3 Life Lessons I Learned From Usability Testing
At 35 years old, there are still a million lessons I have left to learn from life. As a User Experience professional, I find myself in the unique position to filter some of these learnings through the eyes of others. While moderating usability tests, I’ve stumbled upon three significant lessons that have stuck with me. The kind that apply from 9 to 5, and echo past 6 o’clock. They surface in my work and relationships and teach me more about myself.
1. The more invested you are, the less you listen.
Remember that girlfriend or boyfriend everyone told you was a bad idea? But you stuck with them anyway? Or that college paper you stayed up all night writing, only to get a disappointing C+?
Passion and enthusiasm can sometimes blind us. Investing our time and effort into something can unintentionally validate our expectations.
After spending hours writing that paper, you were convinced it read like Shakespeare. You needed it to be great. But, if someone handed it to you today, without knowing it was yours, you would probably rate it as mediocre.
Let’s face it, not every idea can be a winner. The longer you spend working on something, whether a relationship or a project, the more attached you become and the less likely you’ll be to accept negative feedback. After a day, you’re receptive to feedback. After 3 months, you’re committed.
So, when testing, test early and test often. In life, the simple realization that your perception may change over time is a powerful insight.
2. That awkward silence is only awkward for you.
It’s not uncommon to walk into a room with people and stay silent. Who talks first? Do you talk first? Do they? Some people pick up on subtle cues and wait for the right time or the right thing to say. Other people speak to fill the void and cut through the silence.
Silence fuels our imaginations. We associate it with anxiety, uncertainty and hesitation.
As a moderator, when asking a stranger questions, you optimistically hope their response will come quickly, eloquently, and be full of insights. And then they say “ummm, yea… I guess…”
So, you scramble, rush to fill the silence and try to finish their sentence. You’re just trying to help them along. Except now you may have inadvertently high-jacked their thoughts and led them down a path they weren’t sure about. Observing and respecting silence is critically important.
As in life, if you can become comfortable waiting, you can make very effective use of silence.
3. You learn more from failure than you do from success.
Successful people often say they couldn’t have gotten to where they are without making a few mistakes. That may be because they’ve learned how to decode the teachable moments hidden within them. At least, enough to know when and how to pivot in the future.
When was the last time you looked back on a fantastic workout, a successful meeting or a hiccup-free project and thought to yourself, “How could that have gone even better?” Can’t remember? Me either.
These are some of the liabilities of success and the benefits of failure.
In testing apps or websites, failures can trigger organizational learnings and the opportunity to modify after the research reveals less than stellar reviews.
In our daily lives, maybe it’s as simple as confronting those subtle missteps with less disappointment. If we can accept them as a challenge to innovate, we’d likely be a better version of ourselves the next time around.
