E277 - What is the point of user stories?

oh it's springtime for human factors cast in worldwide uh it's episode 277. we're recording this live on March 23rd 2023 like I said this is human factors cast I'm your host Nick Rome I'm joined today by Mr Barry Kirby hello good to see you well Welcome to our show tonight everybody uh we got some exciting topics to discuss including the story tonight which is on user stories and what they're good for potentially how to improve upon them we'll also be uh answering some questions from our community on topics like struggling to find ux research opportunities for beginners quitting jobs and the intersection of ux research and AI so sit back relax let's get started but before we do uh we have an exciting announcement coming next week and I'm really excited about it like I'm so excited about it this has been like I'm not exaggerating when I say years in the making but like recently just picked up traction uh and it is very cool it may or may not be another podcast announcement it may or may not be with personalities you're familiar with you may or may not want to tune in to the uh the human factors and ergonomic Society International Symposium on human factors and ergonomics and Healthcare next week uh that we we might have an announcement for you there so that's a little tease I guess I can't get more specific than that right now but but Barry can Barry can get more specific with what happened at 1202 this week so yeah so in 1202 we had our episode with Jenny Radcliffe go right go live so General uh the people hacker the um ethical uh burglar um give it was basically her insights into into social engineering and uh pen testing or pen trade penetration testing and really the the big thing that she's doing is normally when we talk about these sort of things we believe that we're looking at sort of cyber and and and hacking and things like that whereas what she's doing is she describes hacking the people not hacking the technology um and working out how to penetrate security systems so she she was really uh generous with her time and um her thoughts so that is now up there and uh well worth a listen you may know Jenny as the other human factors podcast if you if you look up human factors podcast you get human factor security so that's she's right there Barry I know you've been looking forward to this one for a long time so I'm glad you finally got to do it yes it's been um the longest bit of it was actually just plucked up the code to message him and said please come and talk on my podcast you inspired me to do my podcast can you come and talk on my but she was very kind about it well I'm glad she was kind about it uh looking forward to listening that I still haven't listened to that one sorry I know I know but hopefully the episode isn't anyway we we got a story that we need to get to so let's get to it [Music] this is the part of the show all about human factors news Barry what is the story this week so the story this week is as a user I don't want to so use your stories that were invented in around 1997 and they've become a ubiquitous tool for software teams attempting to focus on the value of their product however in many cases task oriented user stories have replaced the original formats masking the lack of benefits by falsely justifying product features so an example of this is as a user I want to reach a goal so that I can obtain a benefit that is the traditional user story but it's now morphed too as user I want to do a task so I can use the tool so task oriented user stories do not differentiate between costs and benefit and don't show why users are willing to pay for these benefits fortunately this can easily be remedied by inverting the stories by recognizing the task is a cost and searching for a way to for us to remove that cost we can move the focus back to the benefit for the users so we can optimize the product experience inverting the user story highlights that the features feature ID is a hypothesis invoking the question of whether users actually want to optimize their experience instead of assuming that they do by identifying pain points through existing costs software teams can innovate and differentiate their products from competitors more successfully the original user story format is beneficial because it outlined that the benefits that users may be wanting to pay for whilst task oriented user stories reduce the focus on these benefits by replacing them with tasks and features that user will not necessarily find valuable so Nick are you a forward-thinking kind of guy or do you need to have your uh in do you need to invert your user story to get meaning out of life look so in some ways this I talk about unprofessional I have my phone ringing off over here uh this makes sense in some ways um I love this from a ux perspective putting the humans goals first is always a good thing and that's how we treat human factors and and this is why it's so critical that we play a part in the requirements process I think if you look at the goals of of humans and put those first goals can be ambiguous which means there's sort of this need to deconstruct goals into hierarchies of goals and what goals that you're trying to achieve to make that overall goal happen I love that process um but the the article doesn't necessarily address the downsides of this um or the risks associated with using these inverted user stories and I think just user stories in general we we talked about this a little bit in the pre-show about associating cost of implementing the technology but don't necessarily always consider the cost the negative cost of implementing that technology when you when you implement something does it then become more cumbersome to use for some types of users or does this have adverse interaction effects for some reason or another um the bad news with all this is that changing culture is hard especially