“Empathy is a key part of a UX designers arsenal”, they say. It’s drilled into our heads that we need to be thinking about our user, about their journey, about what works best for them. And it does feel empowering to boast of empathy, inside vision and user understanding. All that said and done, a recent task led me down a rabbit hole of questioning whether we were fooling ourselves when we say our work is user friendly.

他們說： “ Emptyy是UX設計人員的重要組成部分 。” 它深深扎根于我們的腦海，我們需要考慮用戶，他們的旅程，最適合他們的東西。 它確實具有吹噓同理心，內在視覺和用戶理解的能力。 說了這么多，說完了，最近的一項工作使我陷入一個棘手的問題，當我們說我們的工作對用戶友好時，我們是否在自欺欺人。

This Monday, I walked into my living room to find my father attempting a rather daunting task: he was explaining technology to his parents over the phone. This had been happening more often since in-person meetings were out of the question. The only conclusion I’ve drawn from watching these exchanges is that nobody’s having fun or making any progress (Doh!). On this particular day, the challenge was setting up a Skype account. Things to note here: mediocre call quality and the challenge of explaining the internet in non-English terms. About 15 minutes into the process, the phone was passed on to me. Let’s give it a shot, I figured. It’s like user testing, isn’t it? I’m a patient person, I can manage this. Boy, was I wrong.

這個星期一，我走進客廳，發現父親正在執行一項艱巨的任務：他正在通過電話向父母解釋技術。 由于無法進行面對面的會議，因此這種情況經常發生。 我從觀察這些交流中得出的唯一結論是，沒有人在玩樂或取得任何進步(Doh！)。 在這一特定的日子，挑戰在于設置Skype帳戶。 這里需要注意的事情：通話質量中等，以及用非英語術語解釋互聯網的挑戰。 大約15分鐘后，電話就傳給了我。 我想讓我們試一下。 這就像用戶測試，不是嗎？ 我是一個有耐心的人，我可以解決這個問題。 男孩，我錯了。

To begin with, my grandparents didn’t have the faintest clue about setting up an account. About 40 minutes, a dozen WhatsApp calls, a failed attempt at setting up a Gmail account, 2 OTPs and a lot of struggling with words, we managed! Big whoop all around, and that was that. But when I went back to the project I was working on, I realized that the whole experience had set some cogs turning. I found myself rethinking my own work and it took me a while to articulate exactly what I’d learned. Read on!

首先，我的祖父母沒有關于開設帳戶的最模糊的線索。 大約40分鐘，十幾個WhatsApp通話，一次設置Gmail帳戶的嘗試失敗，兩個OTP，以及很多單詞爭吵，我們設法做到了！ 到處都是大喇叭，就是這樣。 但是，當我回到正在從事的項目時，我意識到整個經驗使一些棘手的事情發生了。 我發現自己在重新思考自己的工作，花了我一段時間才清楚地表達出我所學到的東西。 繼續閱讀！

Icons eye-cons: Helping my grandparents navigate through well-known interfaces made me realize exactly how many icons we use: calls, video calls, camera switching, kebab menus, taskbar icons, it’s an extensive list. We’re so accustomed to them it’s often easier than reading text and fairly intuitive. Icons are a tried and tested way of conveying meaning to the user without the added hassle of positioning text. They are a visual language tool, a way to ensure consistency and a generally accepted way of showing an affordance for available features. The problem arises in the space between the intended meaning of an icon, and what the user may interpret it to be. Icons are only effective because of the match to the real world that they provide. Ironically, the more creative and metaphorical an icon is, the more chances there are that the intended user will misinterpret it, at least the first time around.

