[timg]

"engage the user and see if you can get the feature to a common ground"

Yes, this is what I'm asking. In direct marketing for example, there are ways that success can be scientifically measured. I am wondering if any of you have used more methodical approaches to improving applications -- or if it's just guess and find out if it worked 2 months from now.

The reason for this is that I just don't always trust users to think deeply enough of the problem for them to know what they want.

[dpapathanasiou]

A great thing to do is invite your target users to try the app/service in your presence.

But don't lead them or demo anything; just watch how they start, and what they react to/don't understand.

We had a similar experience recently -- http://blog.seeksift.com/2007/03/02/an-epiphany/ -- and it did wonders for our usability.

[tocomment]

Seeksift looks cool. I was a little frusterated though when I clicked on the blog and then couldn't find a way to click back to seeksift easily.

[dpapathanasiou]

Thanks; let me know if you use it and what you think: good, bad, or ugly (actually, especially if it's either of the latter two categories, because that's how we improve).

Thanks, too, for bringing up the point about the blog; there are probably ways of customizing the header to point to SeekSift.com but I got a little frustrated with Wordpress after I found out you can't change their favicon.