10 ms·

We are not normal people

210 points by libovness 13y ago

dominotw 13y ago
seriously?
- recursive 13y ago
  Yes.
romanovcode 13y ago
Nothing is more normal for an individual than thinking he is not normal.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Isn't that the Forer effect (or at least related to it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect
- Jun8 13y ago
  "Normal is a distribution"
normloman 13y ago
Nobody's normal. Every developer and client is unique. And learning to listen to potential clients is sound advice.
amplification 13y ago
The whole point of the post is that we are different than our users. What we want, or what we think is important, often doesn't match up with what users really need.
mathattack 13y ago
This is true for many things. In a marketing class long ago the professor asked what % of the US beer industry was imported. The answers were all over the place, with most answers between 30 and 50%. She responded with, "It's less than 10%, and this is why you have to look at the #s rather than intuition even if you're a consumer of the product yourself." Technical complexity and fancy features aren't what helps crack the bottom of the market, which is the heart of disruptive innovation. "Because it's cool and I like it" may have worked for Steve Jobs, but he's the exception and not the rule.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > Technical complexity and fancy features aren't what helps crack the bottom of the market, which is the heart of disruptive innovation. "Because it's cool and I like it" may have worked for Steve Jobs, but he's the exception and not the rule. I don't get that one. One could argue Apple does exactly the opposite of that. Technical complexity is usually hidden and there are less fancy features than competitor's products. Compare the first iPod vs. any MP3 on the market at the time.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Right - everything you said is true. I'm highlighting that Jobs as the exception. :-)
- dictum 13y ago
  > In a marketing class long ago the professor asked what % of the US beer industry was imported. The answers were all over the place, with most answers between 30 and 50%. She responded with, "It's less than 10%, and this is why you have to look at the #s rather than intuition even if you're a consumer of the product yourself." You'd just have to take a look at what brands sell the most in the US to get an approximate answer. I'm not American so I can say for certain, but except for the yuppie preference for microbrews, most Americans stick to domestic light beers — Budweiser, Coors, Miller. Per the essay, I'm not normal and most people don't really know the companies that make the products they consume, but estimating 50% of the US beer industry to be imported is something fairly inadequate for someone in college taking a marketing class. Maybe the german-sounding Budweiser/Anheuser-Busch threw them off, but I'd guess most college students either drink (legally or not) or see people drinking, and could make a better estimate.
onion2k 13y ago
Being pedantic, if you're thinking “I could use this new tool I just purchased!” then you're doing things backwards.
- JoeAnzalone 13y ago
  How is that being pedantic? That's one of the main points of the article.
  - onion2k 13y ago
    I stopped reading after I saw an opportunity to be pedantic.
edw519 13y ago
Great post! This really hits the sweet spot for so many here at HN. I especially like: The problem is that all of this is focused on us, the creator, and not on the customer, the consumer. If we're actually going to sell products, we need to quit thinking about what's cool to us, and focus on what customers actually need. I've talked about this here so many times, I don't have much more to add. I'd just direct you to #195 and Chapter 10 here: http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html Justin, this is important work and I look forward to it. Let me know how I can help (email in profile). I wish you great success. This community could really use it.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jiggy2011 13y ago
"increasing the technical challenge while creating a product does not increase the chance for more sales" This is true to a point, but if your strongest suite is your raw technical ability then it may be best for you to pursue problems that have remained unsolved because of technical challenges that have put others off. A significant technical barrier is also nice to have if it means you can get the market before your competition catches up. Even a mediocre implementation of something "impossible" can make a lot of impact. See bitcoin.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Even a mediocre implementation of something "impossible" can make a lot of impact. See bitcoin. Bitcoin was perhaps the worst possible example you could have chosen... The implementation was the opposite of mediocre; its code predicted and solved implementation problems that no one realized were problems, except Satoshi. And on a technical level, the client has only experienced one problem that had to be rolled back. There are few other implementations of anything that have that kind of track record. A better example of a mediocre implementation of something would be the original Quake engine. Ha, got you, just kidding. Actually, I can't think of anything that's made "a lot of impact" while also being both a mediocre implementation and very difficult on a technical level. Even Minecraft wasn't mediocre. Difficulty and mediocrity seem to be opposites, the way magnetic poles are.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    I should clarify. By "mediocre implementation" I didn't mean "the code sucks" I was talking more about "can my grandma use this?". Going from zero to "working cryptocurrency" is a massive leap even if only the relatively geeky can understand and use it. It does open the door wide for someone to build a "bitcoin for grandma" but that will probably involve a somewhat different skillset to that of Satoshi.
  - GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
    Obviously what counts as mediocre is up for debate, but I think you could argue that the first mobile phones were a mediocre implementation of a very difficult technical problem.
Pxtl 13y ago
On the barber anecdote, I think something that a lot of software solutions miss is how fast and flexible paper is. It's ready for you the instant you need it, and you can draw arbitrary shapes quickly and easily in addition to text. We're still feeling out getting this convenience into user's hands. Keyboarded platforms suck for drawing/using standing up, tablets suck for typing. Ultimately, the only thing I could offer this barber is a cloud-synced whiteboard with week-planner drawn in-behind the screen, and the only advantage it would have over paper is cloud syncing.
