Follow up to “Self Design” and falling down the rabbit hole

I’m starting to feel like Alice. I followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and now I’m falling farther and farther into the abyss that is designing without any user data. Let me explain: A few months ago I wrote an article about my experiment in “Self Design” and what a UX designer might do in a sticky situation in which there is no user data for the problem he/she is trying to fix. In my case the interaction we were (and still are) designing was to be sent along a chain of command and to which end users we were not allowed access to poll or consult with; a challenge in itself. As I wrote in my article, I followed my own protocol to test our product and our solutions doing the one thing all UX gurus advise not to do — make myself the primary user. All in all, that stage of design panned out as decently as I could have expected and still remains a viable solution for a designer forced to work in isolation from end users. Even in my limited scope and perspective I was able to identify key usability issues in our product and suggest logical solutions that I believe really will benefit our end users.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the subsequent abyss that accompanies a project with no user input, feedback or data. When a project is devoid of feedback or a true comprehensive understanding of end users (personas and journey maps included) there are also no users through which we can determine the priority of interactions or halt the ever growing list of “must have” elements of the project. Without user data, every user is “the perfect user” who will utilize our tool in the EXACT way we anticipate and is sophisticated enough to utilize all the additional goodies we are adding to make their lives more efficient. At least that’s the trap my managers seem to have fallen into. Without testing, interviews, or even analytics, my PMs and upper management have made the unfortunate mistake of assuming that if THEY find value in an — albeit obscure and complex — interaction there MUST be value for the user and is therefore a necessity to implement before the launch of the product. There is no one to say “This is a cool idea, but I’ll never use it” or “this interaction is too complex for the limited amount of time I have to interact with the product”.

Now this isn’t to say there isn’t value to using one’s own experience and gut to help drive a list of suggested features for users but without actual users to then test these theories with they are all fair game. And a dangerous game when it comes to launching a product in a timely manner. What we end up with is a product with a never-ending, ever growing list of features that get more obscure as interactions get more complex and a timeline that keeps stretching to accommodate these potentially important — but probably not — interactions. And I don’t think my company is alone in this warped reality. On one foot, I would bet that so many well-intentioned but missed-the-point UIs are the products of situations like this. So, in conclusion — though my “self design” experiment was a noble one — I have reiterated to myself (and management) that a product cannot stand alone without its end users. User feedback, on any level, is integral not just in helping identify interaction problems but also in helping drive the direction of the solutions and helping designers understand the hierarchy of their proposed features thus preventing interactions and products that are overly complex. Testing and running ideas by users can not only illuminate issues on a current product but will help curtail a project and keep it simple, clean, intuitive and delivered in this century. For now I am still in mid-fall down this Rabbit Hole but I hope to see the end of it soon. I’ll send a postcard :).