圖標使人眼前一亮：幫助我的祖父母瀏覽眾所周知的界面，使我確切地意識到我們使用了多少圖標：通話，視頻通話，攝像頭切換，烤肉串菜單，任務欄圖標，這是一個詳盡的清單。 我們對它們非常習慣，它通常比閱讀文本更容易且相當直觀。 圖標是一種經過實踐檢驗的向用戶傳達含義的方式，而不會增加定位文本的麻煩。 它們是一種視覺語言工具，是確保一致性的一種方式，也是一種普遍接受的顯示可用功能承受能力的方式。 問題出現在圖標的預期含義與用戶可能解釋的含義之間的空間中。 圖標之所以有效是因為它們與所提供的真實世界相匹配。 具有諷刺意味的是，圖標越具有創造力和隱喻性，至少在第一次使用時，目標用戶誤解它的可能性就越大。

Now, looking back at my classroom project, I noticed the main error: I was assuming that my user would know what each icon meant. This is a rather well-known bias, called ‘false consensus’, where a person believes that their own thoughts and perceptions match exactly with the thoughts of the majority of people around them.

現在，回頭看我的課堂項目，我注意到了主要的錯誤：我假設我的用戶會知道每個圖標的含義。 這是一個眾所周知的偏見，稱為“錯誤共識” ，人們認為自己的想法和看法與周圍大多數人的想法完全吻合。

Take, for example, the light bulb. In this case, I used it as an indication that users could click there to open up a set of prompts to help with their writing. My thought process was ‘Idea- commonly represented through bulb- prompt is for generating ideas- prompt links to bulb’. It’s a simple line of thought, and i assumed that users would pick up on my metaphor and click on the bulb, expecting a prompt. After that call, I could see a bunch of possibilities. My user might think the bulb was for changing brightness, or for changing colour. They might interpret a plus symbol as an indicator of more features, but they may also interpret it as adding something, or in a far-fetched use case, as an error. Even worse, they might not perceive it as anything at all. They’ll click on it and figure it out eventually, but reducing the steepness of the required learning curve is always ideal.

以燈泡為例。 在這種情況下，我用它來表示用戶可以單擊此處以打開一組提示來幫助編寫。 我的思維過程是“通常用燈泡表示的想法-提示是用于產生想法-提示到燈泡的鏈接”。 這是一條簡單的思路，我假設用戶會拿起我的隱喻并單擊電燈泡，并期待出現提示。 打電話之后，我看到了很多可能性。 我的用戶可能認為燈泡是為了改變亮度或改變顏色。 他們可能將加號解釋為更多功能的指示，但也可能將其解釋為添加了某些東西，或者在牽強的用例中將其解釋為錯誤。 更糟糕的是，他們可能根本不認為它是任何東西。 他們將單擊它并最終找出它，但是減小所需學習曲線的陡度始終是理想的。

In my case, with my target audience for this project, this wouldn’t be a huge problem, but it still led me to add labels to my icons: better safe than sorry. The takeaway? Icons are great, icons are super useful, but using an icon needs to be very carefully evaluated. Replacing text with an icon shouldn’t take away a user’s clarity on its purpose. Extreme metaphors? They feel creative in the moment, but the trade-off isn’t worth it.

就我而言，對于這個項目的目標受眾來說，這不是一個大問題，但是它仍然導致我在圖標上添加標簽：安全勝過遺憾。 外賣？ 圖標很棒，圖標超級有用，但是需要非常仔細地評估使用圖標。 用圖標替換文本不應使用戶不清楚其目的。 極端的隱喻？ 他們一時感到有創造力，但不值得取舍。

I’ve now put a little sticky note near my keyboard which reads ‘will grandma know what this means?’ and if my answer is no, I try to do better.

我現在在鍵盤附近放了一個小便箋，上面寫著“奶奶會知道這意味著什么嗎？”。 如果我的答案是否定的，我會嘗試做得更好。

Expecting myself to design everything for her level of technological know-how seems incredibly hyperbolic, but it does get me thinking along the right lines. More importantly, it’s personalized.

期望自己為自己的技術知識水平設計一切似乎令人難以置信，但這確實使我思考正確的方法。 更重要的是，它是個性化的。

I also added 2 other sticky notes, because they were observations I didn’t want to forget.