- jsaxton86 13y ago
  Does the barber need arbitrary shapes in this case? It looks like his pain point was that he was walking to a computer. Perhaps having a tablet by his phone could fix this problem? It could be as easy as the paper calendar solution, but since it's all being done electronically, you could allow people to schedule appointments online and such.
  - tbirdz 13y ago
    Or perhaps even some kind of advanced handwriting recognition, image recording system that would automatically scan the calendar and store the information in a database (probably not practical with current technology)? Or for that matter why not some kind of automated voice recognition system that extracts the customers schedule date directly from the phone call?
  - badman_ting 13y ago
    > Does the barber need arbitrary shapes in this case? But why is the default assumption that the barber needs software, and we must prove out that he doesn't? The barber just wants to note some info and get on with things.
    - astine 13y ago
      Because we are software writers and we are looking for problems to which our skills are a solution. The barber might just need another paper calendar, but then where does that leave me, the software developer? It leaves me still in need of a job.
epx 13y ago
Sometimes a software puts the business in a cast. Me and my friends used to go to a cafeteria every day. Every day we needed to reach for change money, etc. We suggested the cashier to create a "pre-paid" account for every person so we could pay once a month, in advance, with credit card. He/she could not do it because "the system does not implement this". In another epoch, I went every day to the same restaurant, at the fourth day the cashier offered to open an account to me. She opened a big notebook and put my name in a page, case solved. (She even offered post-paid bit I took pre-paid because I detest owing money.)
- tanzam75 13y ago
  ERP software is notorious for doing this. Many a growing company has found itself forced to change its business processes to align with the SAP way of doing things, instead of the other way around. At the top end of the scale, companies are large enough to write custom software. At the bottom end of the scale, you can't yet justify buying software, so a lot of processes are still done manually. It's in the middle that you tend to get squeezed. You're too big to do things on paper, but you don't have the in-house development talent to customize the software to fit your needs.
workhere-io 13y ago
If I have to walk over to the computer, I’ve already wasted too much time. Wouldn't the point of scheduling software be that, unlike his current phone solution, he doesn't have to do something when a customer schedules a time? Ideally he'd enter his work hours and holidays into the scheduling system, and customers could schedule a time without interrupting his workflow. Then he'd only need to look at his iPad once in a while to see who the next customer is. Other than that, I think the article makes an important point.
- widdershins 13y ago
  Barber: "Almost all my bookings happen on the phone, or via text message."
  - workhere-io 13y ago
    That's the point: If the barber has a lot of younger customers, the reason that most of the bookings happen on the phone or via text message is that the barber doesn't have a good website set up with a decent booking system that the customers could use instead of the phone. What OP could have told the barber is this: "We'll put up a system that enables your customers to schedule a time automatically - that way you'll only have to schedule times manually in the 20% of cases or so when a customer prefers to call rather than use the website". It's not rocket science - plenty of barbers have such a system.
    - prawn 13y ago
      Agree completely. If voice is crucial, save yourself answering the phone with some sort of Twilio setup to handle the majority of calls with a series of questions about timing and duration of appointment. In the preamble mention online bookings and see if the majority stick with phone. I know I'd vastly prefer a web booking system for almost everything - restaurants, car service, medical appointments, etc.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      >plenty of barbers have such a system // I'm really interested in this. Could you link some?
janj 13y ago
I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing.
- ryanio 13y ago
  Did you think this article was scummy? Probably not, it provided some real value and insight. And guess what, it was a piece of content marketing for his new book. I was pleasantly surprised at the end with his CTA (call-to-action). Marketing is just finding a way to communicate your value proposition to your target market. Yes, there are plenty of scummy ways out there -- but some awesome real-world examples come from our favorite tech startups like 37signals (e.g. their books) and Atlassian (e.g. their git tutorials). That's the great thing about the inbound/content marketing movement these days -- you are typically not paying people to read it, so you first and have to step back and think, "what can I write about that would grab the genuine interest of people I want to reach?" Just some thoughts from a product marketing manager at a startup in NYC.
  - janj 13y ago
    Maybe I'm just too cynical a person but I thought his CTA was awkward and couldn't help thinking about how giving his readers 'homework' was a great marketing technique to automatically place him in a mentor position in the minds of his readers, helping his readers justify buying his book. But I get your point. This wasn't a scummy piece of marketing and I found it through a very neutral channel.
    - mijustin 13y ago
      Hey, original author here. I appreciate your perspective. Which CTA, specifically did you find awkward? (As a side-note: I've had other posts with similar traffic and same landing URL. This one outperformed them by quite a bit. The launch list itself grew 2x)
namank 13y ago
So what, it's the maker mindset. Add to that with the appreciation for what to make, you have a very impactful being indeed.
Geee 13y ago
Actually, computers aren't just there yet. Imagine if we actually had huge and paper thin displays that could be used like paper, few on the desk, few on the walls, cheaply and ubiquitously. There's still lots to do to get there, but we will.
