014 : The User Doesn’t Always Need It Easy with Mona Patel

Mona Patel Motivate DesignYou probably have an idea for an app or website, and you think that people would use it, but how can you find out what will really happen when you put your product out into the world? The field of user experience is about way more than laying out websites so they’re easy to use — it’s a combination of design, psychology, and science. You have to do research, create a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, and change accordingly. You have to figure out what the user really wants to do.

This week on the podcast, I talk to Mona Patel, the founder and CEO of Motivate Design and UXHires. We talk about what it’s like to found and run a UX agency and what entrepreneurs can do to instantly improve their user’s experience. We even peer out into the future a little, and Mona shares why she thinks virtual reality will completely change the way people experience the world. She says something I have never even thought about that completely blew my mind.

This episode will help you stop building products and start building products that people will actually use.

Here’s what we chat about:

  • What it means to put the user in the center of the design process
  • Usability as the origins of user experience
  • Why the Mini Cooper website was absolutely terrible but it didn’t matter
  • How sometimes the most important realizations happen while on vacation
  • Listening to intuition and why it feels so wrong every time
  • When does a company need to talk to a UX agency?
  • Three important aspects of user experience research
  • Why Facebook is investing heavily in virtual reality
  • What entrepreneurs can do to improve the UX of their products
  • Yes people and No people, and which you should surround yourself with

Links mentioned in this show include:

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The Novice No Longer Podcast intro music was composed by the talented Will Larche.

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