Published on <a href="http://ift.tt/2tCMmce">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Paul Armstrong 
<h3>User Experience Is Not About Data It’s About Understanding How Humans Work</h3>
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2t8qWA0">Photo by <a href="http://ift.tt/2tCPu7M">Jonatan Pie</a>
<h4>Despite the ubiquitous nature of user experience, many teams are over-complicating its practice and under-simplifying its purpose. UX is more than just data analytics, A/B tests, and user research.</h4>
We only know him by his initials: W.J.
During World War II W.J. was injured twice, after which he began to increasingly suffer from debilitating blackouts, convulsions, and seizures. In 1962 he underwent surgery to <a href="http://ift.tt/28RJrR8">split the two hemispheres of his brain</a> (called a corpus callosotomy) in order to decrease the intensity and frequency of his seizures. The surgery was seemingly successful.
In 1967 two neuroscientists, <a href="http://ift.tt/2tCCv68">Roger Sperry</a> and <a href="http://ift.tt/1T6b33w">Michael Gazzaniga</a>, were <a href="http://ift.tt/1gu2ZN1">conducting experiments to study</a> the different hemispheres of the brain and how independent and unique they were from each other. One of their subjects for their research was W.J. The scientists observed that while each patient appeared normal, they displayed some highly unusual mental abilities. Using series of three tests to determine the cognitive capabilities of the split brain.
<blockquote>“When the brain is whole, the unified consciousness of the left and right hemispheres adds up to more than the individual properties of the separate hemispheres.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>— Roger Sperry</blockquote>
In the visual test, subjects where told to stare at the middle of a horizontal row of lights. Bulbs would flash from the left to the right of their visual field. When asked what they observed, the subjects only reported seeing lights on the right side of their sight. Next, only bulbs on the left side of their visual field where lit, the subjects claimed to have seen nothing. Finally, subjects were asked to point to the bulbs as they lit. Each subject successfully identified bulbs as they lit from both sides of their visual field, but when asked to describe what they saw, they claimed to have not seen anything on their left side.
In the tactile test, an object was placed in the subjects left or right hand. Without being able to see or hear the object, subjects were asked to describe what they were holding. Anything put in their right hand was easily identified, while anything put into their left hand could not. Yet, when previously unknown objects were put into their left hands and were observable, subjects could correctly identify them.
In the final, both tests were combined, where the subjects were show a picture of an object to only the right hemisphere (left field of vision) and where unable to name it. The conclusion being that while the right hemisphere can visually identify what’s been seen or touched, since there is no language to categorize the visual, there is no way to communicate that recognition.
<blockquote>“There is no one boss in the brain. You are certainly not the boss of the brain. Have you ever succeeded in telling your brain to shut up already and go to sleep?”</blockquote>
<blockquote>— Michael Gazzaniga</blockquote>
This groundbreaking research helped conclude what many of us now already know, that our cerebral hemispheres are very unique systems. The left hemisphere specializes in language, science, and logic while the right hemisphere specializes in intuition, creativity, and holistic thinking. Bridging the communication network between our hemispheres is the corpus callosum, which is constantly negotiating between impulse and induction. Creativity and logic. Assumptions and data. The corpus callosum is our internal user experience.
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2t8OxAR">
Since being hired as Director of User Experience at <a href="https://www.ebth.com">Everything But The House (EBTH)</a> in August of 2016, I’ve been tasked with growing and building a user experience team to work with our product managers, developers, and data scientists to better understand our users and how they interact with our products. Part of my growing application of user experience has been to treat it like the corpus callosum — bridging two opposing ideas of data-driven decisions and design-inspired creativity.
<h4>How do we define UX at EBTH?</h4>
Let’s get some assumptions out of the way, that is after all the primary goal of user experience. UX is short for User Experience (I can only assume that after extensive research, testing, focus groups, and surveying that UE just didn’t quite have the same marketability and widespread brand appeal as UX). <a href="http://ift.tt/1I4Duf5">Donald Norman</a> — author of the amazing book <a href="http://ift.tt/28KfpI3">“The Design Of Everyday Things”</a> — is credited with coining the term “user experience” when he was <a href="http://ift.tt/2aiYtlf">hired at Apple</a> as their User Experience Architect in 1993.
