Journal tags: methods

Eric mentioned the JavaScript closest method. I use it all the time.

When I wrote the book DOM Scripting back in 2005, I’d estimate that 90% of the JavaScript I was writing boiled down to:

1. Find these particular elements in the DOM and
2. When the user clicks on one of them, do something.

It wasn’t just me either. I reckon that was 90% of most JavaScript on the web: progressive disclosure widgets, accordions, carousels, and so on.

That’s one of the reasons why jQuery became so popular. That first step (“find these particular elements in the DOM”) used to be a finicky affair involving getElementsByTagName, getElementById, and other long-winded DOM methods. jQuery came along and allowed us to use CSS selectors.

These days, we don’t need jQuery for that because we’ve got querySelector and querySelectorAll (and we can thank jQuery for their existence).

Let’s say you want to add some behaviour to every button element with a class of special. Or maybe you use a data- attribute instead of the class attribute; the same principle applies. You want something special to happen when the user clicks on one of those buttons.

1. Use querySelectorAll('button.special') to get a list of all the right elements,
2. Loop through the list, and
3. Attach addEventListener('click') to each element.

That’s fine for a while. But if you’ve got a lot of special buttons, you’ve now got a lot of event listeners. You might be asking the browser to do a lot of work.

There’s another complication. The code you’ve written runs once, when the page loads. Suppose the contents of the page have changed in the meantime. Maybe elements are swapped in and out using Ajax. If a new special button shows up on the page, it won’t have an event handler attached to it.

You can switch things around. Instead of adding lots of event handlers to lots of elements, you can add one event handler to the root element. Then figure out whether the element that just got clicked is special or not.

That’s where closest comes in. It makes this kind of event handling pretty straightforward.

To start with, attach the event listener to the document:

document.addEventListener('click', doSomethingSpecial, false);

That function doSomethingSpecial will be executed whenever the user clicks on anything. Meanwhile, if the contents of the document are updated via Ajax, no problem!

Use the closest method in combination with the target property of the event to figure out whether that click was something you’re interested in:

function doSomethingSpecial(event) {
  if (event.target.closest('button.special')) {
    // do something
  }
}

There you go. Like querySelectorAll, the closest method takes a CSS selector—thanks again, jQuery!

Oh, and if you want to reduce the nesting inside that function, you can reverse the logic and return early like this:

function doSomethingSpecial(event) {
  if (!event.target.closest('button.special')) return;
  // do something
}

There’s a similar method to closest called matches. But that will only work if the user clicks directly on the element you’re interested in. If the element is nested within other elements, matches might not work, but closest will.

Like Eric said:

Very nice.

The verbs of the web are GET and POST. In theory there’s also PUT, DELETE, and PATCH but in practice POST often does those jobs.

I’m always surprised when front-end developers don’t think about these verbs (or request methods, to use the technical term). Knowing when to use GET and when to use POST is crucial to having a solid foundation for whatever you’re building on the web.

Luckily it’s not hard to know when to use each one. If the user is requesting something, use GET. If the user is changing something, use POST.

That’s why links are GET requests by default. A link “gets” a resource and delivers it to the user.

<a href="/items/id">

Most forms use the POST method becuase they’re changing something—creating, editing, deleting, updating.

<form method="post" action="/items/id/edit">

But not all forms should use POST. A search form should use GET.

<form method="get" action="/search">
<input type="search" name="term">

When a user performs a search, they’re still requesting a resource (a page of search results). It’s just that they need to provide some specific details for the GET request. Those details get translated into a query string appended to the URL specified in the action attribute.

/search?term=value

I sometimes see the GET method used incorrectly:

• “Log out” links that should be forms with a “log out” button—you can always style it to look like a link if you want.
• “Unsubscribe” links in emails that immediately trigger the action of unsubscribing instead of going to a form where the POST method does the unsubscribing. I realise that this turns unsubscribing into a two-step process, which is a bit annoying from a usability point of view, but a destructive action should never be baked into a GET request.

When the it was first created, the World Wide Web was stateless by design. If you requested one web page, and then subsequently requested another web page, the server had no way of knowing that the same user was making both requests. After serving up a page in response to a GET request, the server promptly forgot all about it.

That’s how web browsing should still work. In fact, it’s one of the Web Platform Design Principles: It should be safe to visit a web page:

The Web is named for its hyperlinked structure. In order for the web to remain vibrant, users need to be able to expect that merely visiting any given link won’t have implications for the security of their computer, or for any essential aspects of their privacy.

