Using Brain Science to Build Better Products - Melissa Fisher

I fell into testing by accident. My background was not in tech instead, it was in Brain Science (Neuroscience). It was a subject that focused on the brain and its impact on behaviour and how people think. It may sound like a strange combination, a Neuroscience graduate, then turned tester. However, it has turned out to be the perfect match!

The problem that I have noticed is that sometimes we forget about people and how they work. This means we forget about things like how quickly a user can learn a product or how they might feel when using it. This impacts the business because it changes how likely a person would recommend a product to others or whether they continue to use it.

In this talk, I want to share the knowledge that I have learnt about the brain and its impact on behaviour and how people think so that you can start asking more questions to build better products with people in mind. In the introduction, we explore the structure of the brain and what each of the areas does. Then we’ll go through some exercises to explore how the brain interprets our environment. We will then go on to explore the multi-store memory model, working memory and why we need to consider memory when building products. Then lastly we will explore emotions and how you can use them as a tool to guide your testing.