U.S.E.R. - Secret Sauce Distilled
There’s an assumption that consultants have some sort of secret sauce. And consulting firms often go to great lengths to uphold that assumption – witness the bevy of trademarked proprietary methodologies (RUP, Macroscope, WAVE) touted by firms big and small. However, when it comes down to it, most of the methodologies are describing the same thing. That hasn’t kept me from coming up with my own twist on the iterative approach – a twist that distills the essence of good design by acknowledging that at its heart, design is largely about problem solving. So here’s my basic recipe for secret sauce:
Simple, short, sweet, and it keeps users top of mind. But the U.S.E.R. approach is about more than simplicity, and about more than user-centered design.
U.S.E.R. is a generalized problem solving approach that applies to any problem solving situation – not just every part of the project lifecycle, from strategy to launch to maintenance, but also to situations from consultative selling to buying a new fridge. It’s the essence of good consulting – diagnosis before prognosis. It also frees our practice from a rigid, prescriptive methodology by encouraging a toolbox approach – choose the right method for the job. For understanding user goals, we might use a participatory design session, or contextual interviews, or a series of community workshops, depending on the project. However, the real secret sauce is even simpler – the insight and direction gained from different tools depends on the experience and insight of the practitioner. People can see better results by adopting UX methods – but how much better is going to be inseparable from the people using the tools. But you knew that secret already.