3 entries for "Kathy Sierra: Badass — Making Users Awesome"

[Jargon is an indicator of high-resolution conversation between those inside domain. It may exclude people outside, but that doesn't it should be avoided inside. Help newcomers quickly get up to speed and they'll be happy to join in.]

[The experiment suggests that participants chose cake afterwards not only because their challenging cognitive task required more calories, but also because the same process drained their willpower to resist. There's only one pool for both.]

Every moment spent struggling with a confusing UI, frustrating customer service, poor documentation, or anything requiring patience, self-control, or intense concentration on the tool could be stealing resources from learning, practice, and becoming badass at the thing they really care about: the context.

The Zeigarnik Effect means cognitive resources are being consumed in the background while you’re doing other things. The more open/unfinished tasks that are running in the background, the less resources are available for focusing, practicing, and learning.

[Marketing materials focus on the compelling context, while remaining easy to understand. Learning content focuses on the tool, and the dry or hard to read material gets interpreted by the brain as spam.]

[Asking "Why?", "So what?, and "Who cares?" can help reframe unfocused material so that the brain says "worthy".]

[Easier for their brain is good, but less is better: is that element truly necessary?]

[Help them move from "can't do" to "can with effort" to "effortless mastery", ideally skipping the second step.]

[Help them practice toward better outcomes by designing exercises that bring them within a session or two to 95% reliability for a small skill or task.]

[Through perceptual exposure, your brain is learning without telling you what it learned.]

[Good perceptual exposure training needs lots of high quality examples that seem different on the surface but aren't.]

[Ideally, the exercises don't explain but enables the learner's brain to "discover" a pattern.]

[A common theme when newbies get derailed is that they can't express their frustration to the product maker. You can at least acknowledge their experience and encourage them to continue or hint at what could make progress easier; tell them the struggle is normal and that it's part of getting started.]

[The manual's sin is not complexity but making people feel like they're idiots for not understanding.]

[Anticipate the faces they're likely to make and compensate for their inability to show you.]

[Find what needs compensating by looking in the top comments in discussion groups for the tool or its larger more compelling context.]

[Design a performance path with skills that motivate them towards mastery can also magnetize them away from derailers. Use existing paths based on training programs, discussion forums, or definitive guides. If you create a path, order skills from beginner (less time/effort) to expert and group by rank.]

[They need to believe they'll improve, then actually improve, and also realize they've improved.]

[The first thirty minutes is a critical period to support them doing something new or that they didn't know they could do: their first superpower.]

[If they're worried about breaking something, they'll hesitate to touch anything. Make recovery easy. Help them feel free to just try things. Consider it a "Wild Experimentation Mode".]

["This product is awesome" really means "I'm awesome".]

[Most focus on product quality before quality of user results.]

[Businesses claim "world-class service" for their customers, but their customers are likely more interested in being a "world-class customer".]

[Make a better master rather than a better tool.]

[The post-UX UX of results begins after the clicking is done. What does it now enable them to do or show or say? How are they more powerful?]

[Substitute "How can we succeed at X?" with "How can our users or their users succeed at X?"]

[Imagine a scenario where your users are out-performing your competitions users in the bigger context.]