The expectation of safe stateless browsing has been eroded over time. Every time you click on a search result in Google, or you tap on a recommended video in YouTube, or—heaven help us—you actually click on an advertisement, you just know that you’re adding to a dossier of your online profile. That’s not how the web is supposed to work.

Don’t get me wrong: building a profile of someone based on their actions isn’t inherently wrong. If a user taps on “like” or “favourite” or “bookmark”, they are actively telling the server to perform an update (and so those actions should be POST requests). But do you see the difference in where the power lies? With POST actions—fave, rate, save—the user is in charge. With GET requests, no one is supposed to be in charge—it’s meant to be a neutral transaction. Alas, the reality of today’s web is that many GET requests give more power to the dossier-building servers at the expense of the user’s agency.

The very first of the Web Platform Design Principles is Put user needs first :

If a trade-off needs to be made, always put user needs above all.

The current abuse of GET requests is damage that the web needs to route around.

Browsers are helping to a certain extent. Most browsers have the concept of private browsing, allowing you some level of statelessness, or at least time-limited statefulness. But it’s kind of messed up that private browsing is the exception, while surveillance is the default. It should be the other way around.

Firefox and Safari are taking steps to reduce tracking and fingerprinting. Rejecting third-party coookies by default is a good move. I’d love it if third-party JavaScript were also rejected by default:

In retrospect, it seems unbelievable that third-party JavaScript is even possible. I mean, putting arbitrary code—that can then inject even more arbitrary code—onto your website? That seems like a security nightmare!

I imagine if JavaScript were being specced today, it would almost certainly be restricted to the same origin by default.

Chrome has different priorities, which is understandable given that it comes from a company with a business model that is currently tied to tracking and surveillance (though it needn’t remain that way). With anti-trust proceedings rumbling in the background, there’s talk of breaking up Google to avoid monopolistic abuses of power. I honestly think it would be the best thing that could happen to Chrome if it were an independent browser that could fully focus on user needs without having to consider the surveillance needs of an advertising broker.

But we needn’t wait for the browsers to make the web a safer place for users.

Developers write the code that updates those dossiers. Developers add those oh-so-harmless-looking third-party scripts to page templates.

What if we refused?

Front-end developers in particular should be the last line of defence for users. The entire field of front-end devlopment is supposed to be predicated on the prioritisation of user needs.

And if the moral argument isn’t enough, perhaps the technical argument can get through. Tracking users based on their GET requests violates the very bedrock of the web’s architecture. Stop doing that.

The brilliant Cyd Harrell is opening up day two of An Event Apart in Chicago. I’m going to attempt to liveblog her talk on making research count…

Research gets done …and then sits in a report, gathering dust.

Research matters. But how do we make it count? We need allies. Maybe we need more money. Perhaps we need more participation from people not on the product team.

If you’re doing real research on a schedule, sharing it on a regular basis, making people’s eyes light up …then you’ve won!

Research counts when it answers questions that people care about. But you probably don’t want to directly ask “Hey, what questions do you want answered?”

Research can explain oddities in analytics weird feedback from customers, unexpected uses of products, and strange hunches (not just your own).

Curious people with power are the most useful ones to influence. Not just hierarchical power. Engineers often have a lot of power. So ask, “Who is the most curious engineer, and how can I drag them out on a research session with me?”

At 18F, Cyd found that a lot of the nodes of power were in the mid level of the organisation who had been there a while—they know a lot of people up and down the chain. If you can get one of those people excited about research, they can spread it.

Open up your practice. Demystify it. Put as much effort into communicating as into practicing. Create opportunities for people to ask questions and learn.

You can think about communities of practice in the obvious way: people who do similar things to us, and other people who make design decisions. But really, everyone in the organisation is affected by design decisions.

Cyd likes to do office hours. People can come by and ask questions. You could open a Slack channel. You can run brown bag lunches to train people in basic user research techniques. In more conventional organisations, a newsletter is a surprisingly effective tool for sharing the latest findings from research. And use your walls to show work in progress.

Research counts when people can see it for themselves—not just when it’s reported from afar. Ask yourself: who in your organisation is disconnected from their user? It’s difficult for people to maintain their motivation in that position.

When someone has been in the field with you, the data doesn’t have to be explained.

Whoever’s curious. Whoever’s disconnected. Invite them along. Show them what you’re doing.

