UX myths, journey map mistakes, ratings, and moon buggys

Howdy! Welcome to this week’s Whiteboard Roundup.

After a smashing Easter weekend, it’s been another pretty hectic week. I went to the first ‘N0BS’ event run by the lovely Sabrina Chevanne, an entrepreneur’s club with refreshingly little bullshit. Always nice to meet other straight-talkers.

Talking of straight-talking, I’ve been thinking of running a video series in which Katie Fisher (Senior Product Strategist at The User Story) and I pick a stupid topic in UX/product, tear it to shreds, and get a bit ranty. We were talking this week about how much ridiculous terminology and confusing language there is in UX, and we want to get grumpy about it. We could even do it with rum. What do you think?

Cheers.

Tom HaczewskiDirector, The User Story

News

UX Myths You Should Know

I'm really enjoying this collated list of UX myths. It feels like every week, I’m explaining one of these to someone, whether it’s a business founder in a startup or some larger organisation, and it’s quite nice to see it written down with links to the research and evidence, too.

Some of my favourites include:

• Don’t assume that just because you’re reading UX blogs, you don’t need to do research. You do.

• You aren’t like your users. They are different to you, and you have a different frame of reference and set of experiences that they do.

• You don’t need to redesign your whole website periodically. Yes, the ‘stale’ website that needs ‘refreshing’ is basically bollocks.

• People don’t do what you expect them to, even if you really think they will.

And much more. Check it out here!

Avoid the mistakes with UX journey maps

If you’re the kind of person that likes to makes maps of user journeys, you might be falling into a couple of traps. This nice article covers some of the biggies, and I particularly like that one of these is ignoring the context of use.

Much of the time, I see designers who forget that they’re building a system that people will be using while they do other things. They might not have all the information at that time. They might be in the middle of something. They might be watching TV, out and about, copying and pasting, or washing the dishes.

It highlights the need for good user research too, of course, but I bang on about that enough that I probably don’t need to wang on about it any more here.

Have a look.

How many numbers should your rating scale have?

I have a love-hate relationship with rating scales (otherwise known as Likert scales. I think because when you say your NPS score is great, senior stakeholders really, really likert (sorry)).

I love getting feedback. I love a metric, and something that can be seen to improve. Rating scales can do that.

But I hate when they’re hard to use. I hate NPS, because it’s an absolute crock of complicated nonsense that pretends to be ‘algorthmic’ and empirical, and looks good because it’s a single number that can measure your entire experience, but in practice, does very little to commit action or even benchmark an experience anyway.

Anyway. If you’re going to use scales, take a look at this article for some inspo.

Space races?

Finally, because I’m a big space fan, I was super interested to read about the design competitions for NASA’s next LTV - Lunar Terrain Vehicle - or, moon buggy to us muggles.

I’m particularly interested because while the last time we went to the moon, we used rovers that looked like they were built out of scaffolding and tin foil, the new concepts for lunar transport look incredible. I mean, seriously - which astronaut doesn’t want to ride around on the ‘Moon Racer’? Is this how pod racing starts? Will we see Formula Moon on our TVs soon?

Let’s hope so, to all of the above.

Enjoy the concepts here.

What we’re up to.

💥 Is your company hostile to design?11 April, 1pmAre you creating an environment where designers can thrive and do their best work? Or are designers fighting to be heard?

Join this definitely-not-shouty discussion with three fabulous experts within the UX and product function, where they'll talk about the ways companies diminish the importance and impact of design and ways you can empower designers within your organisation.Sign up here

Check out our previous videosIf you missed my last videos, you can see them all here. Have a look. They’re fun!Replays

Thanks for reading.

I wonder if Easter Eggs are that shape because when you eat that much chocolate, that’s the shape you feel.

As you’re here to the end, here’s my thought for the week to leave you on:

See you next time, friends!

Brought to you by Tom Haczewski, director of The User Story. We’re a product strategy, research and UX agency based in Norwich, working with SaaS teams and startups.