Saving Bob Dylan, or How Not To Do User Research
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows
- SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES
You’re not going to believe this. I’ve been getting some criticism. “Your posts are too long”, some people cried. “Lose the Twitterfeed”, shouted someone else. “Your Southpark Avatar is so 15 year old” claimed an anonymous coward. Hey man, I made that avatar myself. That hurts. But seeing as I work for an agency that prides itself on its insight and user research, I decided it was time to do some user research of my own. As the budget I assign to run this blog is three fifths of fuck-all, Survey Monkey was the logical choice. Thanks so much to the 37 people that answered it.
Firstly, let’s talk about the Bob Dylan blog introductions that I’ve been pouring my heart and soul in to. As the chart below shows, more than a third of the respondents don’t read them. And another bunch want a change of theme.
So I thought about this. Granted, some of the quotes are, at best, very tenuously linked to the topic at hand – I need to improve the relevance. But Bob’s got so much more to give. I’m going to try not to repeat songs yet, but again, some tunes have so many classic lyrics that I might have to. If I do a new a brand theme, it’ll be in 2010. After deciding this, I tweeted my new found conviction:
To which someone responded:
He has a ridiculous avatar, and what kind of name is @golansleepweed? What does that mean, anyway? Nevertheless, this clown also happens to be the Head of LBi Intergalatic Creative Domination so I feel obliged to listen. I know which way the wind is blowing, so Bob is staying on the blog. After all, if he’s good enough for sat-nav, he’s good enough for me. Thanks, Chris, for the vote of confidence.
Some other findings of the so-called “research”:
- 19% of you actually want links to open in new windows. 64% agree with the no-new-window policy. 19% don’t care. Sweet.
- Only 13% of you found the survey annoying. 87% of my readers are all round nice guys. The web is about giving, man.
- This one surprised me. 76% like the automated Twitterfeed announcements. 13% don’t care and only 11% want them dead. So they’re staying, giving me less reason to retweet my own posts and feel like a douchebag.
- Only 12% think I should tweet with my real name instead of @McBoof. 41% don’t care, and 47%, for some reason, like my dumb-ass name.
- On the other hand, more people think my beautiful South Park avatar is lame (29%) than like it (24%). Most don’t care
- 56% don’t care about my WordPress theme, 44% think it rocks, and 0% (yes, zero) think it sucks. Woot.
And the highlights of the comments:
- Most people want me to swear more. There was a wee bit of concern of kids reading over shoulders and evil corporate firewall traffic snoopers. There was far more swearing on the survey than on my blog.
- I need a proof reader. Badly.
- My posts are too long and ramble a bit. This is because it’s quite difficult to write a well-constructed, thought out post that actually has a point.
- Someone wants me to write more about Kas Thomas.
Finally, I’d like to point out that I’ve been involved in more than a few projects on which the client commissioned my agency to perform high quality user research and then chose to ignore the results. They’re idiots. I guess that makes me an idiot too.
P.S. @Ivanka, I hope you aren’t reading this. See what happens to User Research here after you leave …
Don't worry, Bob. I'm not ditching you just because the crowds are baying for blood
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I like the blog as is for the most part. My best piece of advice is to not keep things the same for the sake of consistency. The Dylan quotes are great, but if one doesn’t just happen (or has been used, repeatedly), grab a quote from another source.
Don’t worry about the research results though. It is your blog and we already come to read it. Besides, if you look close, you’ll probably find that most of us are clinically insane anyway.
-Pie
Love it! Fantastic!
Bottom line is, McBoof, I’m here and I did read it. I’m apparently replying to the post too, so let sum it up by your blogs work. Pragmatic user research.
lol @ this post Jon. I love this blog even if the rants are a little long, they are entertaining. Although, your should look into how well they print out. I would at least like to be able to read them on the train and disturb my fellow passengers with random demonic laughter
Keep up the good work “old chap”…
Well, I’m trying to shorten the posts. In fact, the post I’ve been trying to bash out this week has now split into 3 posts that don’t make any sense. Writing short, to the point posts is a lot harder than a nice long dump …
As for the train – save the trees! Get a phone with a decent RSS client
Jon, Finally I feel you have a post that I feel qualified to comment on. Keep the Bob bits, I always read them and try to work out whether I would have used some other lyric: I would propose for example:
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?
Now that’s a game I like! Keep playing it. But there is a rule – I don’t repeat songs. I already blew my Ballad of a Thin Man quote in another post. You can see all the posts, organised by song, here: http://jonontech.com/index-of-songs/
Well can I have:
It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
You can. Although I like my quote for this entry
I’ve got a few Don’t Think Twice lines primed for usage …
Right, will await the next post with interest and post a response accordingly.
Game on
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