When you’re researching users, every once in a while you come across one that’s an anomaly. You must decide whether to exclude their data points in the set or whether to adjust your model of the users.
Let me tell you about one such user. I’ll call him Bob (not his real name). I met Bob during a day of back-to-back usability tests of a specialised software package. The software has two categories of users:
Professionals who interpret data and use it in their design work.- Technicians who mainly enter and check data. A senior technician may do some of the work of a professional user.
When Bob walked in, I went through the usual routine: welcome; sign this disclaimer; tell me about the work you do. Bob’s initial answers identified him as a professional user. Once on the computer, though, Bob was unable to complete the first step of the test scenario. Rather than try to solve the problem, he sat back, folded his hands, and said: “I don’t know how to use this.” Since Bob was unwilling to try the software, I instead had a conversation (actually an unstructured interview) with him. Here’s what I learned:
| My observation | For this product, this is… | |
| • | Bob received no formal product training. He was taught by his colleagues. | Typical of more than half the professionals. |
| • | Bob has a university degree that is only indirectly related to his job. | Atypical of professionals. |
| • | He’s young (graduated 3 years ago). | Atypical of professionals, but desirable because many of his peers are expected to retire in under a decade. |
| • | Bob moved to his current town because his spouse got a job there. He would be unwilling to move to another town for work. | Atypical. Professionals in this industry typically often work in remote locations for high pay. |
| • | Bob is risk averse. | Typical of the professionals. |
| • | He is easily discouraged, and isn’t inclined to troubleshoot. | Atypical. Professionals take responsibility for driving their troubleshooting needs. |
| • | Bob completes the same task once or several times a day, with updated data each time. | Atypical of professionals. This is typical of technicians. |
I decided to discard Bob’s data from the set.
The last two observations are characteristic of a rote user. Some professionals are rote users because they don’t know the language of the user interface, but this did not apply to Bob. There was a clear mismatch between the work that Bob said he does and both his lack of curiosity and non-performance in the usability lab. These usability tests took place before the 2008 economic downturn, when professionals in Bob’s industry were hard to find, so I quietly wondered whether hiring Bob had been a desperation move on the part of his employer.
If Bob had been an new/emerging type of user, discarding Bob’s data would have been a mistake. Imagine if Bob had been part of a new group of users:
- What would be the design implications?
- What would be the business implications?
- Would we need another user persona to represent users like Bob?