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One user testing question can help uncover the gap between conceptual and mental models
Intro to B2B design: How to educate users about difficult or complex concepts
It’s possible to design things that test well but don’t teach users what they need to know.
It’s a scenario that some of you may have encountered while user testing onboarding. People can get through the onboarding process but don’t understand the introduced core concepts or functions, leading to problems later.
You might have even done this yourself: you rush through onboarding, completing things quickly, only to run into issues later (and Google the solution).
This is not a problem with simple applications. However, this became a serious issue when I started to design more complex Business-to-Business (B2B) applications for one key reason: Google searches often don’t return relevant results for their issues.
So, if your users don’t understand more complex terms and concepts, they’ll guess or stop using your product.
How exactly should you design to help educate your users about specific concepts?
The first step is to address the big elephant in the room: is this even a Designer’s job?
Why educating users is a Designer’s responsibility
Between my distaste for content-last design and my need to wear multiple hats at startups, it seems natural to immerse myself in the problem of educating users.
However, it may only sometimes be your responsibility at larger organizations. You may have a content or writing team in your organization, which often focuses on problems like these. In that case, should it still be the responsibility of the Designer to contribute in some way?
The answer is yes, for two reasons. The first is that whatever decisions are made around content, they still have to be implemented in the design. I’ve encountered countless issues when content is finally decided on and plugged into…