Over the last several years the term has become a fashionable label with <a href="http://ift.tt/202WEIR">many varying ideas</a> about the practice, purpose, and function of user experience, which include any and all of the following: user testing, focus groups, surveys, questionnaires, research, data analytics, and usability. In other words, it’s an almost entirely useless title.
For the purpose of clarity in our new and growing team, I choose to define the role of user experience flexibly, simply, and plainly: to create visual experiences that anticipate and enhance users response and perception about a product.
<h4>What Does The EBTH UX Team Do?</h4>
Without getting overly dull about the role of design to create a functional narrative of a product story to it’s intended audience, my personal perspective leads me to think of UX as putting the science into design.
Making a product “pretty” or “beautiful” or “sophisticated” (insert any random adjective you want; “cowabunga”, “tubular”, “cool beans”) is a worthwhile outcome, but without context those terms are subjective and trivial. When design decisions rely only on “intuition”, then solutions are unquantifiable and turn into emotional arguments against personal preferences — which sure to leave someone or something hurt. When building a world-class product, design decisions need to have more substantial reasoning beyond an emotional response to a personal preference.
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2tCNlcj">
Utilizing research and data creates context and a framework for the more subjective decisions of design. Design begins with assumptions, but data allows those decisions to be clarified and refined — getting both hemispheres of neurological processing to function together. Therefore an assumption that a red button is understood to mean “important” rather than as a “warning” can (and should) be tested to affirm or refute that assumption.
Our team’s primary goal is to analyze, research, hypothesize, and recommend ways to build improvements and refinements to our diverse products (in what we call a UX Audit). Specifically, we apply more s<a href="http://ift.tt/KUEVE3">cientific thinking</a> to our process, which I know sounds very boring, but science is amazing — how else can you explain <a href="http://ift.tt/1DbLHz1">KFC’s Double Down</a> (may it rest in peace)? SCIENCE!
In order to inject science into the design process we thoroughly investigate any given task through various methods of data, research, and testing which is implemented based on brand consistent patterns and guidelines in order to maintain product unity and consistency.
<h4>How Do We Use UX At EBTH?</h4>
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2t8qUYU.">
Before any solution can be researched and implemented, we must first understand our users — whether those users are related to the EBTH website, our iOS app, or our internal tools. Each of our products have specific user goals, so we collaborate closely with the team that best understands those goals.
These goals are then analyzed through our internal data (Google Analytics and <a href="http://ift.tt/1Dqjz6p">Tableau</a>), to gain insight into potential impact; and external data (like <a href="http://ift.tt/1YC0NYG">Nielsen Norman Group</a>, <a href="https://baymard.com/">Baymard Institute</a>, <a href="http://www.goodui.org/">GoodUI</a>, <a href="http://ift.tt/2cAqCpx">Prototypr</a>, <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/">UXDesign.cc</a>), to understand common standards and best practices. After research is complete we form a hypothesis about the potential outcomes and areas where we can make a positive impact on key metrics. Or more precisely, how can we “enhancerate” our product (I’m just trying that out as a new phrase to see if it’ll stick, I already regret my decision). Then based on our analysis, research, and hypothesis we recommend next steps toward testing a solution.
To create a solution we work with a squad — mixture of a product manager, UX and UI designer(s), and developer(s) — and design mockups (using Sketch and InVision) which are reviewed, adjusted, and approved, then built and rollout to a limited audience, where we can test effectiveness through A/B testing (<a href="https://vwo.com/">VWO</a>), feature flags (<a href="http://ift.tt/2tCKv7p">Flipper</a>), and user feedback (<a href="http://ift.tt/1cxW9kb">Inspectlet</a>, <a href="https://lookback.io/">Lookback</a>). Based on these tests we either revise and improve their performance or deploy to all our users.
Since we’re creating a product we are constantly iterating and evolving. Nothing we build is ever considered “complete”. Whether it’s adding features, exploring ways to increase performance, building better workflows, improving operations, or addressing issues, our process continually repeats.
Good UX is a process of balancing our opposing processes to create the best outcomes.
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<a href="http://ift.tt/2t8P71g">User Experience Is Not About Data It’s About Understanding How Humans Think</a> was originally published in <a href="http://ift.tt/2cAqCpx">prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

User Experience Is Not About Data It’s About Understanding How Humans Think

User Experience Is Not About Data It’s About Understanding How Humans Work

Despite the ubiquitous nature of user experience, many teams are over-complicating i…

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