Book Review: Make Your Customers Dance

Understanding People

Understanding customer preferences, as well as their motivations, culture, and limitations, is important to delivering a wedding reception—or any kind of user experience—that all can enjoy. In terms of culture, Marc describes the differences that some groups experience—across different families and regions. For some groups, it is common to have music and dancing during dinner; others expect that there would be quiet, easy-listening music and no dancing during dinner. Recognizing the cultural expectations for an experience can help the Dancefloor Pro avoid having an empty Dancefloor. Similarly it can help organizations to avoid delivering software experiences that alienate prospective customers—as in the example that Marc provides, in which the conversion rate for a car-insurance company was less than optimal. Further research revealed that prospective customers abandoned the process when they were asked to disclose their social security number. Even though this data provided more precision in quoting premiums, it reduced the number of prospects.

There is a reason that many wedding receptions include familiar songs such as the “Electric Slide,” “Hokey Pokey,” and the venerable “Chicken Dance”—plus, many songs have a familiar 4/4 beat as opposed to something like dubstep. Most people—though not me—can competently dance to such songs and rhythms. Having a good time doesn’t require much technical knowledge. This is similar to the cognitive limits people encounter when using software. Relying on familiar patterns and terms and avoiding technical jargon facilitates a user experience that is accessible to a broader audience.

The User-Centered Design Process

Marc spends the bulk of book articulating the user-centered design (UCD) process in great detail. He shares information about many concepts that can influence the visual design of an experience, including typography, gestalt theory, and many others. He also discusses prototyping and evaluation. Marc advises that a designer should not take negative UX research personally. Here is a comical example that illustrates this point: At one of Marc’s earliest DJ gigs, an audience member feigned curiosity about the brand new Van Halen album, featuring Sammy Hagar, that Marc had played. When Marc gave the cassette to the audience member, he promptly destroyed it. Clearly he was more of a David Lee Roth fan.

Marc’s presentation of research and evaluation methods is extensive. He even discusses the use of galvanic skin–response testing, which, while impressive, might be overkill for many projects. But he doesn’t just promote novel research methods; he also provides solid guidance on how to perform low-cost, yet effective research methods such as heuristic evaluation and guerrilla testing.

Persuasion

The unfortunate phenomenon of dark design patterns has discouraged some in the UX community, who worry that the profession is descending into exploitative tactics in pursuit of profits. However, the use of persuasive patterns in UX design is vital to creating value through user experience. I’ve said it before, and I’ll write it here: companies don’t employ UX teams because it’s a nice thing to do—they do it because it improves their bottom line. Similarly, a Dancefloor Pro cultivates the desire to get on the Dancelfoor and dance with audience members.

Recognizing this, Marc provides advice on how to use specific persuasive methods in the design of products and tools. After all, without some degree of persuasion, people would be unlikely ever to do anything other than what they chose for themselves.

Conclusion

Overall, Marc’s book provides an excellent survey of UX methods and rationales. Its content is well researched, and Marc refers to existing literature throughout, providing a guidepost for those who would like to expand their knowledge.

Although this might seem to be a superficial criticism, the chapter lengths are very uneven. At five pages, Chapter 1 reads more like an introduction; while Chapter 4 extends across 93 pages, comprising more than 50% of the book’s text. 

Disclosure—I provided the Forward for this book. The author, Marc Majers, was a student of mine in the Kent State University UXD graduate program.