User-centered innovation
Understanding users (different from "customers") is a critical part of the innovation process that most technology companies in India either miss or are ignorant about. Today, this is one of the key reasons why Indian software services companies like Wipro and Satyam cannot produce innovative software.
Organizations believe that customers are users, however, in reality most customers are NOT users. As service companies, we focus on our customers but we completely ignore the users who will use the application or the product.
Typically, customers have no understanding of their users. This leads to:
- Open ended functional specifications that change during the development lifecycle
- Most functions get similar priority. Or, arbitrary allocation of priority so that functions that require least time to develop are developed first rather than those critical to the users.
- Non-use of many functions by users
- Non-completion or partial implementation of critical (read day-to-day) functions performed by users--leads to user dissatisfaction and huge number of support issues.
What do innovating companies do to understand users?
- They ensure proximity and access to users
- They make Ethnographic studies, contextual observations, and inquiry techniques a key part of software development process
Customers who are geographically near their users and have understanding about users' day-to-day functioning, motivation, goals, and environment are the only ones who provide innovating ideas - understanding users always trigger innovating ideas. Innovative technology companies understand the users directly or by employing user research consulting companies.
How will understanding users lead to innovation?
Any innovation can be traced back to change in the style of work or leisure. This leads to positive changes in the users' life. The process of innovation begins with deep understanding of what the users actually do, their characteristics, their needs, their motivations, their experiences with the world, and what they care about. Successful collection, analysis, and synthesis of user data triggers innovative thinking. The insights that businesses get about their users help them make innovative applications and products that users enjoy and recommend.
The entry was origianlly posted at Ripul's personal blog
I have nothing to differ on your views, Ripul. The effort to make user experience fully delightful has huge cost. However, users especially in India do not really know what they want until they are fed upon. We have had exciting incidents of projects going haywire when the users expect castles while they do not have a clear idea of how much they use.
In our current work we have always explored how best we can make users to get on with the software through intutive inerface. We still are on constant look out for improving the user experience.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Helps as a reminder!!
Would appreciate some critical remarks on Samooha :-) during your free time.
Understanding users brings profits. Unfortunately the reality is difficult to swallow. The choice is yours--ignore users and the idea/product dies a slow death, understand them and your chances of success are excellent.
We work with many software product companies and realize that most of them have NEVER seen a user (user is a completely differrent animal from "customer"). They have no clue who are the potential users, their wants, needs, goals, tasks, and motivations are. We help them understand these first and that becomes basis of good user experience.
Do this exercise Rajesh, tell me about 3-5 key user types (not customer types) of your application, for each type of user describe:
1. Thier job roles in detail
2. Thier gender
3. Their approximate age
4. Their educational qualifications
5. Their key tasks on your software
6. Their key goals that they want to achieve using your software (sometimes we realize that the goal is really to "look good to the boss"!)
7. The key motivation to use your software and not do the task any other way.
If any software product company cannot do this, they are not designing for anyone--they are only designing for themselves. Rajesh, can you see where this is going?
Do let me know if you guys need any help.