1.
Getting To Know Your User
Laura Klein
@lauraklein
http://www.usersknow.com
laura@usersknow.com

2.
Who Are Your Users?
(Hint: You are not your user)

3.
You Your User
You’re Nothing Like Your User

4.
And That Can Lead To Danger
• No (or bad) intuition
• Us vs. Them mentality
• Disdain
• Mistrust
• Disinterest

5.
You Your User
Except Sometimes When You Are

6.
And That Can Lead To Danger, Too
• Too many assumptions
• No “need” to listen
• Real vs. Imagined
similarities

7.
A Few Universal Truths

8.
Your User’s Computer Sucks

9.
Your User Is (Probably) Not Very Good with
Computers

10.
Your User Knows More About Something Than
You Do

11.
Your User Doesn’t Know What Your Product Does
(and frequently doesn’t care)

12.
How Do You Fix This?
• ASK open ended questions
• LISTEN to the answers
• OBSERVE what they do
• IDENTIFY patterns
• FORM hypotheses
• INVALIDATE hypotheses
• REPEAT

13.
TL;DR
Ask Questions
Don’t Assume You Already Know the Answers

14.
START ASKING QUESTIONS
NOW!
Laura Klein
@lauraklein
http://www.usersknow.com
laura@usersknow.com