Perception

[Note: This entry was written for the module, CS3216]

The title of this entry pretty much sums up the main point illustrated by Chewy Chong in his talk titled ‘You, Others and the Business of People”, which was a really engaging and entertaining session to sit through. What I particularly enjoyed was how the seemingly obvious idea that everyone is unique was comprehensively covered by him in a fashion that provided an interesting perspective on understanding users and customers.

When developing an application, one of the greatest challenges is trying to understand how one’s target users think. A common mistake would be to generalize who the audience is, and from there try to build a product that will seamlessly integrate into their lives. Clearly, making assumptions in this case can be harmful to the way the user experiences the application, as ultimately, this approach is based on one’s gut feeling and not on empirical evidence nor feedback.

So let’s say the developer gets smarter, and removes all previous assumptions. What then? The developer goes out to collect data to support his hypothesis on what the requirements of this product are, but this is not a scalable endeavour in any way. So the developer satisfices, and after interviewing about a hundred potential users or so, comes up with a minimum viable product that suits their needs. The problem that surfaces, then, is that the market is about a thousand times the sample size, and that the amount of data isn’t sufficient to extrapolate to the larger group.

Even if the developer was able to get feedback from more than half the target market, the likely conundrum that will be present is that everyone has different ideas of what the product will be like. The expectations that arise from the users will more often than not be based on their own interpretations of how the application should work and from past experiences with similar products. As a result, not everyone will end up being a satisfied user, with some probably even being dismissive of the execution.

Could the developer have done it any better? Likely not. We know that people are not like us. We avoid making assumptions. We do research, carry out surveys and collect data. Yet, it’s likely that we still do not know exactly what our users want or how they behave. This is just because people aren’t the same as one another, and every individual has a different background with varying past experiences.

Considering cultural and geographic contexts, designing for users becomes a lot more arduous a task. When taking into account the skill curve of our users, the problem then is how we can develop a product that will serve the interests of the respective beginner, intermediate and expert groups at the same time. Attention is usually paid to the former two groups to encourage adoption, and the latter group is normally too marginal that it justifies the sacrifice.

As it turns out, there isn’t a single, right answer to this problem. Based on the premise that people are not like you, an extension of this thought implies that people are not like one another as well, and that it would be improbable if not impossible to design an application or product that caters to the needs or suits the expectations of everyone in the target market. So what’s the best way to deal with this issue?

Well, I’d simply optimise my approach from the results. But that’s just me, of course.