Measure UX with the help of COWS
A qualitative analysis framework to validate design in the prism of user feelings and satisfaction.
Introduction
COWS (or Cool — Omg — What the F! — Shit) is a method to verify, prioritize and resolve defects in an organism — quickly, naturally and moreover efficiently.
Its core philosophy lies in four primary human emotions of Joy, Surprise, Anger, and Sadness. These emotional states compose the foundation of the intellectual process a user is going through when interacting with a product, interface or any physical object.
With the COWS method a researcher, designer, product owner can easily categorize solutions based on the user impact or better on emotional perception characteristics.
These insights can be originated by asking one simple question to yourself, to stakeholders, or users — “How you feel about …”
This type of classification based on empathy is able to produce not only valuable information about gaps and obstacles but also help the facilitator of such a study to understand people and values.
It’s the aspect of people’s core reactions and emotional state, what makes COWS so intuitive and a great tool for many operations inside a team — such as to evaluate a condition — or as a tool to gather feedback on a developed solution.
What COWS does differently as a technique is that it improves the duo-feedback (like-dislike) system by introducing a more honest and meaningful way to identify, review and revise choices, assumptions or ideas.
COWS, is a method of self and team development, a pathway which empowers everyone within an environment to actively reason the current establishment and provide valuable and genuine remarks that will aid in further positive development of a team, product or person.
All you have to do is to say how you feel!
The story behind COWS
The COWS process has been conceived (probably emerged by chance and true need) during a UX review phase that I did in Transifex.
During my first month, I wrote down dozen of pages with comments, notes, gathered feedback from outside resources, reviews of the platform and discussed with the team and my product owner. After some time of learn and exploration, I had many issues written down that I felt they had an impact on the user experience, design and the vision of the product.
While I was writing down all these remarks, questions and notes, a natural prioritisation and tracking system has being emerged — completely by a personal need.
I started categorizing my findings as Cool, Omg, Wtf or Shit in order to check later and know what is more or less important, what made me feel that this is a cool interaction, or cases that I felt WTF is going on here :).
The COWS system was born!
What occurred next is that this segmentation, helped me understand the problems from the solutions, and also made me know exactly what to look after in the product, what is a Cool, Omg, WTF or S!!! thing that we need to know about.
The amount of data and results that were extracted by practicing the COWS process, only in that single initial Transifex UX review sprint, were outstanding and the knowledge that I received was extremely constructive.
Desirability studies
What are Desirability Studies?
Christian Rohrer in an article dated 10 years ago, says that “Desirability studies actually do more than just measure, as they can also be used to inform and even inspire different visual design directions you may be considering. In the landscape of user research methods I described in this article, it is classified as an attitudinal study that can be qualitative or quantitative (shown below as a “hybrid” method in the middle bottom area)..”.
What’s different with COWS in contrast to other UX research methods — such as Microsoft Desirability Toolkit — is the minimisation of possible reactions and the ease-of-use of the ubiquity of the methodology.
In an article, Kate Moran of NN Group says about MDT, “The full list of product reaction words is quite large and comprehensive. Taken together, the words cover a wide variety of possible reactions to features ranging from the design’s visual appeal, the microcopy used, the functionality, to the user experience as a whole.”
Imo the full spectrum of reactions can lead to analytical ataxy. Why not keep it simple and decrease the reactions to the primary.
A new research from the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow says the range of human emotion may be a little closer to a teaspoon than previously thought.
The research suggests there may only be happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted. In more details, the study says that “these emotions are our biologically based facial signals — though distinctions exist between surprise and fear and between anger and disgust, the experiment suggests that these differences developed later, more for social reasons than survival ones”.
The COWS framework — based on the above research and practices — suggests a new type of desirability method which can be applied in visual design, user experience, product development process, with the purpose to recognise the primary emotions users have and resolve them efficiently and in time.
The four COWS principles reflect the following four emotions.
Cool — Happy 😀
Omg — Afraid/Suprised 😱
WTF — Sad 😞
Shit — Angry/Disgusted 🤬
Application of COWS
As said before COWS is a hybrid study that can be applied for usability studies, as a method to capture qualitative insights, for visual design and product analysis, within an agile development sprint or as a constructive feedback process.
The versatile nature of the method enables all stakeholders and team members to pragmatically expose issues in a relevant board of four pillars, that reflect the Cool, Omg, Wtf & Shit status of an entity or element inside an organism.
It might look similar to JIT framework which designates “Making only what is needed, only when it is needed, and only in the amount that is needed”.
What COWS propose is enabling the people in the decision making and evaluation (even of the process itself). By rephrasing JIT framework then COWS designates “Making only what I feel is needed, only when I feel it is needed, and only in the amount that I feel is needed”.
