prototypes on target customers? How do you get closer to the truth while you are conducting strategy? Do we ever get closer to truth? What is the truth, Jaime?! To answer, yes I have conducted evaluations. The type of evaluation depends very much on the available budget, the available time, what is being evaluated, what point in the process we’re at, and who the end users are. I think it’s vitally important that we evaluate our work as UX strategists and designers. We’re tasked with crafting an experience that other people will use. The amount of time and effort we put into this means objectivity might be a hard thing to maintain. We are often not the target audience either, so we’re not best placed to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. That’s why we need to put our work out there, at different stages of its development, for others to evaluate. And it’s not just end users you turn to for evaluation: it’s important that you regularly invite the business to evaluate your work because they ultimately own the experience. I love user testing. I love sitting down with people and seeing how they react to something we’ve designed. No matter what stage of the process or what form the evaluation materials take. The outcome of these sessions helps make me and design teams more effective. And it can be feedback that comes from sitting down with friends, to more a formal response from a group of users in a usability lab. I don’t think I’ve ever conducted any testing or any research where I haven’t been surprised by something. No matter how good we are, we’re designing something for people, other people, so it’s inevitable that we’ll be surprised with how some people end up using the product...or not. It’s important to spend time with people while they test something. This might be as close as we can get to “the truth.” For example, how do you know what people are looking at on a page before clicking, without watching them? You won’t find out what they are thinking, without asking them, and you won’t know to ask them unless you’ve seen them pause. 8. What is your secret weapon or go-to technique for devising strategies or building consensus on a shared vision? I would like to share what is called a user journey, or customer experience map (see Figure 10-2).