Dumb user, really?

How many times we have listened that users don´t know what they want, but if you ask your users, words like intuitive, easy, useful are the most common answers. Our users are as dumb as us, they are just people like you before you started coding, they have fears, passions, hopes, they are lazy, they just wanna use your tool with a specific purpose.

Who is my user?

There is a very easy way to know how many types of users you have, all. Every person is different, in a particular context, backgrounds, education, they are going to interact with your dispositive in as many different ways as people*situations are.

Does that mean that we are like John Snow and we know nothing? … Not really. Think about one of your best friends, and remember how deep you know him now versus when you spoke with him the first time you’d met him. Even if you didn’t do it by that purpose you have done research, tested your hypothesis and validate it after a few errors and fails, or in common language huge fights with your friend. So research is the key, and even after that, you will be sometimes lost because we cannot validate all our hypothesis, we don’t have enough time, resources and knowledge to do perfect research, but we can get close to know our users better.

How you can find out who/how is your user?

Empathy first, try to feel and think like your user. Probably this concept is not new for you but most of the people forget about how to do it properly, and later you will get some advice.

Statistic, we are as special as everyone else, which makes us not that much different. What I am describing is the reality that we have a lot of things in common with other people, from those facts we can start working, we know an overall of behaviours of some group of population, like the way of how Millenials buy online, those data is important to start scoping our users, but we can never use just that.

Get closer with Interviews, speak with people closely do not be afraid. Ask everyone about your tool, be ready for some crap, be strong and get the useful feedback. I will say that open conversations and questions are very important at the beginning in order to get as much information that we can because always there are funny findings that you will never have thought.

Now that I have mentioned some hints please think about how to use them.

Empathy.

It’s a must? Yes. It’s just that? No. Why? Because 100% empathy it’s impossible. We need to understand that we can put ourselves in other’s shoes but it’s extremely difficult to disconnect our emotions, thinks and behaviour, and its what you need to not disturb the empathy process. Because even if don’t wanna do it in some part of your brain are thoughts and patterns of behaving, values etc… that are clashing with the others.

If you are empathising just saying “If I were the user I will love to use the share button because I always do it” rookie mistake. We have to try to think like that person, try to imagine what he/she is feeling, motivations, fears, level of activation, culture and the most important thing all as an indivisible sum.

And all of that for something that is not accurate 100%, but please do not desist. We are getting closer to our user and every step is important.

Give to your user what they want.

Once you meet your user and understand his problem or what he wants to solve with your tool he is not dumb anymore. And even after you know him you could fall in another mistake like to give our user more and that giving more is better, what happens is that your product has thousands of features that are for everyone and for none so you threw all the good job you did.

Human beings calculate if the time that they are expending using something is worth of it, so you will have two critical points, if the person thinks that is not a valuable product he will never give enough time to learn how it works and will delete your app, if the person keeps trying and learn, that person will be the most exigent customer that you will ever have.

So if you know your user you will give them exactly what they want and they will appreciate how you have read their minds, using UX design techniques you will find out who is your user and what they really want, better than them.

But, please don´t treat them like Dumb users, or you can lose a lot of the potential of your product in your way.