People’s paths can sometimes tell us a lot.
Whether we actually do what we say we do or not, one of the more interesting aspects about human behaviour in places, is that we tend to leave evidence of our actions behind for analysis. In urban planning they call this concept desire lines. They are the organic emergence of where people want to go versus where we plan for them to go. Have you ever seen a path cut through the grass from people walking on it? These desire lines are evidence of behaviour that is left behind as a result of use.
A few weeks ago I was at an appointment in a ten-floor building. On my way out, I decided to take the stairs instead of the elevator, for that feel-good factor. As I walked down from the sixth floor I began to see a form of desire lines emerge. The stairs down to the fourth floor were pristine. Once I got to the fourth floor you began to see a little wear, the third floor had quite a bit of wear, and between the second and first floors showed the most wear. People were most willing to use the stairs, starting with the fourth floor, and increasingly so down to the second.
I have seen similar evidence of desire lines with usage reports on websites. What is interesting there is the difference between how users tell us they use a site and what the usage reports tell us; the reports sometimes tell a different story.
So, while it is always a good idea to gather direct user feedback about how they interact with a system (whether virtual or real) it is good to compare that with actual usage data. What people say they want and what they actually do and/or use, are not always the same thing.
