Today I will show you why you shouldn’t take me (or any other supposed expert) too seriously. I will contradict myself entirely and, in doing so, show you how context is everything.

But before I do, can I be honest with you? You are not supposed to say things like this because you want everybody to think you are in high demand. However, the current state of the world means I am light on work. So, if you need some consultancy, coaching, training, or help to improve your conversion rate, drop me an email. I’ll even throw in a 10% discount if you book in October.

I Often Ignore My Preferred Approach

Not too long ago, I shared with you my preferred approach to developing digital services. An approach that began with a discovery project that crucially includes user research.

I have even written about what you should do as a minimum in this type of user research.

However, if I am being honest with you, I often ignore my own advice. Blindly following best practices can often be wasteful and less effective in delivering results.

Let me give you a real example, hopefully explaining why you should always favor common sense and your judgment over what you see online.

I have been working with a company for some time now, helping them improve the conversion rate on their website.

Because of a change in circumstances, we concluded that the site needed to be redesigned and rebuilt.

I am not usually a fan of this approach, but it was the most cost-effective in this case.

Sometimes I Do Things in the Wrong Order

Typically, I would start with a discovery phase to better understand the user, understand the competitive landscape and speak with stakeholders. However, I decided against that, jumping straight into prototyping. I didn’t even do any card sorting or top task analysis to decide on the information architecture.

My reasoning was I knew this client, their audience, and their needs well enough to have an initial stab at the website.

Of course, I am making many assumptions, and I may well be wrong. But I intend to conduct my interviews and user research retroactively rather than upfront.

I Occasionally Carry Out Research Retroactively

If I had begun the project by interviewing stakeholders and users, I wouldn’t have known what to ask them. So I would have done it to go through the motions rather than because I had burning questions.

However, prototyping has thrown up various questions in my mind that I can now address through user research. Moreover, showing the prototype to users and stakeholders will undoubtedly generate even more questions or wrong assumptions on my part.

It makes a lot more sense to carry out the user research at that point when I have specific issues I need to resolve.

Don’t Do Things Just Because You Are Supposed To!

What I am driving at is that too often, we do these exercises because that is what we are supposed to do, not because we have a clear idea of what we want to learn. Everything from customer journey mapping to user surveying are tools that help us answer questions. If you don’t know what questions you need to ask, then don’t use them until you do.

Use these techniques when it is sensible, not just because somebody told you to in an article.