danso 13y ago
I don't disagree with the OP's overall point...my favorite developers are "not normal" at least in the sense that, yes, they have an opinionated drive for perfection that I admire, particularly because it benefits so many of us who rely on their work. What I do object to is this zero-sum attitude, that it's either "do cool technical stuff" or "MAKE MONEY", and wanting the latter implies a direct reduction of the former. To one extent, that's true...because our time is finite. But on the other hand "MAKE MONEY" gets in the way of technological innovations that could leap frog the market? Why not think of technical innovation/investment as a loss leader? In the same way that it'd be questionable for a gas station to say, "fuck selling gas, let's just focus on selling coffee! (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23904590/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23904590/), realize that tech innovation can be the underlying reason for profit, even if it doesn't have a direct contribution on the balance sheet
gesman 13y ago
If you own the product to-be-built and it is your startup, then you need to think like a businessman and that includes listening to customers. But if you work as a salaried employee or contractor - lets face it - you really in a position to care more about your personal income and care less about customers who will be buying the product you don't directly benefit from. You better realize that you can and will be let go on a minute's notice and no one is going to drop a tear that you're no longer there. And hence your survival depends on convincing the management to build the product using technologies that you can benefit from by knowing them, just in case you decided to quit or will be let go. Even though above may sounds selfish - this does not mean your personal interests are not aligned with the company you're working for. Quite often the opposite - and quite often it's win win for everyone.
calinet6 13y ago
This is a useful perspective, but not the whole picture. Quality drives a portion of sales. Technical ability to perform, create features, respond to customer needs, and maintain a service contributes highly to quality. The technology and tools and process chosen enable that technical ability to a large degree. Therefore, some portion of your sales is driven by your technology. It's useful and important to think at a high level about your customers directly, at times. This is your UX role, doing user research and understanding all the intricate details and desires of your users. It's also marketing, understanding the market and who the target consumers are. It's also useful and important to ensure you get your process and systems right to meet that market head-on with the ability to solve the problem that you now understand. Ideally these are several roles communicating seamlessly. It's not always ideal, but that's the goal.
shmerl 13y ago
The point is not just "listening to people" (which is important too). The main point is "putting yourself in your user's shoes". I.e. one has to think through various use cases from the perspective of the actual user. That's very important in any development if you care about robustness, quality, usability and even security.
dpcan 13y ago
Also, we sometimes won't ask questions or talk to potential consumers for FEAR that our "great" idea will be negated. The excitement of building something, using new technology, solving a problem (whether it exists or not) is exciting. Then you might start seeing dollar signs, or fame, or respect among peers, etc, in your mind. Nobody wants to INVITE someone to shut down those thoughts or feelings.... but we must. I have a few ideas on my list that I think are really good. But I haven't started building them yet because I know I have to talk to a few people in certain industries first to confirm the ideas are good. They just sit there though. For some of these ideas, I'd rather they continue being a pipe dream instead of talking to someone and possibly have them shot down. Or maybe I'm really not normal.
- Udo 13y ago
  Sometimes, customers don't know what they might need. The danger of talking to potential customers when designing a piece of software lies in the problem that you're going to get a long list of convolute feature requests that, if implemented, doesn't result in anything usable. On top of that, the exemplary barber is unlikely to ever use anything besides paper. We might not be normal people, and normal people are unlikely to give meaningful design input. In my experience it makes sense to talk to them twice, once to determine general needs, and then a second time to actually have them try out the prototype.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Yeah, that is a common mistake. Customers are experts on their problems. We are experts on solutions. Good products are found at the intersection of those two circles. I never believe uncritically what customers say about solutions. And I never believe what developers say about customer problems. Especially when that developer is me.
- gizzlon 13y ago
  I feel the same way, and I think it's quite normal. It might not be the stated reason for not evaluating an idea, but I think it's often the real reason. I mean, it's seems so obvious, right? Don't spend lots of time building something unless you're pretty sure there's a market. You can't be "pretty sure there's a marked" unless you actually check. Engineers & programmers are often quite analytical people. Still we somehow miss this obvious conclusion. I know it, but it's still hard to do it.
nine_k 13y ago
At Yandex (Russia's largest search engine) among engineers they/we used to have a motto: "I am non-representational" ("я не репрезентативен"), reminding about just that. Another useful motto was "I'm not your target audience". Some even had these on T-shirts. You, the developer, are not a normal user, by definition (unless you're building tools for fellow developers). Anything user-facing should be tested on real users, on members of the target audience. What they find convenient and useful may seem inconvenient and useless to you. This is OK; such a view is usually reciprocal. BTW this is often a point of contention in open-source software. It is built mostly by engineers. If the target audience does not also consist of engineers, users may find the UI confusing and inconvenient, despite authors' best effort to make it clear and convenient for themselves.
kybernetyk 13y ago
Hmm, sorry but the teaser didn't appeal to me. Where can I unsubscribe? (Can't find a link.)
bsbechtel 13y ago