Think about the qualities of a good invitation (for a party, say). Make the rules clear. Make sure they want to come back. Design the experience of observing research. Make sure everyone has tools. Give everyone a responsibility. Be like Willy Wonka—he gave clear rules to the invitied guests. And sure, things didn’t go great when people broke the rules, but at the end, everyone still went home with the truckload of chocolate they were promised.

People who get to ask a question buy in to the results. Those people feel a sense of ownership for the research.

Research counts when methods fit the question. Think about what the right question is and how you might go about answering it.

You can mix your methods. Interviews. Diary studies. Card sorting. Shadowing. You can ground the user research in competitor analysis.

Back in 2008, Cyd was contacted by a company who wanted to know: how do people really use phones in their cars? Cyd’s team would ride along with people, interviewing them, observing them, taking pictures and video.

Later at the federal government, Cyd was asked: what are the best practices for government digital transformation? How to answer that? It’s so broad! Interviews? Who knows what?

They refined the question: what makes modern digital practices stick within a government entity? They looked at what worked when companies were going online, so see if there was anything that government could learn from. Then they created a set of really focused interview questions. What does digital transformation mean? How do you know when you’re done? What are the biggest obstacles to this work? How do you make changes last?

They used atechnique called cluster recruiting to figure out who else to talk to (by asking participants who else they should be talking to).

There is no one research method that will always work for you. Cutting the right corners at the right time lets you be fast and cheap. Cyd’s bare-bones research kit costs about $20: a notebook, a pen, a consent form, and the price of a cup of coffee. She also created a quick score sheet for when she’s not in a position to have research transcribed.

Always label your assumptions before beginning your research. Maybe you’re assuming that something is a frustrating experience that needs fixing, but it might emerge that it doesn’t need fixing—great! You’ve just saved a whole lotta money.

Research counts when researchers tell the story well. Synthesis works best as a conversational practice. It’s hard to do by yourself. You start telling stories when you come back from the field (sometimes it starts when you’re still out in the field, talking about the most interesting observations).

Miller’s Law is a great conceptual framework:

To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.

You’re probably familiar with the “five whys”. What about the “five ways”? If people talk about something five different ways, it’s virtually certain that one of them will be an apt metaphor. So ask “Can you say that in a different way?” five time.

Spend as much time on communicating outcomes as you did on executing the work.

After research, play back how many people you spoke to, the most valuable insight you gained, the themes that are emerging. Describe the question you wanted to answer, what answers you got, and what you’re going to do next. If you’re in an organisation that values memos, write a memo. Or you could make a video. Or you could write directly into backlog tickets. And don’t forget the wall work! GDS have wonderfully full walls in their research department.

In the end, the best tool for research is an illuminating story.

Cyd was doing research at the Bakersfield courthouse. The hypothesis was that a lot of people weren’t engaging with technology in the court system. She approached a man named Manuel who was positively quaking. He was going through a custody battle. He said, “I don’t know technology but it doesn’t scare me. I’m shaking because this paperwork just gets to me—it’s terrifying.” He said who would gladly pay for someone to help him with the paperwork. Cyd wrote a report on this story. Months later, they heard people in the organisation asking questions like “How would this help Manuel?”

Sometimes you do have to fight (nicely).

People will push back on the time spent on research—they’ll say it doesn’t fit the sprint plan. You can have a three day research plan. Day 1: write scripts. Day 2: go to the users and talk to them. Day 3: play it back. People on a project spend more time than that in Slack.

People will say you can’t talk to the customers. In that situation, you could talk to people who are in the same sector as your company’s customers.

People will question the return on investment for research. Do it cheaply and show the very low costs. Then people stop talking about the money and start talking about the results.

People will claim that qualitative user research is not statistically significant. That’s true. But research is something else. It answers different question.

People will question whether a senior person needs to be involved. It is not fair to ask the intern to do all the work involved in research.

People will say you can’t always do research. But Cyd firmly believes that there’s always room for some research.

• Make allies in customer research.
• Find the most curious engineer on the team, go to lunch with them, and feed them the most interesting research insights.
• Record a pain point and a send a video to executives.
• If there’s really no budget, maybe you can get away with not paying incentives, but perhaps you can provide some other swag instead.

One of the best things you can do is be there, non-judgementally, making friends. It takes time, but it works. Research is like a dandelion in flight. Once it’s out and about, taking root, the more that research counts.