in software development uh so unless it's adopted by certification courses agile communities it's not going to happen um that's how I feel about this in a nutshell Barry you got a very simple reaction but I feel like it's going to be a rant so what what do you think of this oh my so this is just really excuse making for adapting bad bad methodology so the methodology when it was first instigated was for me was right it was about turning around saying right what is it I'm trying to achieve what is it that that my user what is the benefit that they want to get okay so then what's happened and this is where we sort of assume that the ux is agile and ux is Scrum because it's not they're just they're just things that really work well with each other um the the you uh the agile and scrum teams because they're actually probably more dominated by software and systems um type of folks they've gone I've seen what you're trying to do there and doing that whole user wanting to reach a go and obtain a benefit so the benefit is being able to use the tool clearly it is isn't it and to reach the goal um that's just a that's just a task because reaching the goal is a task and therefore the user wants to do a task so you can sort of see how that has happened but what it's meant is that we've the the this methodology has then been subsumed into a um an engineering Paradigm rather than a uh a human factors Paradigm so what we really should be doing is now pushing back really hard and saying get your hands off our methodology or if you're going to do it use it properly um because what we've done here now is turn around and said okay we see what you're doing there we've seen that you've done the whole test thing and the tool thing so if we invert that so we have to do yet another process to get it back to pretty much to what we had in the or what we wanted in the first place sort of but even then it's not quite right and that means we're still going to do a lot more work to work out what it is that the user wants to achieve and what the overall benefit they want to get so I get why we're here I get tools evolved methodologies evolve that's fine um but here we are now trying to develop more methodology in order to fix methodology that's gone wrong and really we should be stronger within our field to show a bit of leadership and say hands off to be done and now I'm just going to leave now you've had a mic I'd drop it I do have a mic I can't drop it because it's on a boom man okay yeah so this is this was a like I feel better now okay good I'm glad you feel better I'm glad you got that out of your system this is a uxe topic um it's a good meaty topic actually because what is really neat about it is it does show because things do evolve you know life evolves methodologies evolve and if this is so to put above a positive spin on this now if things have evolved so people are thinking about the user first even if it's in the wrong way there is advantage in being able to say well at least you sort of halfway there and this is maybe just meeting them halfway so that that's to be slightly less runty about it but uh well yeah so I think let's just take a step back for anyone unfamiliar with the concept of what a user story is they're common in in uh software development you see this in scrum and agile all the time and the entire purpose of these things is to keep development teams moving and focused on um basically providing additional features and functionality that capability to customers um when you look at user stories they've become ubiquitous in software development like this this is everywhere you go in software development you see user stories um you're gonna be hard-pressed to not find a place that doesn't follow user stories in some way shape or form the uh the original user story format looks at sort of the benefits that a user might be willing to pay for when it comes to implementing this technology and that's kind of what we're talking about um when it comes to putting the user first and with respect to this article is it something that they're they're wanting because they're willing to pay for it or is it something that they're wanting because they need it and it's capability that they want so we're looking fundamentally at two different types of user stories here in this article at least there's the task oriented user stories um and those focus on the tasks that a user must do to get to their goals which can sometimes lead to bad product decisions and here's an example of how so if you have a goal that is an outcome of a task it's not directly you're not getting directly at the goal you're saying hopefully that goal will be accomplished by that task you're not saying this is the goal that we're trying to solve coming back you know to the task that's the that's the inversion is if you put the goal if you put that bigger thought about how this value might be um you know how users might be attracted to this value proposition it's going to ultimately focus on that benefit to users and and what their goals are and so I think that is what we're looking at here that's an overview did I miss anything no I don't think so I think it's the it is just that whole that whole focus on rather than saying so we focusing on the tool or the the the function rather than the outcome um and then we because we we have to flip this around um so there's yeah there's it so it works I mean the you can't argue with it the the article when you read it and I've recommended people go and read the entire article not just not just the bid I um I read out but it's a it's a well-constructed argument it's where um it highlights why you know you make task go into um user stories they can lead to bad product decisions and it makes sense you know it's the um you know the example I think is in there around the user wants to um um log on by the log on screen um in order to be able to use the tool