Kathy Sierra: Creating Passionate Users

I have been enjoying Kathy's blog for the past month or so. So, I was eager to hear her keynote.

She spoke about what she knows, and what I believe she is passionate about: Creating Passionate Users

Passionate Users

She explained that for any application you build, or tool as she refered to it, you need to create passionate users. They are the ones who will evangelize your product, help other users, and generally improve your product more than you could on your own.

Suck Threshold

Users will start out sucking, then they will become competent, before they become passionate. In order to move users past the suck threshold:

1. Have a clear goal. Something the user can aspire to being able to do.
2. Have a clear path. A series of steps that will allow the user to get there.
3. Easy first step.

Flow

You may have experienced this when coding, or doing anything else you are passionate about. You enter the Zone. The Flow. Time flies by without you realising it. You believe you are always one compile away from finishing.

The longer users can stay in the Flow, the more passionate they become. Enchant the user, and keep them in the flow state where they are happiest.

Make it hard to do the wrong things.
Make it easy to do the right things.

User Experience Spiral

Knowledge and skill, balanced correctly with challenge will engage the user. The challenge is what the user can do with the application, not the application itself.

Motivating Benefit -> Interaction -> Payoff (which is the next benefit)

You get the challenge, and promise of some reward, so you go on to learn something new. Once you have learned something new, your next challenge is dangled in front of you which uses what you learned. This is something which I felt when reading the Head First series of books.

Interesting point:

• Boys found it motivating just getting to the next level.
• Girls asked what they would get for getting to the next level.

Community

Forums, conferences, user groups, study groups, blogs with comments. This is where people can go to seek help. It is key that there are no dumb questions and no dumb answers. Having key figures in the community also help lead and motivate others.

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed Kathy's talk. She tied together various disciplines which are not normally considered together, to come out with insightful ideas.