“I could build this on the Twilio API!” “I could learn that new CSS framework!” "I could use this new tool I just purchased!” I've never thought this way when I learn about some new technology...my way of thinking has always been "This task I'm doing really sucks, how can I make it easier?" This way of thinking seems so much more intuitive and less mentally taxing. Do others here really think the way the author describes? I'm curious.
desireco42 13y ago
Not only that we are not normal as a consumers, but we are also not normal, for most part as developers, there are huge number of people who just are not up to speed with latest technology and simply don't use it. It helps to remind yourself often about that.
_random_ 13y ago
My future recruiter and employer are my customers. I can assure you that they are most certainly interested in technologies I am going to use. Welcome to CV-driven development!
pessimizer 13y ago
I don't know who "we" is, but there's nothing abnormal about programmers as programmers. Currently the profession is dominated by a few narrow demographics which have a limited understanding of people outside of those demographics, but that's a social issue, not one that comes along with technical competence. My major problem with dealing with clients/customers that I'm doing custom work for is that instead of telling me what they do, or what they want to be able to do, in language that they understand, they convert it into their own private techspeak. They incorrectly drop in technical words that they've heard somewhere, and they ask for specific brands of software that they've never seen and often don't understand. I am a normal person. Tell me your goals and your problems in plain English, and I'll figure out how to get it done. I'm pretty good at it, and if I can't help you I can probably find you someone who can.
- j_baker 13y ago
  I don't even think that this is even a case of that. The writer is obviously not a programmer (he even uses the "Some of my best friends are x" line where x is some type of person you are trying to convince people you don't hate). It seems to me that the writer is trying to peg programmers into a hole where all we do is say "We have to do this with the newest CSS Framework using the neatest database and the coolest programming language." And I think that's clearly a load of crap. What bothers me most about this is the idea that programmers are some kind of underclass that just doesn't get "normal" people. The truth is that we're people too who have a lot of the same needs as "normal" people.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    You're probably right. I may have been making the mistake of thinking that he was representative of a some large contingent of programmers just because of the "we." Marketing works:)
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    yeah it's weird, we are one the one hand said to be an underclass of social rejects, and on the other hand said to be immensely privileged. And on top of that, somehow being losers makes us more privileged, since it keeps normal people who don't want to be losers out of the profession. Go figure.
talles 13y ago
This is definitely not a rule of thumb, but this point of view does fit in most of (small) cases. Want an example? One of the most beloved practices by the software industry is kanban boards. It's at least curious how people writing systems prefer to have a physical board rather than, well, a system.
antonios 13y ago
Insightful post. I wish I'd read something like that years ago, instead of finding out the hard way. Thank you.
CodeMage 13y ago
I agree with the underlying message, which is to listen to your market. I just feel that the example Justin used is somewhat unfortunate, because I feel it describes a missed opportunity. Of course the barber doesn't think he needs anything beyond a better paper calendar, but what do his customers think? Would they, perhaps, prefer to book online instead of over the phone? I guess that what I'm trying to say is that you should definitely listen to your customers, but you shouldn't let that blind you. It's like that Henry Ford quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The problem, of course, is that very few people are Henry Ford material ;)
itsokintheory 13y ago
Posts with a similar sentiment seem to appear on HN occasionally. I find it entirely reasonable, but it's also quite banal compared to research on product design done by people in Participatory Design[1] and User-centered Design[2]. It has often surprised me how limited many North American PMs and software designers seem to be in their knowledge of these areas. [1] http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/14-p-partic.html http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/14-p-partic.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design
WalterBright 13y ago
I get told constantly that not only am I not a normal person, I'm not a normal programmer. This is in the context of me listing things I'd like to see in a product. The irony is that when I build a product that I'm told that "normal" people/programmers will want, it usually fails. When I build a product that I would use myself, with weird features I'm told nobody wants, it does well.
lutusp 13y ago
Steve Jobs took exactly the opposite tack -- he would say things like "People don't know what they want until we tell them" -- and he succeeded with that outlook. I'm not saying the article is wrong, only that it's not a self-evident position. Chances are a product will succeed or fail for reasons neither the designers nor the customers understand. Consider the personal computer -- the best minds in technology were offered a chance to get in at the start, and nearly all of them turned it down. Hewlett-Packard repeatedly rejected Steve Wozniak's proposals until he quit and developed his ideas with Steve Jobs in a garage. Then IBM created a rather limited knockoff PC, expecting it to serve only as an "entry system" to their main product line, which was large systems. Pretty soon the tail wagged the dog. And the Internet -- no one saw it coming, even when it was on top of them. No one was able to predict any aspect of that phenomenon, something that remains true. About people's tastes and choices in entertainment, Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman famously said, "Nobody knows anything". I agree, and I think it applies to technology as well. The bottom line -- if you ask customers what they want, what they might buy, they won't be able to tell you. I disagreed with Steve Jobs about practically everything, but he was dead right about this.
mgkimsal 13y ago
