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From my experience mentoring junior designers Ive learned to set the utopian belief that "its all for the user" is a matter of perspective. A stakeholder is als

by cut3 2y ago

From my experience mentoring junior designers Ive learned to set the utopian belief that "its all for the user" is a matter of perspective. A stakeholder is also a user and their utopia is different from any preconceived ideal user an upset designer might have. It can be more constructive to enable the continuation of and building up of new fantasies rather than see it as a doomsday scenario where the good times have ended. they never existed and they always existed its just how you look at it. solve problems and harmonize the multi-utopias :)

hinkley 2y ago
The lead designer for Homegrocer (Amazon Fresh but too early) was in my social circle, friend of my friends, and the part he didn’t like about his job was that you still had to push the high margin items that the grocery stores put in easy reach to get your visit to be profitable to them. So there’s a moral hazard for things like search filters and sorting. As a customer I’d love to sort by price per unit. But they don’t want that (look at how many items are priced per pound in one size and per ounce in another).
- account42 2y ago
  > look at how many items are priced per pound in one size and per ounce in another That is why saner countries have real consumer protection laws that make sure prices can be compared without a calculator.
Gormo 2y ago
In this regard, I see a lot of projects aiming to "optimize user experience" that are actually optimizing for imaginary users at the expense of real ones. GNOME is a great example of this -- they're constantly removing functionality over the objections of their actual userbase in order to implement features that fit the speculative needs they project onto people who don't -- and likely never will -- use the software.
- account42 2y ago
  Another example is Firefox copyring Chrome to court its users instead of focusing on what makes it different.
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
I think this idea of “for the user” is a symptom of being trapped in a certain worldview. For some people, the only form of productive organization they can imagine is a company, which consists of an insular minority of producers, and a large majority of consumers. In such a structure, how can the minority of producers possibly know, anticipate, and retain concern for the interests of the consumers? They have to cross this huge gap between them and their users to do so. Eventually, the company grows larger and that gap between users and decision makers widens to the point where the company loses favor, and this process is inevitable so long as the structure of “company” is presumed necessary for the making of the product. I think open source communities demonstrate a potential alternative route.

by cut3 2y ago

hinkley 2y ago

The lead designer for Homegrocer (Amazon Fresh but too early) was in my social circle, friend of my friends, and the part he didn’t like about his job was that you still had to push the high margin items that the grocery stores put in easy reach to get your visit to be profitable to them. So there’s a moral hazard for things like search filters and sorting. As a customer I’d love to sort by price per unit. But they don’t want that (look at how many items are priced per pound in one size and per ounce in another).

account42 2y ago
> look at how many items are priced per pound in one size and per ounce in another That is why saner countries have real consumer protection laws that make sure prices can be compared without a calculator.

Gormo 2y ago

In this regard, I see a lot of projects aiming to "optimize user experience" that are actually optimizing for imaginary users at the expense of real ones. GNOME is a great example of this -- they're constantly removing functionality over the objections of their actual userbase in order to implement features that fit the speculative needs they project onto people who don't -- and likely never will -- use the software.

account42 2y ago
Another example is Firefox copyring Chrome to court its users instead of focusing on what makes it different.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

I think this idea of “for the user” is a symptom of being trapped in a certain worldview. For some people, the only form of productive organization they can imagine is a company, which consists of an insular minority of producers, and a large majority of consumers. In such a structure, how can the minority of producers possibly know, anticipate, and retain concern for the interests of the consumers? They have to cross this huge gap between them and their users to do so. Eventually, the company grows larger and that gap between users and decision makers widens to the point where the company loses favor, and this process is inevitable so long as the structure of “company” is presumed necessary for the making of the product. I think open source communities demonstrate a potential alternative route.