Submit your reading response by making a comment on this post. In your response, please respond to each of the prompts below. Please number your responses so it’s clear which response goes with which prompt.

Esser

1) The author identifies four steps to developing empathy for your users. The last step is from a design perspective, but the first three (discovery, immersion, connection) are more like psychology research. Which of these three steps seems most important to you, and why?

Hulme

2) One of the things the talk does is contrast two views on giving the customer what they want. One of them is expressed on a button that is shown part way through the talk. The other is reflected in these two quotes, from two different parts of the talk:

“Because if you don’t, the customer will anyway.”

“Because if you don’t offer them in low friction, someone else will, often the customer.”

What are your own thoughts about these contrasting visions? Feel free to draw on your personal experience both as a customer and also, if you have had that experience, in a customer service role.

Visser et al

3) In Figure 6, the authors illustrate how their four ways of presenting information vary on two dimensions, openness and interactivity. In Figure 7, the authors show the number of ideas generated by designers when they were presented with data about users using each of these methods.

• Based on their (admittedly small) data set, which dimension seems to matter more in terms of how many ideas are generated?
• The authors don’t really explain this pattern; why do you think it occurs?

4) The authors note that the most common way that research about user experience is presented to designers is in the form of a written report. Yet in Study 2 a written report was associated with the lowest level of idea generation of the four methods tried.

• Why do you think we sometimes give people information in the form that is least useful for them? You can draw on your personal experience with other types of communication if you like.
• What lessons do you think we can take away from this finding about effective ways to communicate research findings?