In that barber example... selling to the barber directly might make the most sense, but better scheduling software would allow people to self-schedule (well, 'better' for end users). I hate trying to coordinate a time with my barber - his schedule is erratic, mine is erratic sometimes, the place doesn't call me back some times, they don't email, etc. What is efficient for them as a business is highly inefficient for me as a consumer, and I may end up taking my business elsewhere because of it. I like the guy and he does a good job, but there are other places to go. If any of them make it easier on me to schedule on my terms, I'll go there. So... yes, it might be easier for the barber to just look at a piece of paper on the wall, does it increase his business? Is he looking for more business, or an easier job?
- prawn 13y ago
  Same goes with in-demand restaurants. If I get into a city and want to pick a nice restaurant, am I better off calling around and wasting the time of those booked-out, or using something like OpenTable which shows me what's available? Some of the premium places will be booked out three months in advance, but then make mention of potential cancellations on their web site contact page. e.g., "Sometimes we get cancellations. Please call us just in case." Seems to be like that would make for a huge amount of wasted staff time dealing with those sorts of queries.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  IME people will do things like book online and then call because they don't trust the booking app. And that's the people that will bother to fill out the form rather than just ring up anyway. If you're relying on an online system too it has to be absolutely solid - which means expense. Or at least more expense than a wall-calendar or a paper diary [book]. It's hard to have an over-view of, say, the next couple of months work with an online system - a big wall-calendar makes things easier to visualise. Of course you could have a massive touch-screen computer ... If you're running a salon, with multiple barbers then I can see it being cost-effective to try and have customers self-schedule but it seems for a single barber that they'd have to be very up-market to make it worth while. Would you go to a worse barber so you can schedule online instead of by phone? Would you pay more, how much, to be able to schedule online? Personally if I use a barber's it's a simple drop-in service. [Any suggestions for an appointments booking system to check out?]
exodust 13y ago
There's no reason a creative developer couldn't foresee the barber's predicament without speaking with the barber. Patiently visualised, devised imagined scenarios. Phone rings, barber says "excuse me" to his client and walks over to the phone. But does he put the comb down first? Perhaps. Barbers have trays handy, but they might walk around, tools in hand. (This is obvious, and doesn't take research to imagine.) The phone needs to be next to the computer - no screen savers, the scheduling software always on, with clear and large fonts, minimal clutter (generally good interface design anyway). Think "high quality app design", not "looks like Excel". A beautifully designed interface that would impress the barber if demonstrated. Custom default views and all that. It's ok to start from the blue sky and work down to the reality instead of working up from "what the barber likes with his paper calendars". Which isn't the wrong way, but could skew the potential. Top down isn't wrong, if you've done your visualising! Not that research and getting out into the world isn't valuable. (obvious). I'd probably take a look at the book anyway... sounds ok.
ludovicurbain 13y ago
Well, Justin, I would have sold your barber a wonderful web application that he would have accessed using a touchscreen TV, just as he did his old paper calendar, but with better faster interaction AND a complete merge of his web and non-web appointment management enabling a successful transition to the modern age of nobody phoning in for a haircut. But then, that may just be because I have some rough idea of what can be done with technology.
GrinningFool 13y ago
Ah, there. Another programmer matures, having the same epiphany that every other decent programmer does at some point in his career. Welcome to [career] adulthood, it's nice of you to finally join us :)
ballard 13y ago
If the business is risky (which is probably is), use safer tech choices. If the business seems boring, use a few extra bleeding edge solutions to engage us technical folks.
dclara 13y ago
Working with software product companies, we always debated on the product is "technology driven" or "market driven". Back to the days of using EJB, often times we were technology drive (not all). That's why we have product team and product manager to work out the requirements before the development team start to prototype and implement. For startup companies, this kind of process may seem too luxury in the early stage, we called it "discover" stage. Once we define the target market and learn the customer needs, we will build the most compelling features first. We listen, but not tight to specific customer needs, because we know the direction we want to build, and gradually lead the customers toward that end product. For any new product, customer friction is always there very naturally. That's why we need marketing and sales team to remove the friction. It's a lot easy to say than to do.
nicolax 13y ago
I wonder why this is a new topic then. Isn't it pretty established in either Lean Startup or Design Thinking that when building product, we should talk to/interview/research the people who will be using it? Especially in Design Thinking, it's required to do needfinding, which is talking to the barber in this case. And solutions in the brainstorming stage are certainly not confined within software. We just need to be constantly reminded that our perception and reasoning about the world is subjective and often conscious. As designers, or product builders, we should be willing to understand other people's reasoning, putting aside ours.
NameNickHN 13y ago
What the barber shop owner doesn't realize is that an appointment scheduling software is supposed to reduce phone calls which would decrease the workload of the staff. Also, what if I want to schedule an appointment when the shop is closed?
ta_tatata 13y ago
There are no normal people. By definition normal people do not exist in the world. With the title and point of the article being formulated in a way showing a lack of understanding of the matter, it is doubtful the rest of the post is any better.
vickytnz 13y ago
Or as usability people say: "you are not your user".

