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I agree that it's not uncommon to hear things on the development team that basically amount to "if it weren't for our users our application would be so much sim

I agree that it's not uncommon to hear things on the development team that basically amount to "if it weren't for our users our application would be so much simpler" :) We have spent a significant chunk of time working directly with our users during this migration. This is an internal tool, so we can literally walk over and talk to our user base if we have questions or want suggestions on things. We have done surveys, we track using analytics, we have a user council that we meet with regularly to run ideas by and get feedback on our work and they come to our sprint reviews (well, 3 of them do...) to see what new work we've done etc. etc. This doesn't change the fact that you can't make everyone happy. One user will tell us that they hate the way a certain page is designed and that they won't use it because it doesn't fit their workflow. Another user will tell us the exact opposite. So we have to take the feedback and make a judgement call, using the data we have available, to try and make the best decision. One great thing about having analytics is it helps you identify squeaky wheels. We had some people on our user council that would basically complain about every single thing we did. If you just listened to them, you would have been tempted to just give up. When we looked at the data, we realized 90% of our user base was getting A LOT of work done, and we weren't hearing anything from them. Obviously it was possible they also hated the app and just didn't want to tell us, but after reaching out it became clear that they were perfectly happy with the way it worked and were just getting shit done. In my experience, the temptation is just to listen to the people you're getting feedback from and assume that they're a representative sample. DON'T. Do the work (or put the systems in place) to help you vet the feedback you're getting. Another thing that makes this very difficult is one of the things you're touching on; trying to develop a tool for a domain that you don't have intimate knowledge of makes it pretty difficult to know which way to go when you are getting conflicting information. None of the developers is an expert user in the domain (or even a beginner for that matter...) and so we often end up having to look at things from a higher level (i.e. what other applications have we used that function this way? How do they solve this problem? etc.). I think this mostly works, but there are bound to be some misses here or there.

oldandtired 7y ago
I don't disagree with you that there are end-users who are, shall we say, "difficult". That is the nature of having to work with a wide variety of different types of people. That is one of those "unenviable" things that happen. As far as not being "problem domain experts", I have found that getting the co-operation of the "most-liked" and "most-expert" of your end-users in that area can be helpful as to getting most people on side to give you the best chance of gathering what you need. This is not necessarily an easy find as I have had to work with some who don't like to lose their "control" and that can be frustrating, to say the least. My original comment wasn't meant to say that getting end-users on side was going to be easy, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But the reputational boost you get when you do, eases the next time something has to be done.

oldandtired 7y ago

I don't disagree with you that there are end-users who are, shall we say, "difficult". That is the nature of having to work with a wide variety of different types of people. That is one of those "unenviable" things that happen. As far as not being "problem domain experts", I have found that getting the co-operation of the "most-liked" and "most-expert" of your end-users in that area can be helpful as to getting most people on side to give you the best chance of gathering what you need. This is not necessarily an easy find as I have had to work with some who don't like to lose their "control" and that can be frustrating, to say the least. My original comment wasn't meant to say that getting end-users on side was going to be easy, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But the reputational boost you get when you do, eases the next time something has to be done.