um nobody ever won nobody wants a log on no you just want to go and be able to use the Tool uh and even when we talk about this at the din table pre-show I saw put up this example and um my wife immediately was going I don't use the log on screen it's like one you know wanted to use the secure password nobody wants to use a secure password because most people forget them um but it's a necessary evil in order to do it therefore we sort of get ourselves into this thing of um right we we we have a logon screen so if we invert that then it's saying right in order to use the tool I have to have a log on screen the user had the so the user needs to interact with this login screen um so then you sort of say well okay there's clearly a benefit of doing that because without it they can't get into the tool um but equally you could say in order to you know to use a certain function you need to have a another screen in there or to use a capability you need to have another screen in there that might be really intrusive say well actually that's not that that amount of effort isn't worth um doing it for that outcome right I mean you can you can say like a a user would want to be secure when they're um when they're operating a piece of software right they don't want it I don't want anybody to access my account without me knowing therefore we need security policies in place um the I think for me the thing that is interesting about this application of user stories when you say things like as a user I want to especially when it comes to things like a log on screen um and that's a very simplistic example but those types of examples are everywhere throughout a software no matter what thing you're working on and what happens from a cultural standpoint internal to your organization is that you start to get others outside of the role of ux product managers developers um you know uh various other roles that recite those as if that is based on user research no it's not those are user stories written and I think this is why I was saying that this is important that we get involved in the requirements process because we need to define those requirements in a way that is going to result in user stories that are actually equivalent to what users want yeah and It's Tricky because when you when you write them based on what they want then how do you address those situations where it's like yeah we need we need a secure password um well that becomes difficult so that's the whole premise of this article is that we we rephrase how we talk about these things and therefore we're thinking about the problem in a different way where it's down to user needs instead of system requirements yeah yeah it's effectively taking something that then exists in getting value out of it from a from a user-centered perspective um I mean it is it's it's it's it's an interesting perspective right do you think it applies to you know we can use this inversion on every situation every product because I'm not necessarily convinced that we can um so it's clearly got to be there's got to be a bit of skill there hasn't there there's going to be a bit of judgment with the ux professional to sort of say well actually I can see we can get value out of this by inverting it but sometimes it might just not be possible or beneficial to do so no it's it's not a one-size-fits-all application I'll give you a great example of this okay so you have a video game developer with the user goal of I want to have a good time when I play this game that is the ultimate goal of playing a game you want to play a game to have fun and to relax you know and so this is where I'm talking about goal hierarchies you deconstruct that and say well my goal is to encounter challenges and overcome those challenges well how do you design for that how you know you bring it down even more well I want to experience a little bit of friction but how much friction and so this is where it becomes nebulous I mean it's nebulous all the way down but when you start deconstructing those goals and get to that level of there's just not going to be a level that is a one size fits all for here's the friction that we're introducing it's at this level because it's going to largely depend on other settings accessibility it's going to depend on um you know difficulty within the game that you have set you know so there's other parameters that impact that and that is largely incumbent upon the user to opt in to those selections for them to have the most amount of fun some people who have children and don't have the time to invest in video games want to play on easy and they should not be shamed for that and they just want to experience the story right I play easy yeah I've started playing easy because I don't want to waste my time fighting the same things over and over and over again and um unless there's like a unless there's some external motivation and now we can actually talk about it right so do I want to be motivated is it going to establish more fun for me I don't know and user stories in this context I know user stories are used in video game software development but is it going to work I don't know and and some of this I think is influenced by by fashion if I'm honest so we know that user stories is you know we've already said that ux and scrum and agile they're all very fashionable at the moment and everybody I'm now meeting more and more people who've read a book or they've read a blog post or the red the watch the quick YouTube guide on on scrum101 or ux101 and and things like this and so automatically because the beauty the beauty of a good user story is it's simple it looks simple and you think oh anybody could but most user stories are so well crafted that they take time and they take effort and they take multiple iterations to get right and to be to be that simpler to be that good um and I've seen so many versions of this now where people said oh