Research is not about asking users what they want.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

– Henry Ford

This is one of the most cited quotes on innovation and user involvement, associated with Henry Ford. It is often used to dismiss user research – but that is a misunderstanding of its point.

Asking users “why”, and observing how they do things, is essential for user-centered design. Asking users what they want is unhelpful; it’s akin to asking for trouble.

Users are experts on their tasks, workflows, problems, and wishes. This is their area of expertise. They know where things are overly complex for them, where they struggle, where their workflow is broken. And they can even show it to you.

They might have suggestions on how to fix obstacles they encounter, or how to integrate their workarounds into existing solutions. But this feedback is based on their experiences and workflow. They address their own problems, which is fine. It’s not their job to understand or solve the larger issues. That’s your job.

Observing and talking to users helps you find problems and generate solution ideas. However, users can’t tell you what the overall solution should be.

Asking users for their ideal solution can seem like granting them a wish. They might expect it now to be built and be disappointed if it isn’t.

There is value in research – observe users’ behavior to identify their actual needs. Use it to come up with solutions. Ask them what they would like to change, not how. Don’t rely on your users to provide you with a solution.

Translating user feedback into a concept, is your area of expertise, and it’s a job you need to do yourself.

Research can only offer insights, not definitive solutions.

There is a common misconception about the role of research in the UX design community. People hope that research (the more the better) will solve their design problem.

However, research doesn’t provide direct answers to design problems, nor does it magically reveal a solution. Instead, research can only provide insights as “food for thought”.

The primary goal of research is to understand users’ mindsets, workflows, and challenges. You want to see what users do, understand why they do it, and get their feedback. These insights are the raw material for your ideation.

However, there’s a limit. At some point, further research won’t bring you closer to an answer. You might think: “I still have so many questions.” — this feeling is normal. Research cannot answer all your questions.

It is your job to collect and combine these insights and use them to come up with a viable solution. This involves analyzing data, brainstorming, formulating assumptions, and creating prototypes. Research cannot replace the ideation process. There will always be ambiguity when coming up with solutions — embrace it.

Research alone won’t hand you an answer on a silver platter. While it lays the groundwork for ideation, you have to come up with solution ideas on your own. To address unanswered questions, turn to ideation to explore possible solutions.

During ideation you will come up with solution ideas. Map them out, brainstorm, document your assumptions, create prototypes, and validate them. This iterative process helps in refining the solution. You need to actively “work towards” the solution.

While research provides the foundation for ideation work, it’s your job to find the right solution. Don’t try to outsource ideation work to research.

On my birthday in 2009, I bought myself one of the first IoT consumer devices – a cute electronic rabbit, called the Nabaztag.

It was brilliant – it could rotate its ears, read out messages, tell the weather and air quality forecast, play music, „sniff“ and recognize RFID tags, blink lights, and even act on voice commands. I consider the Nabaztag to be the great-grandfather of Alexa and Cortana.

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“If you don’t have people that care about usability on your project, your project is doomed.”

— Jeff Atwood

Occasionally you’ll encounter people that question the value of user experience design. My advice is: don’t try to convince them. And don’t be goaded into an ROI (return of investment) discussion of UX with „non-believers“.

Make the case for user experience design and for its contribution once, maybe twice, as people may be unfamiliar with it. But don’t you don’t want a repearing “why this is actually needed?” discussion.

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I recently stumbled over the Atari Portfolio. It is the first handheld computer, released in 1989. It runs a (compatible) version of DOS 2.11 and is sheer beauty!

I got one on eBay to play with it and soon realized that it’s mainly a pretty plastic brick as you have a hard time accessing it with modern computers.

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In 2003/04 I spent a year in the United States, working as a User Interface Designer for Siemens Medical. To document my stay I bought the smallest camera I could find. (Yes, this was before phones had cameras or were smart). I picked the Pentax Optio S4i.

The S4i was my first real camera.
It fits in the palm of my hand and I always carried it with me. It had glorious FOUR megapixels and it was shiny and perfect – but only until the S5i came out. The S5i had even FIVE megapixels and it allowed me to customize two buttons (instead of one). This was just too good. I bought the S5i and took some good pictures with her over the years.

Actually, I took my best picture with it.

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Here is the link to part one of this series, you might want to start there.

Based on the before stated principles and requirements for the prototyping platform I came up with the following architecture:

On the left, you see the web server where the HTML of the Prototyping tool will be stored. On the right, the different hardware components (sensors and actuators, e.g. buttons, rotary encoders, LEDs) are connected to ESP8266 microcontrollers. In broad terms, ESPs are similar to Arduinos but also offer WiFi connectivity for a low price. In between sits a server to broker and translate the information coming from both sides.

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Hey, long time no hear. I hope you are still around and haven’t given up on me. The last two months were quite busy, so I didn’t find the time to write. Sorry for that.

But I have a long list of things I want to tell you. This post will be a short update on the things that have kept my attention.

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When I tell people that I build physical prototypes (a.k.a things with knobs, displays, and wires, which demonstrate how physical user interfaces of products that are going to get built will work) they usually smile, often sadly, and say: „Yes, but that’s easy for you since you are such a nerd.“

That’s of course a grand misconception. Of me (probably) and the general situation as a whole. People still believe that extensive programming and electrical engineering skills are needed, but that is no longer true. The nerd barrier has been torn down in quite a few places.

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The avid and attentive reader of this blog might have noticed another (silent) relaunch of my blog – the giveaway was the change of design.

This is the result of aspirations meeting reality. As I mentioned before, I wanted to use a small and lightweight engine for this blog and say goodbye to the behemoth called WordPress. Back in September I picked Kirby, since it ticked all the boxes. I bought a license and a decent theme, and loved the fact that I could now write my posts in markup and simply upload the files to the server.

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