The answers to these six questions reveal the context of use \u2013 the people, their tasks, their tools and technology, and the environment in which they will be using the product you\u2019re designing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who are the users? What are their characteristics? What knowledge and experience do they bring to their tasks? Are there different user groups? If so, what distinguishes them from each other, and which user groups are most important?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do the users do? What are the tasks they need to accomplish? You need to understand their tasks as a whole as well as the tasks that pertain to the product or system that you\u2019re designing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do they perform those tasks? While what<\/i> asks about the tasks people perform, how<\/i> asks for the details of how they perform those tasks. For example, paying a credit card bill is what <\/i>someone does. How<\/i> they pay it, gets into the detailed, individual steps involved in the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhere<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Where are these people when they perform their tasks? Which physical characteristics of that environment affect how they perform their tasks? Lighting conditions, temperature, noise, interruptions, privacy, space, interactions with other people, physical movement, and other conditions of the location could influence how they perform tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When do they perform these tasks? Are they in a hurry, or can they take their time? How often do they perform these tasks? If it\u2019s something they do every day, they can learn and remember how the system works. If it\u2019s something they only do a few times a year, it\u2019s unlikely that you can rely on them to learn and remember how to use the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why do they perform these tasks? What are they really trying to accomplish? People perform tasks because they want to achieve higher-level goals. For example, people use personal financial software to update their records of their bank and credit card accounts and to pay bills. Those are their specific, lower-level tasks, but their higher-level goals are to feel more control over their finances, to better understand and control their spending, and to save money. Supporting users\u2019 tasks is merely the minimum. Helping them better achieve their true goals is what leads to an excellent user experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You could simply ask people these questions, but it\u2019s difficult for people to provide accurate answers by simply talking about what they do outside of the context of performing those tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, the best way to learn this information is to go out and observe:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This observation, combined with interviews, would lead to answering why<\/i> they perform these tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Sixth W \u2013 What if?<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Once you\u2019ve answered the five W\u2019s and the H, you have enough information to begin asking \u201cWhat if?\u201d What if <\/i>begins the design process by trying out ideas and possible solutions to help users best achieve their goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You may have heard that to design a good user experience you first need to understand the users and their needs, but what exactly do you need to know? It comes down to five W and one H question \u2013 Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":2370,"comment_status":"publish","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2374,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/2374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}