210 points by libovness 13y ago

dominotw 13y ago

seriously?

recursive 13y ago
Yes.

romanovcode 13y ago

Nothing is more normal for an individual than thinking he is not normal.

arethuza 13y ago
Isn't that the Forer effect (or at least related to it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect
Jun8 13y ago
"Normal is a distribution"

normloman 13y ago

Nobody's normal. Every developer and client is unique. And learning to listen to potential clients is sound advice.

amplification 13y ago

The whole point of the post is that we are different than our users. What we want, or what we think is important, often doesn't match up with what users really need.

mathattack 13y ago

This is true for many things. In a marketing class long ago the professor asked what % of the US beer industry was imported. The answers were all over the place, with most answers between 30 and 50%. She responded with, "It's less than 10%, and this is why you have to look at the #s rather than intuition even if you're a consumer of the product yourself." Technical complexity and fancy features aren't what helps crack the bottom of the market, which is the heart of disruptive innovation. "Because it's cool and I like it" may have worked for Steve Jobs, but he's the exception and not the rule.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> Technical complexity and fancy features aren't what helps crack the bottom of the market, which is the heart of disruptive innovation. "Because it's cool and I like it" may have worked for Steve Jobs, but he's the exception and not the rule. I don't get that one. One could argue Apple does exactly the opposite of that. Technical complexity is usually hidden and there are less fancy features than competitor's products. Compare the first iPod vs. any MP3 on the market at the time.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Right - everything you said is true. I'm highlighting that Jobs as the exception. :-)
dictum 13y ago
> In a marketing class long ago the professor asked what % of the US beer industry was imported. The answers were all over the place, with most answers between 30 and 50%. She responded with, "It's less than 10%, and this is why you have to look at the #s rather than intuition even if you're a consumer of the product yourself." You'd just have to take a look at what brands sell the most in the US to get an approximate answer. I'm not American so I can say for certain, but except for the yuppie preference for microbrews, most Americans stick to domestic light beers — Budweiser, Coors, Miller. Per the essay, I'm not normal and most people don't really know the companies that make the products they consume, but estimating 50% of the US beer industry to be imported is something fairly inadequate for someone in college taking a marketing class. Maybe the german-sounding Budweiser/Anheuser-Busch threw them off, but I'd guess most college students either drink (legally or not) or see people drinking, and could make a better estimate.

onion2k 13y ago

Being pedantic, if you're thinking “I could use this new tool I just purchased!” then you're doing things backwards.

JoeAnzalone 13y ago
How is that being pedantic? That's one of the main points of the article.
- onion2k 13y ago
  I stopped reading after I saw an opportunity to be pedantic.

edw519 13y ago

Great post! This really hits the sweet spot for so many here at HN. I especially like: The problem is that all of this is focused on us, the creator, and not on the customer, the consumer. If we're actually going to sell products, we need to quit thinking about what's cool to us, and focus on what customers actually need. I've talked about this here so many times, I don't have much more to add. I'd just direct you to #195 and Chapter 10 here: http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html Justin, this is important work and I look forward to it. Let me know how I can help (email in profile). I wish you great success. This community could really use it.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jiggy2011 13y ago

