【心理学周边】On Being a User Researcher

I've been thinking recently about user research (by which I mean formative research techniques that attempt to understand how potential users live their lives, what problems they have, what their goals are, etc.) and what it takes to be a good user researcher.

There are many skills that a person who hopes to do user research must acquire. For instance, a good user researcher must learn how to put interviewees at ease while still maintaining sufficient objectivity by avoiding misleading questions, etc. A good user researcher must be able to moderate a focus group by keeping it on topic without stifling discussion, avoiding group-think, and ensuring everyone's opinions get heard. A good user researcher needs to be a good listener. He must keep good notes. He must keep his biases out of the results. And so on.

But there is one quality that I believe all user researchers need to have to be effective, and it's never taught nor even mentioned in any training programs I know of. A good user researcher has to like people.

And I mean he has to like people, all people, not just his friends, peers, and colleagues. He has to be intrinsically interested in who they are, what work they do, how they feel about life, what they want to achieve, and so on. Even though user research is generally conducted to inform product design or marketing, in order to do his job well, a good user researcher must possess an interest in learning about people that transcends these goals. Gaining a deep understanding of how others live their lives must be an end in and of itself.

This is different from the goals of a psychologist or social scientist. Scientists who study humans hope to obtain generalizable knowledge about how humans behave. They uncover facts about human behavior; often these are abstract and somewhat removed in their statistical generality from the real thoughts and feelings of individuals. User researchers, on the other hand, do not uncover generalizable facts; instead they hunt for an understanding of the qualia, the what it's like to be a member of their target population. Though useful in and of themselves, psychology and social science aren't user research professions, nor can they be expected to adequately train user researchers.

I rather suspect that a mature field of user research would more closely resemble journalism than psychology. A good journalist goes out into the world and hunts for stories that will be interesting to their intended audience. A user researcher's audience is the design team. Their job is to uncover stories about their users that would be interesting to the designers while also accurately portraying the people they are designing for. To do this well requires many skills, but foremost among them is an intrinsic interest in and love for people that few other professions in this world truly call for.

Commentary
Posted by Kenneth on May 21, 2004 at 09:57 PM
As a practicing user researcher (woohoo!), I agree with most of this. I'd add that it helps if people like you too: being a likable person. I go back and forth on whether that's true of me. :-)

I disagree with your point about scientists vs. journalists, however; anybody can go out and find some stories about users, and they do. The problem is that often (always?) those stories are not representative, their meaning is misinterpreted, etc. Even if a single "story" is valid, often its significance is overestimated: the availability heuristic. So, I would say that the user researcher's job is about bringing rigor and insight to the process of understanding one's users: though I may not be looking for statistical significance, I am always thinking about how to minimize bias. The fields of psychology and anthropology have a lot of useful things to say about that. Good stories are an effective tool for communicating your results, but nothing more than that. It's the results that count.

Posted by donna maurer on May 23, 2004 at 10:29 PM
Nice summary - I agree with you. You do need to like people in general - it's not about liking everyone you meet, but enjoying talking with them about the parts of their lives/work that are relevant.

It's pretty easy to identify whether people will be good user researchers - the underlying way we approach the world comes through in the way we describe people and the language we use. I teach usability testing - anyone who uses the word 'guinea pig' to refer to a participant (even indirectly) is not going to be good. The underlying respect for people is not there. Similarly, many people want to learn something to push their own opinion, rather than genuinely wanting to make things that people can use more easily...

Posted by catriona campbell on May 26, 2004 at 07:17 AM
I couldn't agree more about a good user-researcher having to
"like people, all people" - however, I would take it one step further an say that
if we want to call ourselves usability professionals, and do user testing as part of our
skill set, then we should be vetted by the Market Rsearch Society, or Association of Qualitative Research
or some other body that would actually make sure that we should be in front of the public!

I have come across many firms in the new media sector who recruit users to take part
in user research without the necessary disclosure forms being filled in - breaking the
Data Protection Act, and I know many which will not note a users address, and make
them sign a receipt which eachc researcher will have to keep for the Inland Revenue.

All these things make us look like dodgy amatures!

And until some form of accreditation happens for usability professionals - we are going
to have to not just "like" users, but train ourselves how to behave around them!

Catriona

Posted by Vidya Gopinath on May 28, 2004 at 07:42 AM
That was some interesting summary on the qualities needed by a user researcher.And I believe it is true.After all, any web site is made for the users.And users do not belong to one particular category.So,it should be designed with them in mind.What they expect when they go to a website? is an important information needed to build the site.If they do not find enough and relevant information,they could always go to someother site and you would never know.

To, go about collecting the information,the user researcher has to be friendly and like people in general.While I agree with the author on the fact that a user researcher has to be like a journalist collecting news, I also believe that he has to know enough of psychology to deal with the users.