[HN Gopher] Show HN: A beginner's guide to finding user needs
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       Show HN: A beginner's guide to finding user needs
        
       https://urbook.fordes.de/  ...a free/libre book about UX research
       with qualitative methods on motivations, activities written for UX
       researchers, UX designers and product managers.  I have been
       writing on this book since about 2010 and did a large rewrite
       during the first half of 2022. (I initally planned this with a
       bigger tech publisher).  This is the link to the full book for
       online reading: https://jdittrich.github.io/userNeedResearchBook/
       (it's one long page, so it might take a bit to load)
        
       Author : simulo
       Score  : 94 points
       Date   : 2022-10-11 16:58 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
       | crawfordcomeaux wrote:
       | After doing a Ctrl-F for "need" and not finding any distinction
       | between needs and wants, I'm wondering if you understand what a
       | human need is and if this book helps uncover actual needs versus
       | things that aren't needs.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | I'm afraid your comment here has broken both the HN site
         | guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html),
         | which include: " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals,
         | especially of other people's work. A good critical comment
         | teaches us something._"
         | 
         | ... and has also broken the extra guidelines that apply to Show
         | HN threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).
         | 
         | Can you please follow the rules in the future? We want HN to be
         | a place where people's work can be discussed respectfully and
         | substantively. There's plenty of room for asking questions,
         | offering critiques, and so on, but we don't want a putdown
         | culture of trying to make others look like idiots. There's
         | enough of that elsewhere on the internet.
        
         | simulo wrote:
         | I agree that discussing that distinction [ed: between needs and
         | wants] can make sense. Since the book does not use the concept
         | of needs as an abstract concepts ("what is a Need") nor as
         | research device ("What are your needs?") I did not discuss it.
         | Fittingly, if you Ctrl+F for "want" you will not find it being
         | use as a research concept either (There are a lot of "wants" in
         | regards to researcher activities as in "You want to do X after
         | Y")
        
           | xwowsersx wrote:
           | Their critique might've been helpful/valid if approached
           | correctly, I don't know. I do know that Ctrl+F'ing through a
           | 30K+ word book in search of the word "need" in order to call
           | out the absence of some very specific thing they decided is
           | essential, without actually reading the book, seems to me
           | like idle sniping and not a genuine critique. It comes across
           | as peevish and snarky.
           | 
           | To the OP, the book looks interesting and I've started
           | reading it from the top. FWIW btw, it loads very quickly on
           | my end.
        
       | deerdeerdeer wrote:
       | Congrats Jan!! :)
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | This is good advice, plainly written. Thanks for the resource!
        
         | simulo wrote:
         | Thanks! Feel free to poke me if there in an occasional sentence
         | that is not as plainly written as it could be:)
        
       | rsavage wrote:
       | Looks interesting. Awesome work putting this together!
       | 
       | I will bookmark and take a proper read when I can.
       | 
       | For the website - might be worth running it through a spell
       | checker.
       | 
       | E.g found this pretty quickly "Early in the reserach session"
        
         | defanor wrote:
         | Indeed, I spotted a couple of typos too: "This book is
         | free/libe", "to provide detaile information".
         | 
         | Also noticed that foreground colors are defined in the HTML
         | version, while the background color isn't, and the blockquote
         | foreground color doesn't meet the AAA level of WCAG contrast
         | guidelines even if white background is assumed. That's rather
         | nitpicky, and generally it's fine, but it feels like materials
         | on UI and UX should better follow common guidelines.
        
         | simulo wrote:
         | Ohno, "reserach" is my favorite spelling mistake. I regularly
         | search-replace for it and regularly create new reseraches.
        
       | mustafabisic1 wrote:
       | Do you write on a regular basis?
       | 
       | Is there a place to subscribe?
       | 
       | I'd definitely love to hear out your process of creating these.
       | 
       | P.S. I created a resource for remote-working parents. It's a
       | weekly newsletter for now, but who knows, I might have enough
       | value one day to do what you did here.
       | 
       | https://thursdaydigest.com/
        
         | simulo wrote:
         | I do blog on https://fordes.de (with an RSS to subscribe to)
        
           | mustafabisic1 wrote:
           | Nice, thanks!
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-11 23:00 UTC)