我還添加了其他兩個便簽，因為它們是我不想忘記的觀察。

Post-it #2- the copy: Creating an account is a fairly well-thought-out user journey on most applications. The main point is that the user COMPLETES their journey, which is why I was surprised at the number of times I found my grandparents asking me for what to do next. They paused at the landing page, they paused when they had to enter personal information, they even asked for help when they received a message and couldn’t figure out how to access it. I’ve always enjoyed websites and apps with creative landing pages, amusing statements, and fun buttons. Watching my grandparents interact with these screens made me realize how pointless all of that was, if it didn’t serve its purpose. The ‘let’s go’ and ‘hi there’ and ‘good to go’ started to feel a little ambiguous and i started to appreciate ‘next’ and ‘enter text here’ a little more. I will probably always hold a soft spot for well-worded content, and I’m a sucker for a good pun, but I’m learning to prioritize utility. The takeaway here?

發布副本2：在大多數應用程序上，創建帳戶是一個經過深思熟慮的用戶旅程。 要點是用戶完成了他們的旅程，這就是為什么我驚訝于發現祖父母問我下一步要做什么的次數而感到驚訝的原因。 他們在登錄頁面上暫停了，在必須輸入個人信息時暫停了，甚至在收到消息并且不知道如何訪問時也尋求幫助。 我一直喜歡帶有創意著陸頁，有趣的陳述和有趣按鈕的網站和應用。 看著我的祖父母與這些屏幕互動，讓我意識到，如果這沒有實現其目的，那一切都是毫無意義的。 “放手去”，“去那里”和“好去處”開始變得有點模棱兩可，而我開始更欣賞“下一個”和“在這里輸入文字”。 我可能會一直對措辭豐富的內容持柔和的態度，并且我很喜歡雙關語，但是我正在學習優先考慮實用程序。 這里的外賣？

Sticky note #2: ‘If the ‘coolness’ of your content outweighs its contribution to the user journey, it needs to go.’

便箋2：“如果內容的“酷勁”超過其對用戶旅程的貢獻，則需要繼續發展。”

Post it #3- buttons: Buttons are crucial elements to almost every interface. They’re well-designed, well-worded, well-placed- that’s the aim anyway. The rather glaring problem is that what I perceive as a button, is a whole league apart from what my grandparents think a button looks like. With flat design and a lack of shadows, I couldn’t blame them for not understanding that the colourful little blob on their screen was calling to be clicked on. When I said ‘click the blue rectangle’, they understood, but when I said ‘click the button’, they were thrown. Round buttons, rectangles, curved edges, everything was confusing to them, and we quickly transitioned to ‘click x shape of y colour with z text’. Neumorphism might help with that, shadows and better CTA text definitely would.

張貼＃3-按鈕：按鈕是幾乎每個界面的關鍵元素。 他們經過精心設計，措辭恰當，位置合理-始終都是我們的目標。 一個相當明顯的問題是，我認為紐扣是一個完整的聯盟，而我的祖父母則認為紐扣看起來像。 憑借扁平化的設計和缺乏陰影，我不能怪他們沒有理解他們屏幕上五顏六色的小斑點正在被點擊。 當我說“單擊藍色矩形”時，他們理解了，但是當我說“單擊按鈕”時，它們被拋出了。 圓形按鈕，矩形，彎曲的邊緣，一切都使他們感到困惑，我們很快過渡到“單擊帶有z文本的y顏色的x形狀”。 神經變態可能會對此有所幫助，陰影和更好的CTA文本肯定會有所幫助。

Either way, it seemed a worthwhile third sticky note: ‘does it make you want to click on it?’

無論哪種方式，它似乎都是值得的第三個便箋：“它是否使您想單擊它？”

At this point, it feels necessary to point out that these post-its aren’t universally applicable. There will be cases where we shouldn’t be designing with those thoughts in mind. But the point of the post-its was to set easily visible reminders of things I should keep asking myself in most design situations. So far, they seem to be helping!

在這一點上，有必要指出，這些便利貼并非普遍適用。 在某些情況下，我們不應該考慮這些想法。 但是便利貼的目的是讓人們在大多數設計情況下都應該不斷問自己一些容易引起注意的提醒。 到目前為止，他們似乎正在提供幫助！