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Jared Spool Profile picture
Jared Spool
@jmspool
Maker of Awesomeness at @CenterCentre – @UIE. Guiding orgs to deliver well-designed products & services. (He/Him) Former @USDS.
Kim Jen Profile picture kwanchen Profile picture Wen Vivero Profile picture Dawna Kelley Profile picture Asaad El Salawi Profile picture 14 subscribed
Jun 1, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I’ve never felt comfortable with the “Five Whys” approach to identifying problem root causes.

Let me tell you why.

The approach is that you ask why 5 times.

The first why gets you a immediate cause of the problem.

The 2nd tells you what causes that immediate cause.

1/ The 3rd tells you what causes the 2nd. And so on.

And that's fine. The goal is to get to something that is distant from the cause that, if we solved it, would remove all the intermediate causes too.

The problem I have is this:

What if that first answer is wrong?

2/
May 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The opposite of user research is guessing.

Ironically, many organizations base their most important decisions (what to build, how it should work) on almost no user research (who are the users, what would improve their life?). Complete guesses.

Don’t guess.
Do the research. In my experience, the most disruptive ideas come from a deep understanding of the challenges your users and customers face today.

You can’t get that deep understanding through guessing or “instinct.”

It has to be informed through research.
Jan 14, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
A lot of my work is talking to UX folks about their next job.

Many struggle with "deciding what I want from my next employer."

I've come up with a way to get them past this and to start thinking about where to look first for opportunities.

1/ Thinking about their next job inevitably leads many folks down the path of "what would I like in a place to work."

This gets into lots of touchy-feely attributes about the work environment, but what's almost always missing is what they'll actually do when they get there.

2/
Dec 15, 2021 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
I see the same mistake repeated across many of the UX job ads I review.

The job ad describes the JOB, yet highly-qualified candidates want to learn about the WORK.

These are very different things.

1/ What we hear from candidates:

Tell me what I'll be working on.
Tell me how my work will have an important impact on people.
Tell me what makes the work challenging, especially for someone at my experience level.
Tell me what makes this work unique.

This is the WORK.

2/
Nov 30, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I pine for the day when UX research is no longer sold as a way to “validate” the designs of products or services.

This thinking limits what teams deliver.

Going down this path just to get a foot in the door creates so much extra work later on to break away from it. Put another way:

If “validation” is the first time any team members are getting direct exposure to users and their problems, you’re doing it wrong.
Nov 22, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
NPS, UMUX-lite, SUS, CSat, CES…

These are just tools for producing a number that will send your team off optimizing the wrong things.

Best thing you can do is just ignore them.

(If there’s a follow-on ‘verbatim’ question, spend your time there. That could be useful.) The problem with ‘satisfaction’ is it’s a meaningless term.

Are you satisfied with this conversation?

If you gave me a 7, how is that different than if you gave me a 6? Or a 3?

Everyone brings a different meaning of satisfaction to the survey. We don’t know their context.
Sep 25, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It makes me smile when a product manager tells me they need a full time researcher before they can do any research.

I look them in the eyes and say “you’re a full time user researcher.”

All PMs are user researchers.
Maybe not a good one.
However, they can become a better one. User research is what PMs do.

They identify what users and customers need. Why the product doesn’t do that yet. What needs to change to make the user’s life better.

It’s the most important part of their job.
Sep 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Current status Image Frog on a log Image
Aug 20, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Aug 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

In UX design, this thinking delivers more damage than benefit.

There's usually a LOT of distance between good and perfect.

Good leaves room for better, which, when provided by someone else, leaves our designs behind. We can do more that just good.

We can meet needs and exceed expectations.

We can excel beyond just satisfactory. (Satisfaction surveys should be banned in UX design. They measure the wrong things.)
Aug 15, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Current status Image Image
Jun 6, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
This is better than the Shopify scooter → car diagram.

However, it still leaves out the most important aspect of an MVP: That it’s an instrument for learning, not an actual product.

Eric Reis defined it as the least work necessary to learn the most about users needs.

1/ We should be creating simple MVPs to learn what people need.

That’s not how it’s used in many places. Instead, people see it as the least we can build to claim we shipped something.

2/
Jun 5, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
It seems quick for some hiring managers to complain that applicants may not have a portfolio available to apply to their open UX positions.

Their complaint is often that it makes it harder for them to determine if the candidate is qualified for the position.

1/11 This is not as much a problem for the candidate than it is for the hiring manager.

Smart hiring managers know how to evaluate candidates who may, for many legit reasons, not have an up-to-date portfolio that showcases work.

2/11
Jun 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
UX Hiring Managers:

Do you have an open UX position right now? Designers, researchers, content, writers, or managers?

Reply with a link to the job posting. I’ll then retweet it to my 108k followers.

Lots of folks tell me they get great applicants this way. Right now, you’ll get more applications if you are open to consider more junior UXers.

There’s a ton of skilled, passionate UX professionals who are early in their career and excited to do great things for you.

You’ll also get extra karma points.
Mar 26, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Sideways boat memes have made my day.
Mar 12, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The more I learn about NFTs, the more I think, boy, this is just a bad idea. The more I learn about NFTs, it just gets worse.

A great thread on how an NFT is basically just a receipt that you paid for a receipt.

Mar 12, 2021 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
You’ve got several good theories here. Let’s debunk them. Let’s start with why do prosumer cameras still report these numbers. Your theory is because they are still useful in photography. That’s good, but I have an alternative theory.
Mar 11, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
This *is* a great discussion. Thank you.

Let's talk about the two things you've raised:

(1) what data is made visible to the users (and why you're wrong about this 😀) and
(2) the flexibility of the tool (and why that's not relevant to this discussion)

I believe your notion that professional users (whatever that is) have more need for raw data than "you or I" is not correct.

Let's take pro photographers. The camera reveals all sorts of settings, most of which are anachronistic and where there's many complex interdependencies.
Mar 11, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Great thinking. However, here’s why you’re wrong: If you own a car made in the last 10 years, it has as many as 100 computers with possibly 500 or more sensors collecting thousands of data points per second.

Do you have access to more a than a fraction of that data? No. Why not?

Because it does you no good.
Mar 4, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There’s nothing like a 10-point Likert scale to make complete noise seem like scientific results.

Behold, the completely unactionable survey. I blame Foresee for this. They sell snake-oil-disguised-as-scientific-survey-tool to thousands of unsuspecting product managers who want “data” to prove their decisions were right on.
Dec 3, 2020 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
Let's talk about what early career UX folks should emphasize in interviews, especially when searching for the first job.

A mistake I see folks make is when they focus on the designs they've created. Often these are school or side projects. They look great. They work great.

1/ However, that's not what smart hiring managers care about.

Of course, if you produce crappy-looking stuff, they won't give you the time of day.

But you don't have crappy-looking stuff. That's not what's preventing you from getting that first dream gig.

2/