Stop Listening and Start Watching If You Want To Understand User Needs

rsmiller510 writes "It would seem on its face that simply asking your users what they need in an app would be the easiest way to build one, but it turns out it's not quite that simple. People often don't know what they want or need or they can't articulate it in a way that's useful to you. They may say I want Google or Dropbox for the enterprise, but they don't get that developers can be so much more creative than that. And the best way to understand those users' needs is to watch what they do, then use your own skills to build apps to make their working lives better or easier."

Comments

No question about it, you must watch and learn.

[udachny]

When designing systems for my clients I first listen to what they are trying to convey but then I always take a trip to their locations, departments, stores, whatever it is and I just ask to be allowed to be there, to see what they are doing. Some operations are quite intricate, so I have to sit in with a user and have him/her guide me through the processes, sometimes it's enough just to observe what the operations are like to understand problems.

For example when I started building my retail chain management systems, my background in telecom / banking / insurance / manufacturing / utilities did NOT prepare me for what I observed in retail, in fact it was counter-intuitive and seemed wrong on its face. When an execute order comes to a bank, everything is done in the proper sequence, the transactionality is ensured, etc. In retail that's not the case at all. An order arrives to a store, the boxes can be checked for the products quickly and then pushed to the floor, where the items are placed on the shelves immediately and then they can be sold right away.... but the order may not be in the system yet, so this means the products are NOT in the electronic system and they can already be sold.

This means you have to be able to handle negative amounts of products, as an example, all the way from the cash registers to the accounting systems and your systems have to be able to deal with all of these weird situations, weird from POV of somebody who is used to strict transactionality in terms of processes.

Yes, you have to observe people working IRL or you'll have a bunch of preconceived notions that may be totally wrong and your systems won't handle them at all.