your organization drunk the
as Kool-Aid
drink the Kool-Aid, v. To
become a firm believer in
something; to accept an argu-
ment or philosophy whole-
heartedly or blindly.
This phrase stems from the 1978
“Jonestown massacre” in which
members of the Peoples Temple cult
committed suicide by drinking
cyanide-laced Kool-Aid (although
some say the drink of choice was
actually Flav-R-Aid) [1].
ALIEN USABILITY Nevin Berger
: / 88 i n t e r a c t i o n s
Kool-Aid yet?
There’s no lack of references
for the value of user research. It
has, thankfully, become quite easy
to find a qualified consultant who
can convince upper management
that listening to customers, and
then doing something about what
you hear, is good for the bottom
line.
We will warn that deferring
your product decisions to the
vagaries of a select number of cus-
tomers probably reflects a lack of
vision and focus on your part.
Setting that aside for the moment,
nothing could please us more than
seeing evidence of traction for
user research in software develop-
ment.
Jonathan Grudin and Steve
Poltrock, in their CSCW tutorials at
SIGCHI conferences, have been
telling us for years that we should
not be designing systems for our-
selves: We are most likely not
going to be representative of the
majority of the system’s eventual
users. Our biases reflect our train-
ing and experiences in a way that
is unlikely to match those of our
users. Encouraging user research
points product development down
a potentially satisfying and remu-
nerative path.
Product designs leap forth
full-formed from only a few known
foreheads in our universe (an
herewith a gracious nod to Steve
Jobs). For the rest of us, we know
/ m a r c h + a p r i l
that interaction design requires
interacting with others to get it
right. While the interfaces we
design are the seams between
users and systems, the interaction
we design connects people to their
work, their play, and other people.
You have to actually talk to them
to understand what they want and
how they think. Where ten years
ago “ethnography” was a mysteri-
ous pith-helmet undertaking, today
“customer research” is embraced
as a valuable part of the product
development life cycle. Customer
research takes the form of direct
observation via field work, site vis-
its, customer “follow-me’s,” usabil-
ity tests, focus groups, and inter-
views. These direct methods sup-
plement customer feedback, sur-
veys, market research, and com-
petitive analysis. While none of
this is new, what is new is that
from C-level management down to
product-support technicians, we
see a healthy interest in what the
customer thinks and wants.
This isn’t to say that intuition
is dead and we should all dust off
our anthropology books and “go
native.” What we mean to say is
that we hold the principle of
design for use in high regard. We
see increasing evidence that soft-
ware development companies are
adopting methods that include
specific strategies for understand-
ing the user (personas), the use
(continued on page 87)
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 ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
produced by the Sci-Fi Television
Channel. Robinson discussed how
science-fiction writers use the lat-
est scientific information about
Mars to construct visions of what
could happen with life on the red
planet. And visions of the future
were not hard to conjure, with a
room full of science-fiction
authors and aficionados, and
plenty of hard science as well.
i n t e r a c t i o n s
KOOL-AID
(continued from page 88)
(use cases and scenarios), and the
subjective contextual value that a
product delivers. So much so, in
fact, that user centered design has
become a rather unexamined
shorthand for user research that
can easily become conflated with
market-driven design. We work for
companies that place high value
on interacting with users through-
out the design and development
process. We frequently observe an
enormous data-collection effort
that delivers very little value:
There’s often no deliverable from
user research that generates
design decisions, and the research
is done for research’s sake. (How
often have you seen just the most
favorable user anecdotes extracted
from a report to support a particu-
lar position?) But that’s not user
research’s only value. Another
considerable value is the recogni-
tion your company can derive
from being known for working
directly with users. And yet anoth-
er value is the opportunity you get
when your company embraces
user research: You can empathize,
/ m a r c h
rather than sympathize, with your
users, and develop your listening
and observing skills. This serves
us all in the area of “works well
with others.”
The next time your project
engineer slips quickly out of his
first usability test to “fix” your
design, or the next time you see
your project manager allocate one
week for user research (never
mind time for analysis!), or the
next time your entire team
descends (bag lunches in hand) on
a user’s workplace to make some
all-day observations, or indeed,
the next time your CEO misuses
the concept of user research, be
grateful they drank the Kool-Aid.
Once they start enjoying the Kool-
Aid, you can introduce more fla-
vors. And if they don’t immediately
understand how to use the
research, do your part to assist. It’s
at least refreshing to hear the
Kool-Aid talking. —<eic>
REFERENCE 1. McFredries, P. (2002). Drink
the Kool-Aid. The Word Spy. Retrieved on
February 1, 2005 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.wordspy.com/words/drinkthe
Kool-Aid.asp
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