In the movie, Jurassic Park, John Hammond, the head of InGen, invites many people, including subject matter experts and his grandchildren, to tour the park for the first time. Up to this point, the park has been so top secret that many of the company’s shareholders do not know what they are investing in. Because of an accident in the park at the beginning of the movie, the investors demand an investigation into the park’s safety. This corresponds to when website design goes wrong for unknown reasons, web designers often conduct a user analysis.

• For instance, user analysis “reveals user behaviors and preferences that aren’t otherwise measured.” Once the visitors go on the park’s tour, the audience witnesses the behaviors of actual park visitors or users. If anything, their behavior does not go according to plan. Visitors exit the electric tour cars while they move, deride the ride because they hardly see any dinosaurs on the dinosaur tour, and eventually abandon the tour cars altogether. InGen and Hammond predicted none of these reactions. Similarly, user analysis might produce some unpredictable results. Therefore, it is important to document all user behaviors.
• User analysis measures what motivates people to come to your website. In Jurassic Park, we learn the subject matter experts come because of incentives (funds for research) and the kids go because they are part of the target audience. Understanding why your users visit your website will increase the chance they stay awhile.
• Furthermore, user analysis pinpoints the barriers that stop people from converting. Although Hammond and InGen did some user analysis before selecting the park’s first visitors, Hammond and InGen did not completely understand them. For example, InGen found that subject matter experts like Dr. Ian Malcolm and Dr. Alan Grant, chosen because of their areas of expertise, would not endorse the park because they thought it was ethically wrong. As Malcolm memorably said, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” InGen soon found that ethics (messing with nature, playing God) was a significant barrier. Although on a smaller scale, a website with substantial problems could prevent conversions. User analysis helps you find these problems.
• User analysis finds the “hooks that persuade users to convert.” Jurassic Park had many bells and whistles (the Brontosauruses, the T-Rex, the Raptors). Initially, the sight of live dinosaurs stuns visitors. In this way, InGen understood how to lure people to Jurassic Park. However, they could not make them want to stay. Likewise, user analysis helps explain user behaviors when visiting websites so organizations can get visitors to stay longer.

Usability testing is a “way to evaluate the functionality of a website by observing real users as they attempt to complete tasks.” In the movie, the visitors evaluate the dinosaur tour. Each tour car has a camera that allows the InGen staff to observe the visitors’ actions. The task the visitors are trying to complete is the first Jurassic Park tour. Usability testing helps reveal design flaws, especially ones that are blind to the designers. One overlooked issue in Jurassic Park is that the tour cars did not have locks. Everyone left their still-moving electric tour cars and perused the grounds. Doing multiple usability test types gives a company a better chance of finding glitches, bugs, and misleading wording. Usability testing in Jurassic Park would show that the dinosaur tour could not work. The insurmountable problems (escaping dinosaurs, infrastructure issues, hubris, sheer stupidity) meant something wrong was bound to happen. Usability testing can pinpoint the glitches that website designers miss (Hotjar, 2022).

References

Hotjar. (2022, February 2). Five user-driven website analysis methods. https://www.hotjar.com/website-analysis/user-analysis/