I've done a lot of user stories look at my user stories and then they pull out big list you're sitting on so what what methodology have you used to to get there and do it like well I got I got I wrote I wrote a bunch of user stories down there for it well okay so how do you know how do you know they're complete how do you know they're exhausted how do you know how do you know you've got the range how do you know you know and you just they just can't answer it um which is where you know I mean I mean so and this is maybe to give some credit where credit's due this is maybe this inverted view is a way of recovering bad user stories um you know that's that's possibly where the benefit is is for us to almost re-grasp the initiative um saying right okay you've done this work that thank you very much for that we'll take that away and instead of ripping it up like I would and stamp on it and maybe spit on it a bit um is to then take that and and invert it to then get back to a um a decent value-based system um so I've um I I've asked chat to come up with some examples and you can right away see the variation in those levels of detail and which ones are I don't know beautiful like you were like you were describing so let me let me just start with a high level one okay overall I want a travel booking website that is intuitive user friendly and efficient so that I can easily plan and book my travel without any hassle or stress that is high level that's not specific okay but it is getting at a user goal um almost right and then you have these like weirdly specific one not weirdly these these These are common for what you'd find in software development um as a user I'd like to be able to enter my travel dates and destination into a search field on a travel booking website and then see a list of available flights with prices and schedules I would like to be able to filter and sort the results by Price departure time and airline so that I can quickly find the best option for my needs you see what I'm talking about there yeah yeah but then I mean even the this word GPT is potential numbers well because you go back to that first one which was relatively high level and and actually and it may just be me I would be going that one step back from that because I don't just because I'm on holiday I don't necessarily want to use a website to do it I wanted I wanted to be able to book a holiday um now it happens to be that then your next level down is okay well I've got websites I could do by phone but who does that by phone anymore who actually goes and visits a real travel agent so we are making an assumption there to make to make it run forward um or it could be there is a context there that I'm a website designer but um but yeah it's it is and this is this is why it is as I think it's as much of a an art as it is a science um to be able to craft some of this stuff because I think um having spent most of my time in sorry defense and saved critical type stuff we tend we tend to not steer clear of use of user stories because I I find them a very valuable tool but you still learn go and then drill down into okay I've got these stories how do they make requirements which is not what you would do which is not really what they're made for they're made for to be that whole bit where you don't actually need requirements after that the the team then comes together and fulfills um the years ago um but I do you know even using this sort of approaching requirements definition requirement uh requirements articulation they still are not something that are easy to do it does take a certain level of skill and Panache to be able to pull off um some good requirements yeah I mean a good user story is focused on the user and that's good like this is a net good thing that we are thinking about the user in software development like that is a net good thing right uh it focuses on the user and their needs needs not goals um it's also specific so it talks about a specific thing that they're working on these are Hallmarks of good user stories you also have a measurable component to it making sure that you know when this condition is met right and so this could take the form of as a user I want to X so that I can y I will know this is complete when Z and you have completion criteria right um having them be concise is also good and then also independent from each other to where you're not going to get overlap between them they're specific enough to not have like this overlap between them and I think that is is uh is good and it shouldn't be dependent on other stories to work that's so just to because we put new stories basically on trial here to a certain extent okay with both ways that we we're looking at it um I guess at the moment we I go back to what I said earlier about the being fashionable and all that sort of stuff um do we think that actually user stories either be on an end-all well have they got weaknesses because we we've used the log on screen you've you talked about security earlier nobody is going to sit there and say well I want um you know I I want a password protected system well actually because you know because that's that's never going to be a user story because you never want it but what happens if there's um if we prior is there such a thing as prioritizing user preference over things like you know your ethical considerations like privacy security social responsibility um are we are they too Focus two two short-termist discuss discuss I I don't think they're the end-all be-all um do I think that this inverted user story is the end-all be all no I think ultimately ultimately having ux in charge and making all those shots is the end I'll be all when it comes to uh when when some come to some of this um but but ultimately what we're looking at here is they're useful for capturing those user needs and requirements but there's a lot of drawbacks to them which make them not