HCD doesn't end when a product goes live. To meet user needs, we need to measure what we build.
I try to start each day with a walk. Though I walk the same path each day, only today did I realize that part of my path is a great analogy for why the work of human-centered design (HCD) doesn’t stop at research and design. Returning to what we built to understand and measure how people actually use it is a critical component of the process.
Most of my morning path is along a set of paved sidewalks that easily and safely guide me to where I want to go.
But there’s one part of the path where a sidewalk doesn’t exist. I need to use this part of the route to get back home, and it turns out, I’m not the only one. Innumerable other walkers in my community, have, over time, had to choose between two options: (1) walk directly on the road without much of a shoulder and hope that cars keep their distance, or (2) make our own path.
If I was an urban planner/sidewalk designer, this would be invaluable information. I now know exactly where to put a new sidewalk to suit walkers’ preferred walking path.
The equivalent in the digital experience space is measuring what we built. Long-time measurement and brand strategist Justin Anderson-Weber of Anderson-Weber Strategies shares: “Humans are not static and they’re unpredictable. Once something is in the world, people will surprise you. Monitoring behavior is vital to see how they actually behave. And you then need to be able to respond to that.”
Tracking how users go from one place to the next, and when they finally accomplish their goals is the digital way of looking at the grass-trodden path. If we see that users are often going to a place we don’t expect from a page using a tool like Google Analytics, we have an indication that a path they need doesn’t clearly exist. We can then use tools like heat-mapping (e.g. Hotjar) and user sessions tracking (e.g. Fullstory) to get better information.
Finally, following up with qualitative user research is always a good idea to understand why users do what they do and what they’re trying to accomplish. Especially if a safe path doesn’t exist, they may be taking more steps than necessary to get to where they’re actually trying to go. Though a behavior like this is sometimes possible to see in analytics, it can easily be missed without a direct conversation with a user. Anderson-Weber explains “A mixed method approach is always best. Purely behavioral methods like analytics lack context—if you improved metrics like getting people to go further on a page (page depth), staying longer on your site overall (fewer bounces), or staying longer on a page (time on page)—is it because they’re confused and still can’t find what they need, or did you actually solve their issue? Talking to people is the best way to find out if you actually solved their problem.”
With this information in hand, we can lay down an easier, safer sidewalk for users to get where they want to go. As Anderson-Weber says, “Everyone knows what it feels like to be helped. Monitoring, continuously optimizing, and designing is a way we can help more people more often.”