"increasing the technical challenge while creating a product does not increase the chance for more sales" This is true to a point, but if your strongest suite is your raw technical ability then it may be best for you to pursue problems that have remained unsolved because of technical challenges that have put others off. A significant technical barrier is also nice to have if it means you can get the market before your competition catches up. Even a mediocre implementation of something "impossible" can make a lot of impact. See bitcoin.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
Even a mediocre implementation of something "impossible" can make a lot of impact. See bitcoin. Bitcoin was perhaps the worst possible example you could have chosen... The implementation was the opposite of mediocre; its code predicted and solved implementation problems that no one realized were problems, except Satoshi. And on a technical level, the client has only experienced one problem that had to be rolled back. There are few other implementations of anything that have that kind of track record. A better example of a mediocre implementation of something would be the original Quake engine. Ha, got you, just kidding. Actually, I can't think of anything that's made "a lot of impact" while also being both a mediocre implementation and very difficult on a technical level. Even Minecraft wasn't mediocre. Difficulty and mediocrity seem to be opposites, the way magnetic poles are.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I should clarify. By "mediocre implementation" I didn't mean "the code sucks" I was talking more about "can my grandma use this?". Going from zero to "working cryptocurrency" is a massive leap even if only the relatively geeky can understand and use it. It does open the door wide for someone to build a "bitcoin for grandma" but that will probably involve a somewhat different skillset to that of Satoshi.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
  Obviously what counts as mediocre is up for debate, but I think you could argue that the first mobile phones were a mediocre implementation of a very difficult technical problem.

Pxtl 13y ago

On the barber anecdote, I think something that a lot of software solutions miss is how fast and flexible paper is. It's ready for you the instant you need it, and you can draw arbitrary shapes quickly and easily in addition to text. We're still feeling out getting this convenience into user's hands. Keyboarded platforms suck for drawing/using standing up, tablets suck for typing. Ultimately, the only thing I could offer this barber is a cloud-synced whiteboard with week-planner drawn in-behind the screen, and the only advantage it would have over paper is cloud syncing.

jsaxton86 13y ago
Does the barber need arbitrary shapes in this case? It looks like his pain point was that he was walking to a computer. Perhaps having a tablet by his phone could fix this problem? It could be as easy as the paper calendar solution, but since it's all being done electronically, you could allow people to schedule appointments online and such.
- tbirdz 13y ago
  Or perhaps even some kind of advanced handwriting recognition, image recording system that would automatically scan the calendar and store the information in a database (probably not practical with current technology)? Or for that matter why not some kind of automated voice recognition system that extracts the customers schedule date directly from the phone call?
- badman_ting 13y ago
  > Does the barber need arbitrary shapes in this case? But why is the default assumption that the barber needs software, and we must prove out that he doesn't? The barber just wants to note some info and get on with things.
  - astine 13y ago
    Because we are software writers and we are looking for problems to which our skills are a solution. The barber might just need another paper calendar, but then where does that leave me, the software developer? It leaves me still in need of a job.

epx 13y ago

Sometimes a software puts the business in a cast. Me and my friends used to go to a cafeteria every day. Every day we needed to reach for change money, etc. We suggested the cashier to create a "pre-paid" account for every person so we could pay once a month, in advance, with credit card. He/she could not do it because "the system does not implement this". In another epoch, I went every day to the same restaurant, at the fourth day the cashier offered to open an account to me. She opened a big notebook and put my name in a page, case solved. (She even offered post-paid bit I took pre-paid because I detest owing money.)

tanzam75 13y ago
ERP software is notorious for doing this. Many a growing company has found itself forced to change its business processes to align with the SAP way of doing things, instead of the other way around. At the top end of the scale, companies are large enough to write custom software. At the bottom end of the scale, you can't yet justify buying software, so a lot of processes are still done manually. It's in the middle that you tend to get squeezed. You're too big to do things on paper, but you don't have the in-house development talent to customize the software to fit your needs.

workhere-io 13y ago

If I have to walk over to the computer, I’ve already wasted too much time. Wouldn't the point of scheduling software be that, unlike his current phone solution, he doesn't have to do something when a customer schedules a time? Ideally he'd enter his work hours and holidays into the scheduling system, and customers could schedule a time without interrupting his workflow. Then he'd only need to look at his iPad once in a while to see who the next customer is. Other than that, I think the article makes an important point.

