If interaction design is in big part about understanding users, listening and asking are one of the top tools of a designer.

We all know about user testing, research and all that stuff. Those methods work good if the right questions are asked and the interviewees are carefully listened.

A deeper approach

Latetly, I have been looking for ways to improve my method to get more information from users. What it seems to be working good is to pretend that “I don’t know”.

Sorry, I don’t understand. Could you repeat that? I’ve never heard about it, I’m not from here (works good for me, being a foreigner). I don’t know…

Inside the company

Of course you don’t want to look silly at work but an “I don’t know” approach could also make collegueas share their ideas during design workshops.

Just say: I didn’t know that, could you explaing further?

A different approach to consulting

Many user experience consultants prepare themselves fantastically before meeting their new clients for the first time. They read about their industry, their website, their business. They also prepare extensive documents and they pretend to know everything about them.

I think the best approach is to say “I don’t know, please explain”… what you want, what you think you need, tell me about your business, your industry…

Encourage talk and discussion saying “I don’t know”.

Picture by Kalavinka

I’ve found at the Delta Airlines Blog that they were looking for help for usability testings. As Abby Stephenson, manager of usability at delta.com posted on the blog, Delta is planing to reorganize the Profile section of delta.com.

The exercise was a normal card sorting and the tool used was the web based Websort. This is a software tool that enables researchers to perform remote card sort studies.

Taking part of the study is very simple for participants, just click on the link provided, in this case was it at the Delta Blog, then the web based tool opens with the instructions and a demo video. The interface is pretty simple, easy to use and to understand so participants can concentrate on the study.

I got a results screenshot from the Websort web page:

I am really happy every time I see that some old economy company is making an effort to improve their site’s usability and even more if they are asking users in the process.