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“We don’t have time for discovery”: A UX designer’s response to common user testing myths
UX Designers hear all kinds of excuses from companies who don’t want to do any user research or testing. This is why cutting research and testing costs much more time and money than it saves.
I’ve been a designer in the digital space for over 20 years now. If you worked with me for any amount of time, you will hear me defend user testing as a practice, and I will probably get unusually animated about it. I advocate for user testing and I always will because I have witnessed the power of user testing and I want to share some of the experiences that I have had with people and companies who did, and did not, prioritize user research and testing, so you don’t end up making the same mistakes.
I’ve worked at companies large and small, and one thing that they have all had in common is they all talked the talk when it comes to calling themselves “design-centric” or “user-focused”, but when it would come to doing the work that both design and user-centric work requires, communications with users would be one of the first things that gets reduced or cut entirely. And when those cuts happen, customers notice: according to UserTesting.com, while 75% of companies called themselves customer-centric, only 30% of customers agreed with that assessment.
When designers are not involved in making decisions that affect whether or not a company is really design-centric, the resulting cuts to human-centered research investments have led to disasters of various sizes down the road. In my experience, I have witnessed everything from expensive product re-designs and, in more than one case, design departments getting shut down.
Now, knowing this I do understand why resistance to user testing exists in companies. From what I’ve seen, the roots of that resistance lies in fear. Fear of feedback is real, particularly fear of hearing anything negative about something that you are personally invested in. I think that is something that designers forget because if you have had any kind of formal design training, you have had to deal with feedback.
For designers, reacting to feedback is a tool that non-designers do not have, and we as designers need to recognize that. In design schools, feedback through…
