When laughing means learning
As a client attending a research fieldwork, listening what you already know is boring. As everybody else, you would say.
Having confirmation of what you imagined or guessed is more useful.
Listening to people telling new motivations of doing things you know enlarges your perception and helps you find new growth drivers (new arguments, new way to contact people, new added value…).
You’re right to think that a valuable usertest makes you learn something.
Being shaked in its beliefs is good. It’s a surviving process.
And sometimes, as a company, when you did not expect such words from a respondent, such behavior from a consumer, such way of thinking or such interaction with a device from a user, you laugh. It means you are surprised. The laugh is caused by the gap between what you thought your user would do and what he really does. Youdid not expect that kind of perception, that kind of browsing, that kind of logic, the way to use the content. The laugh reveals something not expected.
It forces you to put your beliefs aside. That’s why laughing means learning.
Laughing, it’s being pushed away from the high speed train of your beliefs. It forces you to stop in a station you did not even know the existence. And if the job is well done during the interview, it invites you to visit the neighbourghood.
And don’t be afraid, your train of beliefs will wait for you. That is the only train you will never ever miss. You know why ? Because you are the pilot.
We use to say that the laugh breaks down barriers between people and is a good way to solve problem. It’s also true here, in usability testing : the laugh breaks down the barriers between you and your costumers (or users).
The laugh could takes different forms : an explosion, a shared one, a stifled one, a short one or just a smile mouth closed. There is no rule for a laugh. It’s beyond control and anticipation. You don’t build a foolish 5 years plan to make it true and experience it.
Make them take the best of their laugh
A this point, the mission of the survey institut (or the UX agency) is to exploit that laugh, put a meaning behind it. It’s about making a valuable insight grom a natural and healthy attitude. We help our clients to understand what they just heared or saw. The laugh brings them closer to the truth (or at least reality) only if someone is there with them to make it a sustainable learning.
We use to say to our client : “Keep it with you and go back to your train to share your experience with your team, your company, every body who is involved in making your users feel good”. Use your laugh and your learning to go to the next step.
If I could go back in time and tell my younger me, I would tell him “let your client laugh, it’s good, it’s not mockery. They are learning something. Help them to have a full awareness of it”.
