Alan Cooper

to minimize mouse movement

What are my users trying to accomplish?

At small companies, for example, workers tend to have a broader set of responsibilities and more interpersonal contact. Huge companies often have multiple layers of bureaucracy, and their workers tend to be highly specialized.

Far more useful than asking users for design advice is encouraging them to tell specific stories about their experiences with a product (whether an old version of the one you’re redesigning, or an analogous product or process). Ask them how they use it, what they think of it, who else they interact with when using it, where they go with it, and so forth. Detailed stories of this kind usually are the best way to understand how users relate to
and interact with products

Why the user is performing the task (that is, the underlying goal)
The frequency and importance of the task
Cues—what initiates or prompts the execution of the task
Dependencies—what must be in place to perform the task, as well as what is dependent on the completion of the task
People who are involved, and their roles and responsibilities
Specific actions that are performed
Decisions that are made
Information that is used to support decisions
What goes wrong—errors and exception cases
How errors and exceptions are corrected

To create a product that must satisfy a diverse audience of users, logic might tell you to make its functionality as broad as possible to accommodate the most people. This logic, however, is flawed. The best way to successfully accommodate a variety of users is to design for specific types of individuals with specific needs.

When you broadly and arbitrarily extend a product’s functionality to include many constituencies, you increase the cognitive load and navigational overhead for all users.

Figure 3-1: If you try to design an automobile that pleases every possible driver, you end up with a car with every possible feature that pleases nobody.

Persona goals and tasks provide the foundation for the design effort.

We can ask, “Will Julie want to perform this operation very often? Will she ever?” With this knowledge, we can prioritize functions with great clarity.