User research, influencing decision makers and Figma sites

A weeknote starting 5 May 2025.

User research in Bristol

This week flew by, starting off with the bank holiday Monday, then we went straight into 2 days of user research in Bristol.

This is the 4th round of user research we’ve done on the service. We did 7 semi-moderated interviews, with usability testing of hi-fi prototypes, and some ad-hoc chats around early design mockups.

We also had a couple of sessions observing frontline staff working with the as-is product. As usual, we were located in an operational area for two days so we got to absorb a little bit of “normal” working life there too.

Spending time with the team was good too, it was nice to have some time to get to know them.

Influencing decision makers

I’ve been moaning a lot recently about how difficult it’s been, and how much effort it’s taking, to influence stakeholders on this service.

But a couple of posts on LinkedIn jumped out to me this week and made me realise that influencing people is the work.

“Most of the work of design is facilitating decisions, not making artifacts.” Erika Hall

"Advocating for design and research is a part of every user-centred design (UCD) practitioners role … Understand how to influence different people" Clara Greo (Teoh)

Figma sites are not accessible

Figma released their website building tool. A lot of people have been pointing out that it produces horrible, inaccessible code.

Adrian has shared a thorough write up: Do Not Publish Your Designs on the Web with Figma Sites…