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Show HN: A beginner’s guide to finding user needs

182 points by simulo ↗ HN
https://urbook.fordes.de/

…a free/libré 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)

23 comments

[ 23.4 ms ] story [ 58.8 ms ] thread
crawfordcomeaux
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.
simulo
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
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.

tbrownaw
I'd think that sort of thing would be in a section on feature prioritization or scoping an MVC. I don't see a section like that in the toc, and it feels like it would be rather out-of-scope for what this is about. Not that I've finished reading the whole thing in detail yet.
simulo
Yes, I deliberately avoided to put feature prioritization or even personas or Jobs-To-Be-Done in the book — there are too many ways to do this and it is of no use if I write about one and the team/PM/company prefers another.
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dang
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.

tbrownaw
"Need" vs "want" is a false dichotomy. It's actually a spectrum, and there's no single obviously correct position to split it at to reduce to a binary.
karaterobot
This is good advice, plainly written. Thanks for the resource!
simulo
Thanks! Feel free to poke me if there in an occasional sentence that is not as plainly written as it could be:)
rsavage
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”

simulo
Ohno, “reserach” is my favorite spelling mistake. I regularly search-replace for it and regularly create new reseraches.
defanor
Indeed, I spotted a couple of typos too: "This book is free/libé", "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
Thanks! I pushed a version without the typos and slightly more contrasting colors, including a defined background color.
mustafabisic1
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/

pier25
Why "libré" with a tilde?

The word for "free" in Spanish is "libre".

"Libré" is a past form of the verb "librar". It has many meanings but I guess the most common one is "to avoid".

cowpig
same in French (also no accent)
spookybones
That accent is too cute to be a tilde.
pier25
Right, sorry.

In English the tilde is the squiggly symbol over the Ñ, but in Spanish any accent is considered a tilde.

simulo
hmm, goooooood point. I wonder why I did this. Thanks for pointing this out!