Design as Conversation

I’m doing rather a lot of remote user testing these days – people use a site to view information about a proposed product and respond verbally to what they are shown and asked.   Most of the respondents follow a predictable pattern, reading a question, giving a brief answer, and moving on – but one of them took an unusual and rather interesting approach: she had a conversation with the product page.

“You say you are a [type of company] and that you want to talk to me about a new product called [product name].    I understand the kind of company you are and I do not know anything about the product.” 

 “You say that this product is supposed to [description of benefit].  I understand what you mean, and I think that what you’re offering is interesting to me because [her reason for being interested] but I am also suspicious about [certain aspects of the agreement].”

 “You say that [key selling point] and I’m not sure I believe you.   It sounds good, but right now it’s just a claim you’re making without proof.  I’ll be listening to hear if you provide any support for that claim later.”

She carried on throughout the test like this, “you say” the various information we presented on the product information page.  “I think” about what her reactions were.   It was very thorough, detailed, and useful.

I’d like to be able to coach others to do this, but my sense is it would be weird and artificial for them, and it might taint the results.   But I do think that this conversational model can be flipped to talk about the product and page design.   “We are telling the user [this], and we expect them to think [that]” – or for more interactive models, to say “We are asking the user [this] and we expect them to say [that]”

I’ll mediate on this a bit more later – for now I wanted to document the experience and its potential for use as a design method.