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INTERPRETING USER FEEDBACK<br />
The most recent lesson I have come to learn through the trials of my career is how to<br />
interpret user feedback. The most difficult part is realizing that people often don’t really<br />
know what they want or what they may become just fine with. Lots of Facebook users<br />
might have said they wouldn’t want ads appearing in their news feeds, but most have<br />
adjusted to them readily. Also, sometimes giving users what they want is impossible,<br />
whether because of the programming it would involve or because it conflicts with business<br />
goals, like removing all advertising.<br />
In a recent project for a mobile application I worked on, a series of user tests exposed<br />
an issue with navigation. <strong>User</strong>s expected to dive right into a category after tapping on the<br />
navigation item for it, but tapping actually took them to a scrolling animation that allowed<br />
them to move up or down the page to the corresponding point. The navigation wasn’t a<br />
link to the deeper sections of the product. If I didn’t have a close connection to the product<br />
I might have advised changing the navigation to do just what the user wants. But I knew<br />
that another level of navigation could actually get in the way of how people interacted<br />
with the product overall, because they liked to read in all sorts of categories. We should<br />
always keep in mind that any additive solution fundamentally changes the flow. A deeper<br />
section to the navigation might have led users to lose their place in the app, and that can<br />
cause drop-offs in usage. You often want to reshape user expectations rather than react<br />
directly to their feedback. This can make the difference between users adapting to a<br />
product’s innovations and the product adapting to the users, which can often limit<br />
innovation.<br />
In the example just mentioned, instead of adding in another page and transition, I<br />
redesigned so that when users tap the navigation the scroll highlights the item tapped,<br />
making it easier to scroll to it. As interaction design professionals we have a responsibility<br />
to discover multiple ways of presenting a solution before resorting to a larger design<br />
change.
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