Ignoring users at SXSW
I was lucky enough to attend SXSW Interactive this year, and one of the many panels I looked forward to was "Why We Should Ignore Users." I always enjoy a good provocative discussion.
And it certainly was. Actually, much of it was quite reasonable, except for the sadly mistaken Robert Hoekman, who insisted that user research is a waste of time. Why talk with users when you can simply make good design decisions based on your own experience? You can't just ask users what they want and then do that, because users aren't necessarily good at telling you what's best. And you shouldn't waste time creating demographic profiles of users that don't help you make better decisions.
I made a question-that's-really-a-comment toward the end, recommending that Robert fire whatever user researchers he's worked with previously. If he thinks user research consists of simply asking users what they want and then impementing that, then he's been robbed of intelligent peers. If he thinks personas are merely demographic profiles, then he's missing the point about personas. If user research and personas haven't worked for you in the past, maybe it's time to fix them. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There did seem to be a persona backlash in the crowd, I think because the trend in our Web 2.0 universe is to move fast, design for ourselves, and be as agile as possible. While that approach can work, I fear that too often it takes us in the wrong direction. It's very easy to move fast if you don't care what direction you're headed.
My favorite moment was the final comment from Jeremy Kriegel, a former colleague. He referred to the novel Crime and Punishment and the protagonist's perception that there were some people who lived above the law because of their supreme intelligence. Jeremy noted that this is easy to apply to web site creation, where some people consider themselves above the need for understanding users. As Jeremy looks around the web, he sees many web sites created by people who think they are these kinds of geniuses. And yet when one evaluates the resulting sites, it's clear that, well, they're not. Jeremy's question was this: How do I know if I'm one of those people?
You don't.