The link was copied to the clipboard!
Method Kit

Module 1: User Discovery & Needfinding

Extreme Users

/static/media/06-extreme-users.c1ba2dc3.svg
Share

Share Method Kit

Copy a shareable link of the Method Kit and share it with your team.

Designers engage with people to understand their needs and gain insights about their lives. They also draw inspiration from their workarounds and frameworks, as they are more notable. Looking at extreme users will therefore often lead to surprising, inspirational, and actionable insights that help you to pull out meaningful needs that may not emerge when engaging with the middle of the bell curve. However, these needs are often also needs of the wider population.

To identify your extreme users, you can look at your challenge through different lenses, for example:

  • Demographics (age, gender or ethnicity)
  • Behaviors (experts vs. newbies or out of the ordinary)
  • Attitude toward tech (early adopter vs laggard)

By looking through those lenses, you can stretch the edges of it to imagine and identify specific groups of people. Those are your extreme users.

Benefits:

  • Identify pain-points and workarounds more easily than with an average user
  • Sparks inspiration and encourages wild ideas for the solution
  • Exposing you to use cases, hacks, and design opportunities that you’d never have imagined
Resources

Materials Needed:

research topic, target audience

Share

Share Method Kit

Copy a shareable link of the Method Kit and share it with your team.

Module Methods
  • Empathize
  • Empathy Map
  • Stakeholder Map
  • Assumption Mapping
  • Observe
  • Identify Non-Customers
  • Extreme Users
  • Participate
  • Analogue Situations
  • Framing Great Questions
  • Prepare An Interview
  • Interview Principles
  • Conduct An Interview
  • Unpacking Principles
  • Learning Notes
  • Unpacking
  • Clustering
  • Crafting Insights
2022 Sparkademy AG