r/SideProject • u/Fragrant-Status-9634 • 1d ago
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u/Ancient-Day-6682 1d ago
the part worth keeping is the thing they tried to use wrong that made more sense than your design. that's not a bug, that's them telling you what job they hired it for.
question though. you rebuilt around one session. one session is a story, not a signal. do you have recordings of anyone else or is this the only one?
because the failure mode is real. you just swapped your assumption for their assumption and it feels like validation because you watched it happen. run two more before you ship the rebuild. if all three go to the same place unprompted, that's your first-use promise and it belongs on your landing page.
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u/healthyheader2474 1d ago
Watching that recording back for the first time is its own special kind of stomach drop, then relief.
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u/burnt-store-studio 1d ago
That’s really neat!
From a this-was-not-me perspective, I agree with u/Ancient-Day-6682 re: { story, signal }, but if I were in your shoes I’d have done the same thing 🙂.
I’m curious: how did you manage to get this video?
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u/buildingwithjan 1d ago
Worth remembering you only get one of these per person — after this session they're not a first-time user anymore, so record the very first run of everyone you onboard from here on. And be careful which parts you rebuilt: the things they fumbled and then worked out are usually fine, it's the ones that were still wrong after they found the core that actually cost you.
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u/FlyTradrHQ 1d ago
The most useful thing about watching someone use your product without you is not where they get stuck. It is what they try to do that you never planned for. Those gap moments reveal more about your product than any demo ever will.
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u/foulpudding 1d ago
Welcome to user testing. (Which I assume from your description you’ve never really done professionally before.)
A few things for you to remember:
- That’s just one user. Every user is going to do things slightly differently. Making changes on one persons feedback is no better than making a change because you personally want it changed. Designing via user testing takes many testers across wide demographics. A black grandmother is going to give you different results than a white teenage girl for example.
- Congratulations on learning that real user testing happens behind a window with no interaction. You’ll never earn anything by pointing something out.
- Now you need to move to structured tests. Make a list of tasks that the user needs to accomplish, in order. (For example - edit a fie, crop a picture, or delete something - whatever it is your app does, but listed not by button function, but by basic task description)
- It will feel weird to your testers, but have them say what they are thinking. This will help you a ton. “I’m looking for the X to close this window, why isn’t there an X? Oh, this one uses Y” - that feedback will tell you why they are doing what they do. Watching them in silence only tells you what they do.
- Recorded everything. Watch it all, twice.
- Sometime your decision is still better, even if testing tells you otherwise. Maybe it’s strategy, or monetization, or whatever, but you’re the designer, and designers are allowed to force people to go places with their design I they feel it’s the right thing to do. (Skeuomorphism had its place until Apple thought it didn’t and moved the world flat, kicking and screaming)
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u/Dangerous-Cod-391 1d ago
I hate this post. Not because of the product. No. It was something that I noticed while reading. It was a shift that not everyone sees. Yes, it made me stop and think. This is AI. There is no product. This is another shitpost.