good for the end-all be-all state right in a lot of cases these things lack context so they can provide some high level detail some high level view of what's going on they don't provide those details especially around what a user wants to accomplish so they they might not provide that full context that you might get from things like user research and it really does like I was highlighting earlier create that disconnect from what a user truly does want and what everybody on the team thinks they want because they're writing it in that format um and and so that can impact user experience in a lot of ways right you also have um sort of the the scope of some of these they're typically like I mentioned very focused on on something right like that example that I gave to you uh which was I want to enter my travel dates into destination search field on a travel booking website see a list of available right that is very specific and that specificity limits basically how how you approach a problem um just because you're writing it in that way right you also have you also have this underlying bias towards the requirements because you're writing them towards the requirements you're not writing them from the perspective of the user you're writing them in that phrase as a user I want to but they are biased they are towards those requirements and not necessarily bias towards the user which is not right there's other issues but those that's kind of where I the I mean the the biggest fundamental like I guess drawback is that the users aren't actually writing this the users aren't included in this process and it's just leading to these assumptions from the development team and other other pieces of the product team that ultimately is can be bad or detrimental to uh to end users I don't know Barry what do you think do you think this is the end-all be all no it's it's not because there's I'm not I guess it's coming from the experiences that I've had there are some things that need to exist within a system or whatever it is you're developing just because you you've basically got a wider you've got wider pressures doing different things so from a defense perspective you're always going to have that security um imperative in what we're doing that might not the the having to have a certain uh layers of security are always going to get in the way and hinder the user and the user never wants to be hindered in what they're doing so sometimes there's almost like the the third party in the room or or a third user um that is that you're saying well actually I I've got some overarching stuff to deal with um but that's just that's the way you adapt what you're doing um but I think we my problem with so it's not a problem with user stories that user stories are hugely valuable for being able to articulate what it is that you that you're trying to do um my problem with user stories is then they tend to be non-exhaustive um how do we know um that that we've captured all of the user stories that um that fulfill it this is why they work with scrum um sort of methodologies agile methodologies is because you're never looking for a complete solution you're you're generally looking for an MVP a minimum viable product and then you alliterate off that and that's why it works for them because you turn around and say right what is my what are the key things I'm trying to achieve right I'm going to take this this this this user stories one to five um we've identified as being my best ones we'll get the product to do that great yes that's gone out that's that's been reviewed right we're now going to add in 678. uh We're not gonna do nine because they're not interested we're gonna go and do 10. um that doesn't work for every type of system if you're looking if you're if you have a system that needs to be 100 system um it needs to work from the off it can't afford not to have some of these functions in that's where user stories don't sometimes don't lend themselves very well because you're not evolving the product you're not developing the product you have to get it right first time on Theory you have to get it right first time um I don't think I've ever met one that's actually got it right first time but um but that but that's a theory yeah no I think that's right uh I honestly I don't know how much else I have to say about this Barry like just the way that we capture information and user needs and goals is broken and there's better ways to do it depending on it depends on um a lot of different factors and humans are not one of them I mean for me for Us's ux HF professionals go try and go back to doing it right from the beginning um you know get it right first time you know look at the at the user benefits rather than do that but I sort of I I've got some sympathy having ranted against it about this it the this could feel like it's oh don't it's not ideal but I'm trying to rescue the situation it's a tool inverting these task oriented tools I could be saving the situation but but you're not because it goes back to what you've just said that what you're doing is you're inverting something that hasn't come from the user it's come from the engineering team who want to develop a certain type of system um so it's got that bias and it the user hasn't been anywhere near it therefore your yes it feels like you're trying to save something and it feels like you might have saved it but you haven't really um you sort of you've you've given everybody a bit of a a get Outlaws and it's not quite I don't think it's well personally for me some of the final thoughts I have on this is the correct way to word user stories as they exist today as a product owner I want the user to right so like ultimately that's what's going on is is you have these um these development teams and and product owners who are guiding the product and that's what their role is but that is how they should be written to convey the truth