#014 - Cloudy with a Chance of SaaS
Uncover Key Insights via AEIOU
Design December
I’ve written a bit about my Masters of Design Methods degree. My design school experience was not about art, colors, layouts, or fonts. Instead, it focused on Strategy, Innovation, and Leadership, along with many research models based on repeatable methods. I am going to focus the next several posts on this type of Design. My next two posts will speak to observing users. Let me introduce the AEIOU method. This method of user observation will result in insights and game-changing innovation for your users and organization. Like many methods they are based on products delivered in the physical world, I’ve had to use some artistic license to convert it to the digital world we all inhabit.
AEIOU
The AEIOU method is just one of a hundred methods documented in Vijay Kumar’s amazing book, 101 Design Methods[1], which celebrates its 10-year anniversary at an event I will be attending later this week. I have used this framework countless times to uncover what is really challenging for end users and to find the space for innovation in a product or offer. And, it ensures I uncover what users need instead of what I think they want (or even what they think they want). As Henry Ford joked, if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Let’s explore this method to help you uncover key insights for driving your innovation practice, and making something more desirable for your users than a faster horse. By the way, AEIOU stands for Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users.
Activities
Your code has zero value until it’s shipped. Worse, if the time for users to see value in your software is too long, you will have an exodus of users. Finding the sweet spot of what your users will pay for, the value they get from using your software, and your ability to deliver in a timely, and cost-effective manner is the holy grail of software development. Asking questions about what it is your users are trying to do, and observing them is key to uncovering the friction they experience and is innovation gold for your organization. Figuring out the user’s next best actions and gathering key insights by seeing live actors doing activities will put you far ahead of your competition. If you are looking for a place to start, check out the users’ notes, spreadsheets, emails, chat messages, and other documentation your users are keeping that is outside of your offering to uncover areas to improve.
Environments
The pandemic forced many users into home workspaces and offices. With this change of venue, people are working differently and your offer has to accommodate people where they are. Are your users always being interrupted via slack or messages? Do they have the space to get work done? The environment can also refer to the physical space your users are working within, and also to the devices they are working on, phones, laptops, and tablets. How does your offering facilitate the integration of teams working remotely and on different platforms? Google docs make it incredibly easy to collaborate as part of a team. How can your innovations drive more distributed collaboration and teamwork seamlessly across devices? Discover the friction in the environment, both what you can and can’t control, is creating for your users and you’ll further inform areas for innovation.
Interactions
How do your users interact with your offering? What are the workflows or communication patterns between users and software? Are they creating unintended workflows? Are they performing actions outside of the designed and curated experience? Do they have to go outside of your offering to some other software to accomplish their end goal? Uncovering the answers to these questions will give you information about where to take your innovation next.
Objects
In a perfect world, your software is completely intuitive. But in reality, your user is likely going to need to use some sort of object to help them use your software. Will they need to read documentation, look at knowledge base articles, or phone a friend to accomplish some task within your offering? How will a new user learn your software without tons of painful trial and error? It is in this space, that a lot of friction lays, that many improvement opportunities live.
Users
Your users are nowhere near as invested as you are in learning the ins and outs of your offering. On any given day your users interact with 100s or even 1000s of user interface components. Expecting them to be masters of each is bound to create dissatisfied users. Finding out what really makes your users tick, along with understanding their limitations, and really getting at their core needs and desires will give you a leg up when driving innovation. At the end of the day, every user makes a decision based on emotions, and as I like to say good emotions are the grease for human decision-making. Understanding what users really need, instead of hoping to meet their needs, is the difference between a winning innovation strategy and being an also-ran. Watching and really listening to your users will give you the key insights needed to deliver compelling offerings for them.
Assuming that you know what your users need or want is the quickest way to fail.
1 Tip:
Use the AEIOU
Activities: What is it that users are looking to accomplish?
Environments: We are all working on disconnected, asynchronous teams, and on multiple devices. What does that mean for your users?
Interactions: How many people and systems are touched to get the work done?
Objects: What are people combining to enable them to accomplish their work?
Users: What makes your users tick, and how invested are they in memorizing all the nuances of your offering?
Thank You
Jim ‘The Designatic’ Tyrrell
[1] http://www.101designmethods.com/