Designing for the Knowledge Gap

In an interesting article, Jared Spool recently wrote "Riding the Magic Escalator of Acquired Knowledge" about designing for users with a range of current knowledge levels. He describes this range as an escalator. At the bottom is no knowledge of the design. Moving up the escalator, Spool places the point of current knowledge, then the point of target knowledge, and finally he puts full knowledge at the top. The knowledge gap is the space between the user's current knowledge and target knowledge. Target knowledge is what many designers tend to assume the user posseses while designing the system. 

This assumption is where designers run into trouble. I've written twice before about the curse of knowledge. For anyone designing a system or a website, it is extremely hard to unknow what you already know about your business, your services, your value proposition, and even the check-out process, login flow, or registration steps on your website. 

To overcome the gap, designers can choose between training users or simplyfying the design.  Training moves the user's current knowledge point further up the escalator. Simplyfying moves the target knowledge point down. Which is the right approach? User testing is a great way to understand if you have a knowledge gap and exactly how big it is. In addition, it's important to understand that the current knowledge points of all of your users aren't going to fall on the same spot on the escalator. So, if you identify a gap, you'll want to test many more users until you define a reasonable range for your universe of users. Then, you can start designing with an informed notion of where your users are on the escalator. 

So, consider user testing for Christmas, as a gift to you and your users! It will improve your website.  Merry Christmas!