January 23rd, 2008

The Power of a Bruised Ego

by Joshua Porter | 18 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/733

Wy wife and I were recently doing some online shopping together. We were looking for lamps for our living room. My wife was the one at the controls, and at one point she got frustrated and said “This web site really sucks. I can’t even look at their furniture.”

I had mixed feelings about my wife’s comment. My shopper side was completely with her. The web site did suck. It was hard to look at furniture. My designer side, however, felt a pang of empathy for the poor designers who probably worked really hard building this.

This situation reminded me of the reality TV shows where they do house makeovers. On one that I remember watching, a couple was having a hard time selling their house. They had open house after open house, yet nobody was making an offer.

So the crafty real estate agent (as part of the show) decided to video tape the next open house. They taped people as they walked through the house, catching all the little comments that couples make to each other out of earshot of the realtor. This was just like the comments my wife and I were making to each other about the web site.

The raw comments were astounding. “This room is fugly”. “I hate these curtains…what a horrible sense of style”. Not only did people attack the style of the house, they attacked the people who were responsible, the house owners!

Obviously, those people wouldn’t make such comments to the face of the house owners. It just wouldn’t be polite and they would get kicked out of the house immediately. (In the same way my wife and I probably wouldn’t tell the site creators to their face that their web site stunk)

But what surprised me is that once the house owners heard these comments, they didn’t fight them. Sure, their ego was bruised. But they realized that they were seeing evidence of why the house wasn’t selling. So they quickly agreed to allow a house decorator to come in an redecorate their house (for a fee) so that it would show better. Their earlier reluctance to put more money into the house before the sale evaporated when they saw the tape.

And, of course, after they redecorated the comments of the next round of people were very positive. “Oh, nice”. “I like this”. Etc. And, as you might expect, the house sold relatively quickly after that.

So while it was a tough pill to swallow to hear people complain and rip on the style of the house, it had a powerful effect of immediate change.

The same rules apply on the web. If you don’t know how people truly feel about your web application, you can’t make the hard decisions you need to in order to improve.

In a recent set of interviews I did for a client, we were hearing some of those negative comments. And since I was doing the interviews myself, I wasn’t sure how to communicate this extreme displeasure back to the site owners. Should I tone it down? Instead of saying “people hated it” should I say “well, there’s a lot of work to be done”?

In the end, I thought about this TV show and let all the comments go through untouched. The site owners heard the true feelings of the people who were using their web application, and realizing that they had a lot of work to do, set about immediately doing it.

Sometimes the only way to make the necessary changes is to take a direct hit to the ego. It hurts, but boy is it effective.

Grab the RSS Feed

Links to this Post

Friday Link Round Up « ellie <3 libraries

Comments

1. Jennifer B. 12:59pm, Wed 23rd, 2008

It shouldn’t hurt. These are not things we are designing for ourselves, they are usually for others. We should be comfortable with the fact that as designers we are probably not always right. We should be VERY grateful to get the raw feedback and not let it affect us on a personal level. We design better products when we have that approach. Just my $.02

2. Weixi Yen 1:31pm, Wed 23rd, 2008

> It shouldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, I think it has to, otherwise designers can spill whatever BS they want about why their designs work.

3. Jake McKee 4:27pm, Wed 23rd, 2008

Great read, completely agree.

The home owners can easily blow off the realtor. Your client can easily blow you off. But it’s hard to argue that your audience isn’t upset about X when they’re saying X loudly and clearly.

I’m always surprised by how much we humans shut ourselves off to outside opinion. Perhaps the ego hit is the thing that smacks us out of that resistance…

4. Odra 4:41pm, Wed 23rd, 2008

Perhaps if honesty became more common, people would be better able to deal with it.

5. William Will 5:25pm, Wed 23rd, 2008

I think as designers we often get ‘attached’ to a specific idea or concept and then have a hard time seeing that an originally well meant element didn’t solve a design problem.

