Review on 'User Research Smoke and Mirrors'

The article "User Research Smoke and Mirrors" is right here.

A pretty insight read I admit. It got me into thinking of the real value of doing tons and tons user research and how it might get designers into the "wrong" track if we are not careful. I agree with Fahey point of view that it is ridiculous to make usability testing as if it is science or even make it very scientific. I feel that usability is quite a subjective matter. Some things which maybe useful to others may not be useful for others. Like some may find user interface of Mac to be user-friendly, while those who are very used to Windows might find Mac to be difficult or worse at times annoying to use. I'm not here to say that Mac is bad, but I'm just saying that things which work for some might be working for others. This is something that designers had to really keep in mind.

Like the eyetracking example that Fahey mentioned, eyetracking might be a very cool method to use as a form of user testing method. However, it will fail if it is not used appropriately. I completely agreed with Fahey that it is obviously weird and nonsensical to use eyetracking when you already know the reasons for certain aspects of design problems. I feel that if it is plain obvious that the real reason of the design is because of an serious design error, there is no need to waste time and money on superfluous user testing methods.

Certain interesting things that Fahey pointed out for example, research is completely useless when you have a capable UI designer. Although I feel it is a debatable point, it is not wrong to say that. It is completely okay to do without research if the designer really know what's good and useful for the user, and should use research whenever it is not obvious and there is a need to get unbiased feedback from the users so that the designer would fall into the trap of saying his design is definitely good.

But I feel that it is not completely fair to say that those in the senior management positions have bad design concepts and need these research results in order to be convinced. If these senior management staffs aren't good with their design concepts, probably it will be good to educate them in this area and maybe let them be the users
themselves. I feel it is also important to let them understand design flaws so that they won't make the same mistakes again. It is not exactly wise to use research especially if the method is just too devious to let them understand that unless it is justifiable. My point is it important to let those involve in the design process to know the reason for such and such design.

Since user experience from what I understand is a mostly subjective and a hardly 100% graspable topic like Mathematics or Science. It is obvious that subjective and non-scientific user research method should be employ to understand usability problems. I feel there is no hard and fast method in user research, and also it is nothing very scientific either. What we need is just common sense in helping us determine what is good for us.