5 reasons why Brexit needed some UX
I know your brain probably switches off when you see the B word by now, so sorry to bring it up again but hear me out. And if you agree give it a clap!
In a moment where we are living in limbo waiting for some sort of decision I can’t help but look back at how it all happened. What was the chain of events that lead to where we are and how can we learn from it? And when I did my first thought was, we could have done with some UX in all of this! Here’s why.
- Doing research for the wrong reasons
It could be argued that the decision to hold a referendum was not taken in the best interests of the UK population (the users). Whatever the outcome, it was likely to be divisive and cause significant tension.
In other words, the decision was driven by organisational needs and not user needs.
It was called because of internal party tensions that had been going on for years. The idea was to call a referendum so that we could close the conversation once and for all — although that plan backfired.
This is like me deciding to do research into banning avocados from brunch menus just because I don’t like them. I am not serving a purpose for the wider population, it’s a self serving reason.
2. Asking the wrong question
When I do a survey or prepare for an interview I need to take multiple factors into account: the audience that I will be targeting, the questions that I would ask them, how those could be interpreted, ensuring that there is no bias etc… The main goal though is that the insight I will collect needs to be enough for me to do something tangible with it and make informed decisions.
Asking if people wanted to leave the EU was not enough. How do you want to leave? Was it a hard Brexit that people wanted? Did they want to be like Sweden? Were they really expressing a general discontent with Westminster instead? The “Leave” answer was just not enough to be able to do anything tangible with. However, the government went full steam ahead drafting a solution based on their own assumption of the “how” people wanted to leave.
This is like me going ahead and asking people, “Have you had enough of hipster ingredients on brunch menus?” When people say “yes” I am none the wiser about what I should do: are they thinking about avocados? Were avocados the real problem all along? Or is it the vegan sausage roll? Could it be the streaky bacon? Despite all of these outstanding questions I am going to say that yes, people have voted and avocados should be banned from all brunch menus!
3. Asking the wrong people
Asking me to vote on something that will have repercussions on pretty much everything (international law, economy, migration, citizenship, foreign relations) is something that I am just not qualified to answer.
It’s like as if I ask a group of cooks, what would you need from an app to record blood pressure? I should be asking a medical audience, they are qualified to answer and they can tell me what the problem is.
4. People weren’t rightly informed
If I haven’t briefed my users properly then their answers are not valuable for my research. Worse still, I could be creating bias in the research.
For instance if I ask my research question as follows:
Avocados are the root of all evil in this country. They destroy the environment, have a huge carbon footprint, involve deforestation and even worse are preventing millennials from buying houses.
With that in mind, would you like to remove avocados from all brunch menus?
You can see that even though the question itself is not biased the context that I added around it will have an effect on the answers that I will get. So in the same way if I think that leaving the EU will save our NHS then I am more likely to say “let’s leave”.
5. Not starting with the insight
After the deal was rejected earlier this month, Theresa May decided to ask all the MPs what sort of Brexit they were supporting. Since we are two months away from the deadline my first thought was “you always start with the research”.
This is the equivalent of me designing a whole app and once it’s complete and people say that they don’t like it I go back and ask them, ‘What did you actually need?’
Turns out the Economist agrees with me, “Parliament cannot agree on what kind of Brexit the people want. Rather than guess, it should ask them.”
So: if I started a research project that didn’t help your purpose, asked the wrong question, to the wrong people, and then miss briefed the participants, would you pay me for the work that I have done?
