BLA (Bipolar Laddering) Applied to YouTube. Performing Postmodern Psychology Paradigms in User Experience Field

One of the main goals in user research is finding detailed aspects of the user experience There are several techniques to find this type of information but they use to be focused on the usability of the product rather than the experience of the users. The following paper describes and shows a method to find detailed information from a user experience. BLA (Bipolar Laddering) technique is been conceived departing from a change of paradigm since is not based on a hypothetic- deductive method but on a Socratic paradigm. Techniques performed on usability and user experience studies are normally based on hypothetic-deductive method, in this article a method based in a Socratic paradigm is going to be suggested. Socratic paradigm entails depart from a non-objective basis perspective, nowadays is often used in some post-modern psychology schools, which use to apply Socratic techniques for psychological exploration and treatment. This model is characterized by gaining information from the user itself, not only from the observation of his behavior. Starting from Socratic paradigm basis, BLA (Bipolar Laddering) method has been designed. The main goal of this technique is to ascertain which concrete characteristics of the product entails users' frustration, confidence or gratitude (between many others). To illustrate this technique a study case performed to Youtube website is going to be presented. Applying BLA method allows discover subtle information of the product that can be difficult to find trough classical usability methods. This methodological proposal not only claims for the participative product design but also promotes the users participation in the test product design.