A User Experience and Usability Analogy

Getting feedbacks to improve User Expereince actually blocks innovation. (Credit: activeside)

In one of my previous posts, I have discussed a different approach to solve user experience related problems. Today I am going to discuss how a developer’s or a designer’s awesome design can turn out to be a useless crap. One truth we tend to forget and I am going to remind now is that our users are the group of people who uses the product. Quite simple. So, what I am really trying to accomplish but reminding this?

As I discussed previously, a common practice is to think, when we approach to a user experience related problem is that users will misuse the product or they will use it in a manner, they are not supposed to.  I prescribed to think that the user will use it properly (or at least will think that is the proper way) and the designers need to figure that out. It is nothing new or unique. A very common good practice in the industry  is  to present/demo the product to the potential clients and taking their feedback. Definitely it works most cases; but I strongly against this approach. Probably as a check mark this can be done; but this can not be the primary or focused approach to improve the user experience or usability. More than that, this approach blocks potential awesome innovations.

I was actually using this analogy to discuss this with my colleagues today and thought of sharing it. Let’s say you are a single good looking fella, in your 20′s. If you are asked what kind of girl you would like as your life partner, your answer is most likely going to be a very good looking girl  or some one who looks close to your fav actress from Hollywood (or so on). But in reality, as you get more matured and finally the time comes to get married; you are probably going to meet the right most girl for your life. Not necessarily that girl is even close to the girl you would think of few years back. You did not know what you really wanted in a person until you met that person. But since you met her you are in love with her. I will assume this is an ideal scenario (don’t want to talk about the odds here).

How does this do any good to a designer?  Think of your user as the guy from our story. If you ask your user what s/he wants in the product, or how s/he is going to accomplish a task with your product, you will hear interesting answers. Most likely the answers will be very closely related to an existing product. It should be like product X and that feature in product Y is awesome. As a good designer/developer, you make that product and deliver to your clients, s/he will definitely not feel quite right; cause nothing is really right there.

Certainly there is no easy or single answer to what would be right then. But the designer needs to create a product which will make the user feel just right. As if the user was just looking for it. Not necessarily they are very familiar. There are many small products like that. Usually in a market segment where there is not much competition, this analogy is not very strong. Rich list of useful features and monopoly rules out user experience in most cases. Yet, the world is changing. More and more competitions are coming into almost every market segment. The availability of more and more smart designers, innovators, resources, new technologies and money (courtesy of venture capitalists and evangelists) is bringing more innovations in the market to compete. Big corporations are now easily threatened by any small start ups. Disruptive technologies are in almost every market segment. That is why, if things are not done right from the beginning, regardless of there is any competition or not in the present, the future of that product  is not very lucrative.