Putting Users in Context: How Sociology Enhances our UX Practice
Jody Ahlm, PhD & Danielle Giffort, PhD
In the world of UX, the user reigns supreme. UXers are on a mission to figure out what makes users tick, blending insights from diverse fields to delve into their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But here’s the thing: users are social creatures and don’t exist in a bubble; they are part of a larger web of interactions and structures that influence their experiences. This kind of thinking forms the backbone of sociology.
We might be a bit biased (okay, we definitely are), but we believe that sociology offers untapped potential for understanding how users are impacted by their social context. By embracing sociological perspectives, we can create more inclusive, engaging, and socially responsible experiences that resonate with users on a deeper level.
So what is sociology, anyway?
Sociology in a nutshell
At its core, the sociological perspective recognizes that our experiences are not isolated phenomena, but rather, embedded within broader social contexts. It acknowledges that our choices, preferences, and behaviors are not solely determined by personal inclinations, but are profoundly influenced by the societal forces that surround us. Things we take for granted as timeless and universal are actually “socially constructed.” They are the product of a specific culture at a specific time.
Sociologists use qualitative and quantitative research methods to unravel the dynamics of social relationships, including the norms that guide our behaviors and interactions with one another. They investigate how social order is created and maintained, while also exploring how social conflicts emerge and resolve — and importantly, how this stability and change impacts our everyday experiences. Put differently, sociologists examine the big picture to explain individual actions.
When applied to user experience, the sociological perspective can reveal how cultural norms, power dynamics, and societal expectations — among other things — influence how we engage (or don’t) with different products and services.
Seeing the user through a sociological lens
Don Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things remains a foundational work for the field of User Experience. In it he took a psychological concept of “affordances” and applied it to the practice of design. When we talk about affordances in UX we’re typically talking about what a technology allows a user to do. But we’ve all been in an interview session where a participant described a use case that the product designers never imagined. Or attempted to test the usability of a feature that, it turns out, no one uses, and no one wants. What’s possible with a technology, then, isn’t merely an effect of its affordances. It’s the convergence of what users bring to the product and the technical capabilities a product offers to the user. Put another way, affordances only matter if they have meaning. And as Sociology reminds us, creating meaning is a collective endeavor.
Users don’t engage with technology in isolation, even when we bring them into a lab, give them a device and ask them to complete a set of predetermined tasks. They bring with them their social self. You might say they have baggage. Imagine a participant walking into your lab with a suitcase that says, “Beauty Standards” or “Workplace Norms.” A participant’s “Neighborhood” backpack might limit their participation since where you live shapes access to resources like transportation and internet connectivity. Backpacks are also full of participants’ past experiences, such as online harassment. Maybe their fannypack says “Family Memories,” because even if a participant comes alone, they bring a little bit of their social network with them. Depending on your study, some of these may be more salient than others, but never assume your participants show up empty handed.
What does this sociological lens look like in practice? Let’s take some examples from our own Ipsos HF/UX team to see what this looks like in action:
Looking at social context to find the why behind user behaviors:
When creating digital avatars, our team found that many users prefer ones that reflect aspects of themselves, including their appearance, personality, and identities. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean making an exact clone. During conversations with avatar users, we uncovered the ways in which users bring culturally-influenced ideas of attractiveness and status into their digital worlds when creating an avatar. They consider things like other people’s reactions to their gender presentation or assumptions others have made about their racial and ethnic identity.
When we do any research, but especially international or cross-cultural work, we have to be careful not to implicitly project our own social constructs onto participants through the way we frame questions. As researchers in the United States, we are embedded in a culture that prizes “authenticity” of self. It’s easy for such an ubiquitous cultural value to seep into our research questions and our discussion guides. If it does, we end up biasing our data and missing out on what really matters to users. Even more tempting is to apply our own meanings to the data during analysis. A sociological lens asks us to take a step back and consider the user in their social context. It’s possible for two users to want an avatar to be relatively accurate to their real-life appearance, but for different reasons: to stand out, or to fit in. And it’s that “why” that makes good UX insights so powerful.
Thinking about context-based meanings when designing:
Online recurring payments are commonplace — from mortgage payments and loan repayments to subscription services and membership fees. So, what about a similar feature for donating? After all, different platforms regularly adopt similar design elements to create familiarity and meet expectations — sociologists even have a fancy-smancy word for this kind of mimicry: institutional isomorphism. But when we showed donors a recurring donation feature in a social media fundraiser hub, some reacted negatively. On the surface, these donors described already feeling overwhelmed by the number of subscription-based services they pay each month and were reluctant to add another item to their list.
But digging deeper, we found that many felt that the recurring donation option “cheapened” donating by reducing it to a thoughtless transaction on par with, say, paying their cable bill. One sociological take on this reaction comes from symbolic interactionism, a theory that emphasizes the significance of context in how we interpret and understand symbols (think: words, gestures, or actions). Put differently, the meaning we attach to symbols is not fixed but shaped by the norms and expectations of a particular context or setting. Taking a sociological perspective, we see that what initially seems like a personal preference is actually influenced by larger cultural ideas about charitable giving. In this example, for some users, donating to a charity holds a different meaning than paying for a service or fee, causing them to have a different reaction to the same feature (e.g., online recurring payments) being used fora different purpose (e.g., donating). Thinking sociologically can help us create more impactful designs by considering how contextual meanings impact user perceptions.
By integrating sociological approaches into UX, we can uncover valuable insights that more individual-focused approaches may miss. Through a sociological lens, we gain a deeper understanding of the intricate web of interactions and structures that underlie user experiences, opening up new directions for designing more meaningful, impactful, and empathetic digital experiences.
Jody Ahlm is a Senior UX Researcher at Ipsos and holds a PhD in Sociology from University of Illinois Chicago. She has written on a variety of sociological topics, including how social context affects technology use, and taught undergraduate Sociology courses for five years before joining the Ipsos UX team.
Danielle Giffort is a Senior UX Researcher at Ipsos and holds a PhD in Sociology from University of Illinois Chicago. Prior to joining Ipsos, she was a tenured Associate Professor at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, where she taught introductory and medical sociology courses for 7 years. She has written on a variety of sociological topics, including the social production of medical knowledge in her book, Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the Quest for Medical Legitimacy.
