Beware of apathy

Apathy is a major obstacle to overcome when designing. The project you have worked countless hours on and spent numerous resources on will feel wasted if confronted with apathy. You should conduct additional user research if your product or website receives apathy from users. The book suggests you ask the following questions

• Describe your initial reactions to the website
• How does the website make you feel?
• Would you recommend this site to a friend? Why or why not?
• Are there site sections or features that are more important to you than others? Less important? Why?

It’s essential your questions are open-ended for users and don’t imply any emotions. If you ask, “Did you have a good experience?” The user will think about their good experiences instead of their overall experiences. They won’t think about their bad experiences and won’t give effective feedback. Vice versa, if you ask about the bad, they’ll shift their perspective to view your product negatively and might not use it again.

Engaging products usually lack problems of apathy. You can transform your project to be more engaging with an anticipation technique called priming. For example, in 2010 Twitter redesigned its platform. They randomly selected social media personalities and regular users to test it out. Chosen users were honored that Twitter picked them and shared their new experiences. Non-chosen users were excited to experience Twitter’s new platforms. Twitter’s method served as an inexpensive marketing technique.