FIELD NOTES / JUST FIVE USERS?
The number sounds reassuring.
Five users. Said confidently, it can sound like a completed research strategy. Put it on a slide next to a green tick and it starts to look like permission to move on.
In this confession, Lawrence steps away from the conspiracy board and admits to a much more ordinary design problem: sometimes a useful rule of thumb becomes the answer to a question nobody has properly defined.
What did we actually learn?
A small round of usability sessions can produce valuable observations. That is not the same thing as proving that every audience understands a product, or that a business decision has been validated.
The episode follows the shrinking distance between “we noticed this problem” and “the research says”. By the time the insight reaches the meeting, the caveats have mysteriously missed their invitation.
“You’re asking the wrong question.”LAWRENCE / DESIGN CONSPIRATORS
A confession, not a verdict.
The joke is not that designers make things up for a living. It is that teams under pressure can turn nuanced work into a confident sentence—and that designers are not immune to the temptation.
Lawrence’s confession is about his own certainty. The participants did their job. They showed up, tried the product and told him what happened. The questionable part came later, when he decided how much their answers could carry.
Keep the useful question.
What do we need to learn next? That is a better place to start than defending a number. The method should help answer the question; the question should not exist merely to justify the method.
Lawrence promises to put the caveats back in the next presentation. They will be in eight-point type. Obviously.
Design Conspirators is a satirical series by Designshot. Lawrence’s investigations are fictional. These field notes accompany a preview episode.