On the other hand there are those moments when we try to swim against the current mode de jour and get asked why we’re not using a blue and green color scheme or rounding our corners or making things ’simpler’. Unfortunately people don’t state things like that clearly, they’re more likely to say ‘it just doesn’t have that fresh feel I’m looking for’.

So while some of those judgement things might be functional, some are also purely emotional. It’s those that I can be bruised by and feel bad about for a very long time… if they truly matter to me aesthetically.

6. Cyndy Aleo-Carreira 10:05pm, Wed 23rd, 2008

I’ve gotta believe that most designers would WANT to know that customers aren’t liking something rather than just having them leave the site, never to return.

7. Grace P 4:28am, Thu 24th, 2008

The art of being able to say the truth lies in the ability to balance tact and being outright blunt. Our education and training has always taught us to use the former. Can we possibly risk being blunt without leaving a bad after taste on the receiving party? Would it turn the other party off from future opinions that we hold?

Having said all that, I do believe that it is a valid technique but I need to know how to apply it appropriately. Afterall, we can never predict the reaction of the receiving party until the act has been accomplished and then it will be too late to repair any damanges if it was not taken well.

8. Tom Grant 7:44am, Thu 24th, 2008

Many companies are certainly willing to endure the pain. At Forrester Research, where I just started working this month, we’ve done hundreds of web site critiques. The results are often pretty brutal, but effective.

By the way, I used to think the least enjoyable part of product management was pricing. Everyone gets involved, and everyone’s blood pressure rises. Lately, new web site roll-outs rank just as highly. Because so many people are involved, and there’s so much over-thinking going on, it’s hard to produce a good site.

Tom Grant
Senior analyst, Forrester Research

9. Eric Meyer 1:37pm, Thu 24th, 2008

Yep. So far as I can tell, the best designers are those who cultivate ego by letting it grow, so they can be more confident and assertive, while being open to taking ego hits that can prune back the growth.

Than again, I’m not a designer,so I might be way, way off on that one.

10. Brad 8:29pm, Thu 24th, 2008

Having written web content and industry reports, I have always considered the comments from others to be helpful for making a better piece of work. One can’t be too precious! However, I have found that the way in which comments are given also affects how they are received – something we need to remember in our critique if bruised egos are not to become resentful barriers to change.

11. Josh 5:29am, Fri 25th, 2008

Interesting idea, Eric. I think there is something to that…at least it explains it as well as other theories I’ve heard.

Sometimes my biggest insights come at these points, when someone points out an obvious flaw in something…then I can quickly shore it up with better work.

12. Josh 5:43am, Fri 25th, 2008

Tom…could you say more about web site critiques? What do they look like?

What I was referencing was comments of use from the actual people using the site. Not my comments (not a critique in the way that I understand it) but from people actually on the ground. Their comments, I think, would have even more weight than an expert’s.

13. Felipe Vaz 7:07pm, Sat 26th, 2008

Great post. It’s funny how critiques are still being taken personally by designers and/or website owners.
If I make a complaint about, say, a deli to his owner, he will be thankful about it if he’s really smart.
In other industries, a complaint is a gift, so why wouldn’t it be thesame for us?

14. Felipe Vaz 7:13pm, Sat 26th, 2008

BTW, the names of people who do not inform a website address when commenting are linking back to this page – is it meant to be this way?

15. Alex Mather 11:28am, Mon 28th, 2008

Great post Josh! When I ran my own software consulting company I always split projects up so that the person gathering feedback was not the actual author / designer / architect of the system.

We played good cop / bad cop and the client usually gave us brutally honest feedback that wouldn’t have been given if the actual designer was present in the meeting. It was also important that we tell the client that their feedback would be 100% confidential and we wouldn’t share it with their bosses. This often opened the flood gates of business-level criticism that we would re-package in a constructive way to their higher-ups: making us better consultants.

16. mayaren1 12:26pm, Sat 2nd, 2008