because then uh but but no one wants to say that they are the ones that are anyway what I'm trying to get at here is that's how you fix it to be more accurate to get it to be more useful is a different conversation and I see the inversion as as one potential stepping stone to get to that ultimate point of Nirvana Where the user is like front and center always coming first never driven by uh external factors going on right it's all about the user and and not money and but that's not going to happen anytime soon Barry any other final thoughts on this one do you know how I solve all of this by making sure that your um scrum lead um the the lead is a human factors professional and generally if that's so if your scrum Master is an HF person um they will generally make this work properly um I just find that HF people make the best best screen Masters I I I'm biased in that but I would say that's right uh so all right well thank you to our friends over at the ux collective and thank you to our patrons and everyone else for voting on our news story this week if you want to follow along we do Post links to the original articles on our weekly roundups and our blog you can also join us in Discord for more discussion on these stories and much more we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back to see what's going on in the human factors Community right after this are you tired of boring lectures and textbooks on human factors in ux well grab your headphones and get ready for a wild ride with the human factors Minute Podcast each minute is like a mini crash course packed with valuable insights and information on various organizations conferences usability methods theories models certifications tools and much more we'll take you on a journey through the fascinating world of human factors from the ancient history to the latest trends and developments listen in as we explore the field and discover new ways to enhance the user experience from the think aloud protocol to the critical incident technique focus groups iterative design will make sure that you're the smartest person in the room tune in on the 10th the 20th and the last day of every month for a new and interesting tidbit 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gears get to it came from this is where we look all over the Internet to bring you topics that the community that human factors ux Community is talking about if you find any of these answers useful wherever you're at give us a like to help other people find this content first one up tonight is by Lauren 550 on the ux research subreddit they are saying they're struggling to find ux research opportunities for beginners they write I'm graduating soon and have a hard time finding entry-level job openings in ux research even with my internship experience most jobs require more years of experience advice for finding ux research opportunities as a beginner any tips or suggestions would be helpful Barry what do you got so I opened this out to the family tonight and so we're going to get full for the price of one how cool is that so Amanda says just keep trying obviously entry-level job positions are really really hard to get um in no matter what the field is ux research or across the board build that portfolio and we'll get volunteer work you know build what you've built your experience up from there Holly says try harder Leah says good luck um but for me really I think um as I said ux in of itself is still a fairly new um New Field in many ways you you a new X research is a subset of that so I think that is a spare fairly specific role you're trying to look for and so if you're struggling don't be afraid of looking slightly broader um so there is you know looking to design work look into other things that are either analogous to or linked to just to broaden your experiences a bit and um you know your first job might not be that golden uxr job but you might want to find something that you can hop into with it but I mean fundamentally the reason necessarily that job out there with your name on it there isn't the the not necessarily out there so yeah bit flexibility Nick what do you think so this is actually the number one thing that my mentees struggle with is finding work uh and this is a large problem I could talk about the state of the job market right now as a whole and talk about why that is but I'm not going to do that I'm going to try to focus on some actionable feedback do something that'll help you stand out um and I know the problem is necessarily with finding opportunities but apply for those mid-tier roles but do something that's going to make you stand out I mean don't don't don't limit yourself but also be open to other things like internships part-time gigs or volunteering with Labs uh like our own to get experience and and I know it sucks to not have that pay believe me I know that sucks but if you're thinking about it in terms of like having actual experience on your resume that is one thing that you can look at there's a lot of good paid internships out there so it doesn't all have to suck uh you just gotta suck it up and get through that at some point so uh that's that's kind of where I'm at I know it's not ideal but this like I said you're not alone in this this is something that a lot of people struggle with because of the market right now so that's where that's where we're at okay this next one up here is by Klein pretzel on the ux research subreddit what's the fastest you've quit a job and why I've started a new job a week ago but I'm considering quitting already there's several reasons why including an unsafe environment for women on my team a lack of diversity in the company poor communication between ux research and product management and inadequate processes asking for advice what's the shortest time you've worked in the job before quitting do these reasons seem valid for quitting my new job Barry