There are great products out there that work exactly as the designer, developer or manufacturer intended them to. But what happens when the customer that is using them isn’t using them with that use case in mind.
I’ll give you 3 quick examples from 3 companies that I am a customer of and otherwise, think do a really great job. The first is from Constant Contact.
We have a lot of people who visit our site and sign up for different things – web seminars, download offers, courses etc. But Constant Contact only gives us one way to get names into our mailing list database. Their form, their code. We can change the registration information and text, but there is one web page the sits between when someone clicks the link they gave me and the page we have changed, and there is no way to change that page. So while someone may want to pre-register for course, they still have to see a page that says “thanks for registering for our mailing list”. Constant Contact’s use case for mailing list sign up works perfectly – it just isn’t what we want – and as a result, we have to hack around and find a better way to solve a problem (which I did – you can see it here: )
The second is Apple. iPhoto is an incredible application. What you get for no money (its part of the operating system install) is a fantastic way to organize all those digital images (pictures and more) that you have been accumulating on your hard drive. What it doesn’t do is synchronize photo libraries between machines (and we know Apple knows how to write sync software ala iPod+iTunes). To do that, I need to spend $20 to buy a utility from a third party or create code that is way beyond my basic skills. Apple figured people would keep their library on one machine. I use two – and I need them in sync.
Last is a new service we just started using – BatchBook – for online CRM for the business. Great application; really powerful, yet simple. They take the concept of tags to a new level and are super flexible about how you search for information. But you can’t search for a record with a blank value? So when we want to look for a customer record that has a missing email address, we have to export all my contacts and search there. Now, I think, they thought, that no one would put contacts into a system with missing info. But really, those of us in the real world don’t always get it all in one place at the same time.
Now, I know Constant Contact and BatchBook will take aggressive actions to add new features. And software can’t do everything the first time out. So what’s my point? Try really, really hard when you are designing a new product or even a new service, to think of the 10 or 15 ways that people will use it. Put it through the dumb user test. Let people who weren’t even remotely involved in the design or thought process for it, try it out. You’ll learn your limitations and likely see some ways to market or promote your product that you never thought of to start with.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting examples and an interesting perspective. In my role as a researcher much of what we do is let people who weren’t involved in the design or thought process provide their opinions and, nearly every time, it turns up some insight or unmet need that the design or creative team never imagined. How do you suggest small businesses get this kind of feedback?
Thanks for the comment. Most small businesses have a group or customers that they consider loyal and close or a group advisers they can rely on. My advice to the small business would be to ask those customers or advisers for recommendations of folks that they should include in a small focus group or test of a new product or service. Its a great way to start with a friendly group (and possibly get some referrals in the process).