A Rare Experiment With “Self Design”
Addressing the “Design Vacuum” Conundrum
Thankfully, as a UX designer, I rarely have to design in a vacuum. I have myriads of testing tools, prototyping tools, simulation tools and customer contact lists at my fingertips to make sure that my designs are tested until they can be tested no more. And then tested again. But I digress. Though it happens infrequently — as many statisticians can attest to — there’s always that margin of error — that 0.1% chance — I do come up against a design project with no customer feedback or information; and then my question becomes: what now?
Becoming My Own Audience
Rule #1 of UX design is: you are not the target market. You know the old idiom “you know what happens when you assume…” This holds very true for UX design. Know your target audience, do your research, test your findings and design smartly. But what is a UX designer supposed to do in those moments when we find ourselves designing in a vacuum? I was forced to ask that question of myself when I received my most recent assignment. For various reasons the project given to me — though the end product would be customer facing — was completely divorced from user context or feedback and was being dictated solely by an internal partner who wanted to see it signed, sealed and delivered as quickly as possible. (We can debate from now until the end of time as to whether or not we should be encouraging tasks like that but — since I still need to pay my mortgage — sometimes it comes down to doing what the boss tells me needs to get done.) After asking all the questions I could of the product owner (in this case: my boss’ boss) I was then tasked with the challenge of setting out to see how much practical data I could collect and did something I try to never do: I made myself the primary user. Jared Spool refers to this type of designing as “Self Design” (5 Design Decision Styles. What’s Yours?). It is an uncomfortable place for designers to find themselves because it’s extremely hard to look beyond our own experiences and design effectively for an environment we can’t immerse ourselves in or at least become familiar with. Yet, when the need arises, using yourself as the primary test subject for a design can sometimes provide real world context for design decisions when none exists otherwise. This seemed like the best solution to my current vacuum dilemma.
Self-Design Strategy
Though I normally do UX audits before any redesign, this time — sitting down to test our software — I knew that my reactions to the product would serve as much more consequential user data than they normally do. So I put myself in the proverbial testing chair and studied my own behavior as I clicked through our existing information. I filled out the questions on the forms, noted my own annoyance and/or pleasure at the various existing interactions. I described (to myself) what I liked seeing on the screen and which interactions or additions to the product might make my job easier if I were the target user. I went through the processes on the screen from start to finish — meticulously inputting information from a spreadsheet as any user would and simulating the users’ behavior to the best of my abilities — trying my best to ignore any preconceived notions or biases I had towards the existing design. Then I moved on to comparable products out in the real world. I signed up for and tested numerous other existing, similar products available online; not as a UX designer doing research and looking for inspiration but as a one of our customers trying to complete the same task using these various platforms. And at the end of the process — imperfect as it was — I had real user data to work with. I had use cases to turn to and indicate pain points in our current design and a list of features to suggest for streamlining the processes in our product to be considered in our redesign.
Am I sure that what bothered or delighted me while using our platform are the same components that frustrate or thrill our users? Hard to tell. I am still a designer, sitting at a desk in my office, probably situated in a completely different environment than the one in which our typical user functions. But, by testing myself, I gave myself some context as a starting point from which I could begin the design process; and that’s definitely better than nothing. Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze some real user data out of this project as we release features and updates to our customers. But until then, this “user” is excited to start implementing design changes to our platform and to see how relevant my instincts truly were when the real data starts to come in. Hopefully I wasn’t too off the mark but until then, I believe, designing with imperfect user information definitely beats designing in a black hole.
