I’ve been reflecting on the myriad of projects and startups I am advising and exposed to and continue to be amazed by the sheer creativity and deep knowledge creators and founders of these projects and companies have. Their commitment to making the world a better place is palpable and their willingness to work hard to achieve such impact genuine.
However, where I see them stumbling often is at the moment they need to connect their vision with what people are actually interested in using. This disconnect is devastating, as it often follows after months if not years of work they’ve dedicated to the idea, project or company. They often have the vision for how people *should* use their offering (good or service) and people typically end up having a very different idea.
A good example of this in everyday life is illustrated in this picture:
Photo: Kai Schreiber/Flickr
As you can see, the designers built a nice paved path people can enjoy. But, given the realities of people using the path and their needs, they found a faster way to get to where they need to go and ended up carving out a new path over the grass. If this can happen with the simplest of products – a path – can you imagine how hard it is with a high-tech/hard-tech product or service?
This one of the the main reasons I am a firm advocate for talking to people who might benefit from your idea before you build anything! Having a bunch of interviews (more than 100 is better than less) under your belt will give you the opportunity to shape in your mind what the reality of your potential user/customer base is, instead of you pushing your own vision into that reality (which never works, by the way).
It’s critical, though, that you formulate those interviews in ways that reduce the risk of biasing the person towards what you want to build. I use, along with my colleague instructors at MIT, a methodology called Customer Discovery to identify the group of people to talk to and structure the interviews to gain the best data and thus derive meaningful insights.
But what does all of this have to do with design? Any product or service that will be used by someone who is not you, or not on your team, needs to experience it on a stand-alone basis. That it, they need to feel that the product or service is complete and therefore useful. Good design is essential for this. No one I’ve talked to likes to use an incomplete product. The product may not have all features, or bells and whistles, but it needs to be able to perform whatever function it’s sought for clearly and unambiguously.
To get to “completeness”, talking to people and understanding what they need to achieve and how they know they are achieving is a great start. So, if you want to increase your chances of success in building a product people actually want to – and can – use, start with interviews and talk to people. This is the fundamental basis on which good design can stand on, making products and services people actually want to use.