When you’re in a role of UX you tend to have contested territory marked out around you. Everyone around you has an opinion on something that fits within your charter so you in turn have to be the guarded diplomat constantly. I don’t mind heated exchange of ideas, when people get passionate about something they always stand their ground on a topic and make sure their voice is heard clearly and loudly (often without politeness attached). In these situations what I typically have echoing at the back of my brain is a question “do they think or do they know”.
I think something instead of I know something takes on a whole new set of discussion points because if you think something then its just an idea or assumption. If you know something, well chances are you have data points filled with confidence attached, this is good, this tells me straight away there are more clues to be found.
“..The only way you win an argument is if you get the other side to agree with you..”
Is what my dad would say when he & i used to get into the thick of it. Its a fairly simple statement as in the end when you have two opposing ideas on the same problem, well it comes down to either compromise or an impasse. If its an impasse then it probably will come down to the title you have on the day, in my case being Head of User Experience. A title like mine carries some weight that means i can ignore your opinion and proceed onwards without it, but doing so means that i need to qualify my arrogance more.
Being the top-dog in UX land isn’t an excuse to just push past people on their “I think” statements and supplant your “I thinks” ontop. Instead what it means is we have to be more focused on establishing the “I know” statement that absorb the two opposing ideas. My way of thinking is this, when I reach a point where there isn’t any data to support the opinions / ideas its now a case of writing multiple tests to get them fact checked and broken down until we do have the ideas transformed into behaviour facts.
I think the users will not like the start menu removed so don’t touch it.
Now lets remove the start menu is my immediate thought, screw the statement what happens when we do it. I’m assuming there will be some negative blowback but can you imagine the data we can now capture once its removed and how the users react. The users will tell us so much, how they use the menu, where they like it, why they like it there, who they are, what they use and so on.
That one little failure in Windows 8 is a gold mine of data and online there are discussion forums filled with topics / messages that centre around “ I think “ but nobody really has “I know” except Microsoft.
My point is this. If you’re not in a role that has User Experience in its title then fine, knock yourselves out with the back and forth of “I think” arguments. If you are in UX your job is to not settle with “I think” and instead hunt for “I know” for you will always get rewarded.
