“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.

他们说： “ Emptyy是UX设计人员的重要组成部分 。” 它深深扎根于我们的脑海，我们需要考虑用户，他们的旅程，最适合他们的东西。 它确实具有吹嘘同理心，内在视觉和用户理解的能力。 说了这么多，说完了，最近的一项工作使我陷入一个棘手的问题，当我们说我们的工作对用户友好时，我们是否在自欺欺人。

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.

这个星期一，我走进客厅，发现父亲正在执行一项艰巨的任务：他正在通过电话向父母解释技术。 由于无法进行面对面的会议，因此这种情况经常发生。 我从观察这些交流中得出的唯一结论是，没有人在玩乐或取得任何进步(Doh！)。 在这一特定的日子，挑战在于设置Skype帐户。 这里需要注意的事情：通话质量中等，以及用非英语术语解释互联网的挑战。 大约15分钟后，电话就传给了我。 我想让我们试一下。 这就像用户测试，不是吗？ 我是一个有耐心的人，我可以解决这个问题。 男孩，我错了。

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，我的祖父母没有关于开设帐户的最模糊的线索。 大约40分钟，十几个WhatsApp通话，一次设置Gmail帐户的尝试失败，两个OTP，以及很多单词争吵，我们设法做到了！ 到处都是大喇叭，就是这样。 但是，当我回到正在从事的项目时，我意识到整个经验使一些棘手的事情发生了。 我发现自己在重新思考自己的工作，花了我一段时间才清楚地表达出我所学到的东西。 继续阅读！

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.

图标使人眼前一亮：帮助我的祖父母浏览众所周知的界面，使我确切地意识到我们使用了多少图标：通话，视频通话，摄像头切换，烤肉串菜单，任务栏图标，这是一个详尽的清单。 我们对它们非常习惯，它通常比阅读文本更容易且相当直观。 图标是一种经过实践检验的向用户传达含义的方式，而不会增加定位文本的麻烦。 它们是一种视觉语言工具，是确保一致性的一种方式，也是一种普遍接受的显示可用功能承受能力的方式。 问题出现在图标的预期含义与用户可能解释的含义之间的空间中。 图标之所以有效是因为它们与所提供的真实世界相匹配。 具有讽刺意味的是，图标越具有创造力和隐喻性，至少在第一次使用时，目标用户误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.

现在，回头看我的课堂项目，我注意到了主要的错误：我假设我的用户会知道每个图标的含义。 这是一个众所周知的偏见，称为“错误共识” ，人们认为自己的想法和看法与周围大多数人的想法完全吻合。

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.

以灯泡为例。 在这种情况下，我用它来表示用户可以单击此处以打开一组提示来帮助编写。 我的思维过程是“通常用灯泡表示的想法-提示是用于产生想法-提示到灯泡的链接”。 这是一条简单的思路，我假设用户会拿起我的隐喻并单击电灯泡，并期待出现提示。 打电话之后，我看到了很多可能性。 我的用户可能认为灯泡是为了改变亮度或改变颜色。 他们可能将加号解释为更多功能的指示，但也可能将其解释为添加了某些东西，或者在牵强的用例中将其解释为错误。 更糟糕的是，他们可能根本不认为它是任何东西。 他们将单击它并最终找出它，但是减小所需学习曲线的陡度始终是理想的。

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，对于这个项目的目标受众来说，这不是一个大问题，但是它仍然导致我在图标上添加标签：安全胜过遗憾。 外卖？ 图标很棒，图标超级有用，但是需要非常仔细地评估使用图标。 用图标替换文本不应使用户不清楚其目的。 极端的隐喻？ 他们一时感到有创造力，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.

我现在在键盘附近放了一个小便笺，上面写着“奶奶会知道这意味着什么吗？”。 如果我的答案是否定的，我会尝试做得更好。

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.

期望自己为自己的技术知识水平设计一切似乎令人难以置信，但这确实使我思考正确的方法。 更重要的是，它是个性化的。

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

我还添加了其他两个便签，因为它们是我不想忘记的观察。

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?

发布副本2：在大多数应用程序上，创建帐户是一个经过深思熟虑的用户旅程。 要点是用户完成了他们的旅程，这就是为什么我惊讶于发现祖父母问我下一步要做什么的次数而感到惊讶的原因。 他们在登录页面上暂停了，在必须输入个人信息时暂停了，甚至在收到消息并且不知道如何访问时也寻求帮助。 我一直喜欢带有创意着陆页，有趣的陈述和有趣按钮的网站和应用。 看着我的祖父母与这些屏幕互动，让我意识到，如果这没有实现其目的，那一切都是毫无意义的。 “放手去”，“去那里”和“好去处”开始变得有点模棱两可，而我开始更欣赏“下一个”和“在这里输入文字”。 我可能会一直对措辞丰富的内容持柔和的态度，并且我很喜欢双关语，但是我正在学习优先考虑实用程序。 这里的外卖？

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

便笺2：“如果内容的“酷劲”超过其对用户旅程的贡献，则需要继续发展。”

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.

张贴＃3-按钮：按钮是几乎每个界面的关键元素。 他们经过精心设计，措辞恰当，位置合理-始终都是我们的目标。 一个相当明显的问题是，我认为纽扣是一个完整的联盟，而我的祖父母则认为纽扣看起来像。 凭借扁平化的设计和缺乏阴影，我不能怪他们没有理解他们屏幕上五颜六色的小斑点正在被点击。 当我说“单击蓝色矩形”时，他们理解了，但是当我说“单击按钮”时，它们被抛出了。 圆形按钮，矩形，弯曲的边缘，一切都使他们感到困惑，我们很快过渡到“单击带有z文本的y颜色的x形状”。 神经变态可能会对此有所帮助，阴影和更好的CTA文本肯定会有所帮助。

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

无论哪种方式，它似乎都是值得的第三个便笺：“它是否使您想单击它？”

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!

在这一点上，有必要指出，这些便利贴并非普遍适用。 在某些情况下，我们不应该考虑这些想法。 但是便利贴的目的是让人们在大多数设计情况下都应该不断问自己一些容易引起注意的提醒。 到目前为止，他们似乎正在提供帮助！