~(where I is: You, He, Shem, They…People)
Following are two stories in which COWS process can be applied. In order to manage metrics, I suggest you use a Trello board with four lists named after COWS.
“True detective” approach
A product designer — who is practicing the COWS methodology will constantly investigate for glitches, inconsistencies and quick wins based on customer requests or loosely by re-examining the product.
Generically speaking a designer will examine parts that make him/her feel Joy, Surprise, Anger or Distrust, the four emotions that form the four principles of COWS.
When looking at a product the question he/she should ask is “How does it make me feel?”.
This emotion stimulus is what drives meaningful user experiences for the end user, mainly due to the fact that the motivation comes from valuable emotional factors and not from a technical perspective.
The designer tags and pins those findings in one of the four relevant pillars inside a COWS board where all findings have a distinct hierarchy.
Example
While looking at a webpage a designer detects that he can’t recognize the text inside a button. He finds out that the background is blue and the text is also dark blue resulting in a low contrast action failing the standards of WCAG 2.0 guidelines for contrast accessibility. He identifies the issue and tag it as Shit! in one of the COWS pillars. It is a top priority to be reviewed and fixed in order to return to a Cool state.
In this case, the COWS methodology is really helpful as a cognitive walkthrough for the ‘investigator’ that enables him to look broadly in a structure and retrieve the essential parts that respond to one of his four primary emotions.
“Judge Dredd” approach
COWS can also be applied as a ranking mechanism for various aspects inside a hypothetical frame.
As has been said before, COWS is a hybrid approach to identify and acknowledge the positive or negative elements within an ‘organism’.
We will use the same type of practitioner — a product designer — and we will look at an example of design feedback for a feature in a product. In a normal case scenario, a designer will rely on conventional analysis tools and methods to get feedback for a visual design work.
With the contemporary toolset he probably will initiate an A/B test session where users are able to select a preferred version of the design, he could craft a prototype and make usability interviews, he can present a solution in a larger audience to gather comments and feedback.
All of the above tools and practices although they provide valuable acumens and information, they don’t offer tangible emotion and reaction values of the end user who’s going to use the product.
In a COWS process, the precious information lies in the response to the question: “How does it make you feel?”.
I should mention that a person can have one emotional state at a given time and context, which means valid, honest and authentic metrics.
Example:
The designer asks for feedback on a new landing page design. The group of reviewers responds with how this implementation that they see make them feel and send their COWS score feedback. The responses are classified in a COWS board.
Understanding COWS levels
The lowest in priority but higher in emotional score level in COWS ranking is Cool, given that in an agile environment of continuous improvement there is no level of great or perfect.
Every product is in a constant loop with a purpose to stay Cool for a longer time in a given timeframe.
“In an ideal great product the column of Cool elements is filled and the rest of the columns in the COWS framework are empty. We presume that an ideal product is the Milky Way galaxy.”
The highest in priority level and lowest in emotional score level in the COWS ranking is Shit, which consequently designates that an action must be taken to resolve the issue.
As in the real world where a pile of Shit produces greater problems for the health, in the same way in a product a pile of Shit features and implementations produce an unhealthy product. The Shit issues in the COWS board that being resolved are moved to the Cool column.
Cool is the state of happiness. It’s the purpose, the utopia, the Shangri-La. Reminder that Cool should also be noted and tracked in order to know what works best for the end users.
The Omg rank is related to surprise. For every part, you feel little or more surprised if its purpose, conception, functionality and stumble on it unawares — then it’s definitely an Omg thing. The Omg issues are prone to become Wtf cases and sometimes can become really Cool entities — so they need special care and nurture.
The What the F*ck! ranking relates directly to the Anger we feel when something definitely doesn’t function the way we want or meant to work. These cases can be for example crashes, bugs, UX deadlocks, misleading copyright, failed or non-compliant with accessibility guidelines elements.
These negative factors have the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. A user that is in the Wtf state will try to reflect the negative pressure by closing, leaving, exiting the situation by any means.
In the best case scenario, the user will try a nethermost solution (e.g. a refresh in a page that is unresponsive) or fill a complaint.
Worst case scenario but most often is to feel distrust for the service and never come back, which inevitably will class this part or the whole product in the pile of Shit.
Modus operandi
In a world where product quality is connected to positive user experience and satisfaction, we need a framework that is emotion-oriented, that dives deep into the customer’s heart model, and enables practitioners to empathize with the user and is simple, effective and flexible to understand and apply.
The COWS methodology is not a manual. Rather it is an overview of the concepts and philosophy that underlie our thinking system. It is a reminder that quality and excellence are possible whenever and wherever creators and users are united in a commitment to positive change.
~Inspired by TPS
