The website I have been working on as a contracted UX specialist the last year has just launched. During the project everyone worked very hard on designing, developing, executing and fine-tuning the finished product. Everyone had the same goal: finish on time, under budget and deliver an exceptional experience to our users. To a large extent this was successful, but in hindsight there is one glaring hanger on that I will address here that has come up post-launch — the pervasiveness and stubbornness of internal user narratives that informed the design are in some areas, incorrect and not a benefit for the user.
As one of a small UX team who worked on this project, I was first tasked with conducting internal research on users to aid in the design before we had time to conduct external user research. This was to establish our users true needs from the perspective of the next-of-kin who know “best”. In the beginning, I wanted a high-level understanding of user habits, needs and goals. As a contractor coming in to a massive project, I was limited in business knowledge and looking for wayfinding in how to find it.
I was quickly directed to the Sales department within the organization who everyone goes to for the quick-and-dirty skinny on users and found quickly that this can lead to a false narrative that permeates through the entire organization, including the project I was assigned. So the story goes, take heed with internal narratives while juggling your UX responsibilities.
Your top priority as a UX person is to deliver a product that allows users to easily complete their goals, any delight experienced is a beautiful byproduct of that attention to detail. This is where the lines blur as there are always opposing forces at play to get to that point: limited time, resources and budget. So you are forced to initially look internally for answers, and you will be directed to SME’s, long-tentured players and those with deep understanding of users.
Be forewarned however, that while these folks are looking to help sometimes, their extensive knowledge is only skin deep. More directly, sometimes they are wrong — a lot of the time this information is anecdotal, based on few experiences and a single glaring review or experience with a customer. Plus, they are sales people and they have completely different goals than the UX team.
Your job as a UX person is to vet this information, educate your colleagues and combine the truth from folks who are likely to be only fractionally right. To do this, you must smash the internal narratives with your developed skills. Only then will you be successfully designing for, and not satisficing your users.
This is where the UX person needs to come in to a project beyond being an advocate for your users — be a devil’s advocate for the user. Put yourself out there. Fact check all ‘established’ narratives, pose difficult questions and try to poke holes in the internal stories to get the deepest, clearest and fullest understanding of all users. Talk to all departments about all different types of users, shadow the front-line CSR/Sales people, write great notes, ask the right questions and consider all types of information before settling on who all user types are and how to best design for them.
Remember, you are walking into a moving machine — there has been years of things happening and history to contend with at every turn. They have established a narrative that is heavily relied on. It is difficult to challenge, you will make enemies and be wrong sometimes, but remember that the reason they have budget for you being there is that some sort of change is needed. The truth is there for you to discover and you’ll need to conduct internal interviews and shadowing as well as contextual interviews to discover and observe how users are using your site. You have a UX tool belt, use it and be prepared to back up your findings.
Thoughtfully consider all information but do not take it as Gospel as all other people you will come into have different roles and goals. It is not that person’s job to understand who users are, and how to design for them — it is yours.
