Understand your users and let that define your approach

I was talking to Kati Price recently (Head of Experience & Digital at the V&A) about the mused platform that her team recently launched.

This is a new website for ‘creatively curious kids’ aged 10-14.

Kati has written a blog post about the project but what really stuck out to me was how this was a response to a clearly defined, well-researched, and well-understood set of user needs.

“we want mused to be a stimulating, safe and welcoming place for kids to spend time online, with content that’s designed to entertain and inspire their curiosity”

This focus on being both welcoming and entertaining is something that is often lacking in so many web experiences (in the cultural sector and more widely).

From talking to Kati I know that mused is already exceeding the V&A’s expectations in terms of both visitor numbers, and levels of engagement.

Centre your users

mused was developed in response to a clear understanding of what the users in question (kids aged 10-14) were actively seeking out in terms of both a) format (personality and trivia quizzes, listicles, and challenge quizzes), and b) subject matter (popular contemporary culture across areas like gaming, fashion, music, and film & tv).

By using this as the starting point and then passing that through the lens of the V&A, the team at the V&A have delivered something that is genuinely useful and valuable for their target audience, and is done in a way that only the V&A could deliver.

There was no awkward wrestling with unrelated or unwanted topics or themes, and the approach to the design and UX is legible and attractive to the people that mused is trying to reach and engage.

It is, as they aimed to be, both “welcoming and entertaining”.

How did they do this? They spoke to actual users!

They asked questions about where kids in their target group spent time online, and why, what things these kids were interested in, and what they enjoyed doing.

The team at the V&A then combined these insights with data from online surveys and SEO research to create content focused on things that people were actually interested in and looking for, and from there - when genuinely relevant - related that to objects and stories from the V&A collection.

“By understanding and analysing how young people engage with contemporary culture […] we identify the topics, people and things they’re most interested in. That’s why you’ll find subjects ranging from Harry Styles to Barbie, and from fashion ‘cores’ to Minecraft.”

Talking to users doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult

User research is a really well established practice and discipline.

It is a specific focus in many user experience-related qualifications (such as this Masters course at the University of the Arts London).

But that doesn’t mean you need a Masters to start doing user research yourself.

Just talking to the people that you are making a thing for, or trying to reach, will give you practical, valuable feedback on how to proceed.

Watching people use the products and services that you’ve built for them is also the quickest way to understanding how something can be improved.

But it is also easy to waste time by not being specific.

You can see in the example of mused that the V&A team were really clear on who their target audience was, “a global Generation Alpha online audience aged 10 – 14 across the English-speaking world”, they were clear on what they were trying to understand, “how young people engage with contemporary culture” and “the topics, people and things they [the target audience] are most interested in” and they then tried to “find ways to make connections with the V&A’s collections and exhibition programme”.

Being user led isn’t easy

The V&A team designed mused in response to the insights from the questions and work mentioned above.

mused was the answer, not the question.

They didn’t initially seek to use a specific product, or type of technology.

This isn’t an easy approach.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do yet” is not what boards or funders like to hear (something I spoke about in my podcast coversation with Nesta’s Fran Sanderson).

But I hope they become more comfortable with this reality.

I hope they become more comfortable in trusting their digitally-focused colleagues to ask the right questions in order to get to the best and right answers, and I hope those colleagues start to use the needs of their target users as the thing that defines the desired outcome and approach.

Shameless plug

On Thurs 30th November, my brilliant colleague, Steph, is delivering a free webinar on “conducting effective user research with limited resources”.

It promises to be 45 minutes of your time well spent.