I'm kind of intrigued as to the difference between the job advert they went for and interviewed for and the job because that must have been a good sales job in that interview um to be presumably so different fundamentally the first thing I'll hear is if you feel that you're in an unsafe environment bail get out of there you have to look after number one so if you really you know there's there's unsafe environments and unsafe environments if you truly feel it's an unsafe environment get out however I would say is you know if this is a larger company there must be routes to complain there must be routes to highlight the issue and and do something about it um it depends whether you want to stay around or you just you know you've gone into something that is just not what you signed up for um go um I've had people who've in fact sort of worked on my team and they were looking to potentially so they were recruited to to take over from me um and they were effectively sold the job um without me in the room weirdly it was a slightly odd situation but when they then started learning about the job from me about what it is they were going to be doing they're like whoa this this isn't what um I envisage this is what I thought it was going to be and I was like so what were you told and that we had then had the good discussion around well no this is what the job is um and they quit before before I before I could hand over um because they're like this isn't what we've sold so if you you know and personally the shortest time I've been in it's not not job research but but a contract has been six months and um it what they wanted to extend it and I said no because of and of a number of reasons I wasn't uh contact with where we were that's probably my shortest but I think the reasons you've given are quite valid but I think there's also a valuable life lesson there uh moving forward Nick what do you think yeah so this is why I wrote this in all caps in the notes this is why you look for red flags during the hiring process and why those questions are so important um because like Barry said this is what is the difference between the person that that interviewed you versus the people that you're working with now uh and why is it the way it is I think there's a few ways to approach this right so without additional context what the the question I have is why is it an unsafe environment for women is this an individual that is causing issues is this a group based safety risk or is this like a company culture wide safety risk if it's the company culture wide safety risk get out now uh because that is and whistleblow get get out of there like it's just not good take care of yourself if it's a group based thing um there may be changes that HR can Implement that would make it different for the future but then that also becomes a really sticky situation because then you're still working with those people and short of a re-hiring thing then there's always going to be that weirdness because anyway so so but then if it's the individual there's obviously things that you can do um by talking to HR and having them uh take care of that issue um depending on how far down they come with the reprimands for that in terms of process now there I have a couple thoughts on the process because they mention here that there's sort of a poor communication between ux research and product um and inadequate processes this could be a huge opportunity for you to restructure this and be the hero they need like I'm just saying this could be a great source of experience here not saying get out but uh just to answer the question about a year is what I've been looking at uh in terms of my shortest and it wasn't for any of these reasons I've been fortunate enough to not have any work environments that have felt unsafe for me or others that I've worked with um and that hasn't necessarily been um I don't know I haven't experienced the same issues here okay the last one here Barry up tonight is by beans JC on the ux research subreddit they write ux researcher to AI hey there I'm a ux researcher and I'm curious about how I can transition to the AI field what are some skills that would be important for me to learn in order to fit into an AI team thinking about Quant analysis machine learning human computer interaction and coding are there any other skills you'd recommend also do you have any suggestions for courses or certifications I should look into thank you Barry what do you think um I mean the stuff that they they highlight you know if you want to get into AI then you know coding and all that sort of stuff yeah great I think it's all going to be helpful but I think with the way the AI is going and chat GPT is a really good example of this um so look at them wider General skills that you can learn to flex so obviously we we've talked in the past now about like prompt engineering about how to engineer a prompt in the way to get you your get you what you want out of it now you can't you can't go and get sorry it's obviously green not yet or anything like that because it only came about what so three four months ago um as a thing and things are moving that fast um the if you've got it's not so much hard skills in terms of like learning how to code and things like that but being open and being flexible being adaptable picking up them skills about how to you know um recognize things that you should be writing down things and how you should like um or sorry um archive them how you should keep them so you can sit there and go right well actually um this prompt engineering thing as the example is becoming a thing right I should be saving all of my prompts in order to maybe you know develop them offline and then put them in as as an example um so yeah just generally picking up those wider skills and being flexible and and and and open to new innovative ways of working I think it's really valuable in something like