Perhaps a hard lesson for product developers is, “the user couldn’t care less about how the device is working,” said Dr. Oved. “What the user really cares about is how easy the workflow is. How does the device fit its workflow? How does the device fit the different use cases and the different environments it needs to serve?”
One way to design a user-friendly product experience is to move usability testing earlier in product development. Often, usability studies are performed relatively late in the process, but Dr. Oved recommends, “Go out to the field with paper models and simulate the workflow you’re about to do, you’re going to learn a lot!”
Asking questions and observing users in the field while designing the product will help you get a clearer picture of what users actually need.
“Whatever you think people wouldn’t do, they’ll do it,” added Dr. Gargan. “Obviously once they’re trained, it’s relatively straightforward. But we were really surprised.”