AI it's not the only fruit at the moment but there's lots of new things out there but being open to doing new things is is is a much skill that is underrated okay great I think um look here's the secret you ready for the secret Barry oh okay let me just give a pen okay right it doesn't matter what domain you work in the thing that's going to be the most important is keeping those core ux human factor skills and applying them to the AI domain for best results I want to elaborate on this a little bit because as you mentioned Barry AI is really young right now it's in terms of being pervasive it's it's still in its infancy and almost all the products that we interact with will have ai or autonomy autonomous systems built into it in the future so in a way we will all become AI researchers at some point to figure out how the human will interact with those automated artificially intelligent systems within that product now the industry as a whole is going to need to evolve to stay on top um of the latest developments I think the best thing you can do right now is just staying on top of what's Happening stay on top of what's going on understand how those things impact end users and that will give you an edge so follow AI news sources and like there's some really cool stuff going on right now so pay attention okay Barry it's it's uh it's time for your favorite part of the show it's one more thing uh where we have just one more thing baby I see baby in the in the in the notes what is what is baby baby is is Awards baby yeah there you go we've got um an exciting day coming up tomorrow with my uh with my team we got we've gone into Cardiff uh because we've been down short selected down down selected shortlisted whatever you want to call it for um family business of the year in Wales so I'm very excited about that it's going to be definitely not going to take uh most of my team out with me and we get to go to a bit of a glitzy afternoon afternoon bash um a couple of couple of drinks maybe and um and see and see if we win something um so that's gonna be uh tomorrow's fun so quite excited well I just awkwardly realized that it almost sounded like I was calling you baby so um what's up baby all right all right so I I actually have uh uh pictures to show with my one more thing and this is left over from the pre-show so ignore the spacesuit but um I recently did uh AI headshots uh because everyone's doing these These are fun I I posted these so if you're listening only go look at them in in our Discord uh they're posted in the random Channel but I do want to just show a couple of these while we're streaming here because these are what I call the yikes y-a-i-k-e-s yikes uh like these um these ones are pretty bad so I'm just gonna hear uh get out of the way here and I showed some of these during the pre-show but the thing with this one is the teeth uh you know that one's fun and I guess the thing that surprised me the most about these was that some of them actually turned out pretty Okay and like I got a new LinkedIn profile picture out of it so there's there's um obviously some things that are going on behind the scenes that I was just impressed with some of the technology but also like how is this so variable in the the product that is coming back because you get great shots and then you get shots like like that first one I showed where it's just like the the worst um and look nothing like me or I guess there's like some resemblance but like what's going on with these eyes and teeth I don't know there's just still some uncanniness to it that I think it needs to be figured out before um I don't know it was it was cheap and fun so if you want to figure it out and see the results that I had uh go go take a look in the Discord Barry I think you're gonna do that right yeah oh true right you need to post your results too uh all right yes I think we all need to that sounds like quite good fun I think so well you know what it's that time everyone that's it for today everyone if you liked our show and enjoyed some of the discussion about designing for humans just generally I'll encourage you to go listen to and be reminded of the fact that we have eight billion humans to design for now that's episode 256. that's a good listen comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the story this week for more in-depth discussion you can always join us on our Discord community uh visit our official website sign up for our newsletter stay up to date with all the latest human factors news if you like what you hear you want to support the show there's a few ways that you can do that one this is free for you to do just go to your nearest review site uh wherever you're listening and just leave us a five star review that really helps the show and that's free for you to do two tell your friends about us that word of mouth is the number one reason we grow and three if you have financial means to do so just a dollar gets you into the door and gets you access to things like our pre-show and post show you can come on in here hop on hijack the show tell us about your thoughts there's plenty of other patreon benefits as we mentioned in that ad it's always links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode Mr Barry Kirby thank you for being on the show today where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about how to write a bad user story I'm all love about user story so if you want to come and discuss that find me on social media and basm to school okay if you want to come listen to some interviews with human factors professionals or people who just generally really influential in the human factors world then come find me on 1202 the human factors podcast at 1202podcast.com as for me I've been your host Nick Rome you can find me on our Discord and across social media at Nick underscore roam thanks again for tuning in to human factors cast until next time Japan