widdershins 13y ago
Barber: "Almost all my bookings happen on the phone, or via text message."
- workhere-io 13y ago
  That's the point: If the barber has a lot of younger customers, the reason that most of the bookings happen on the phone or via text message is that the barber doesn't have a good website set up with a decent booking system that the customers could use instead of the phone. What OP could have told the barber is this: "We'll put up a system that enables your customers to schedule a time automatically - that way you'll only have to schedule times manually in the 20% of cases or so when a customer prefers to call rather than use the website". It's not rocket science - plenty of barbers have such a system.
  - prawn 13y ago
    Agree completely. If voice is crucial, save yourself answering the phone with some sort of Twilio setup to handle the majority of calls with a series of questions about timing and duration of appointment. In the preamble mention online bookings and see if the majority stick with phone. I know I'd vastly prefer a web booking system for almost everything - restaurants, car service, medical appointments, etc.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >plenty of barbers have such a system // I'm really interested in this. Could you link some?

janj 13y ago

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing.

ryanio 13y ago
Did you think this article was scummy? Probably not, it provided some real value and insight. And guess what, it was a piece of content marketing for his new book. I was pleasantly surprised at the end with his CTA (call-to-action). Marketing is just finding a way to communicate your value proposition to your target market. Yes, there are plenty of scummy ways out there -- but some awesome real-world examples come from our favorite tech startups like 37signals (e.g. their books) and Atlassian (e.g. their git tutorials). That's the great thing about the inbound/content marketing movement these days -- you are typically not paying people to read it, so you first and have to step back and think, "what can I write about that would grab the genuine interest of people I want to reach?" Just some thoughts from a product marketing manager at a startup in NYC.
- janj 13y ago
  Maybe I'm just too cynical a person but I thought his CTA was awkward and couldn't help thinking about how giving his readers 'homework' was a great marketing technique to automatically place him in a mentor position in the minds of his readers, helping his readers justify buying his book. But I get your point. This wasn't a scummy piece of marketing and I found it through a very neutral channel.
  - mijustin 13y ago
    Hey, original author here. I appreciate your perspective. Which CTA, specifically did you find awkward? (As a side-note: I've had other posts with similar traffic and same landing URL. This one outperformed them by quite a bit. The launch list itself grew 2x)

namank 13y ago

So what, it's the maker mindset. Add to that with the appreciation for what to make, you have a very impactful being indeed.

Geee 13y ago

Actually, computers aren't just there yet. Imagine if we actually had huge and paper thin displays that could be used like paper, few on the desk, few on the walls, cheaply and ubiquitously. There's still lots to do to get there, but we will.

danso 13y ago

I don't disagree with the OP's overall point...my favorite developers are "not normal" at least in the sense that, yes, they have an opinionated drive for perfection that I admire, particularly because it benefits so many of us who rely on their work. What I do object to is this zero-sum attitude, that it's either "do cool technical stuff" or "MAKE MONEY", and wanting the latter implies a direct reduction of the former. To one extent, that's true...because our time is finite. But on the other hand "MAKE MONEY" gets in the way of technological innovations that could leap frog the market? Why not think of technical innovation/investment as a loss leader? In the same way that it'd be questionable for a gas station to say, "fuck selling gas, let's just focus on selling coffee! (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23904590/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23904590/), realize that tech innovation can be the underlying reason for profit, even if it doesn't have a direct contribution on the balance sheet

gesman 13y ago

If you own the product to-be-built and it is your startup, then you need to think like a businessman and that includes listening to customers. But if you work as a salaried employee or contractor - lets face it - you really in a position to care more about your personal income and care less about customers who will be buying the product you don't directly benefit from. You better realize that you can and will be let go on a minute's notice and no one is going to drop a tear that you're no longer there. And hence your survival depends on convincing the management to build the product using technologies that you can benefit from by knowing them, just in case you decided to quit or will be let go. Even though above may sounds selfish - this does not mean your personal interests are not aligned with the company you're working for. Quite often the opposite - and quite often it's win win for everyone.

calinet6 13y ago

This is a useful perspective, but not the whole picture. Quality drives a portion of sales. Technical ability to perform, create features, respond to customer needs, and maintain a service contributes highly to quality. The technology and tools and process chosen enable that technical ability to a large degree. Therefore, some portion of your sales is driven by your technology. It's useful and important to think at a high level about your customers directly, at times. This is your UX role, doing user research and understanding all the intricate details and desires of your users. It's also marketing, understanding the market and who the target consumers are. It's also useful and important to ensure you get your process and systems right to meet that market head-on with the ability to solve the problem that you now understand. Ideally these are several roles communicating seamlessly. It's not always ideal, but that's the goal.

shmerl 13y ago

The point is not just "listening to people" (which is important too). The main point is "putting yourself in your user's shoes". I.e. one has to think through various use cases from the perspective of the actual user. That's very important in any development if you care about robustness, quality, usability and even security.

dpcan 13y ago

Also, we sometimes won't ask questions or talk to potential consumers for FEAR that our "great" idea will be negated. The excitement of building something, using new technology, solving a problem (whether it exists or not) is exciting. Then you might start seeing dollar signs, or fame, or respect among peers, etc, in your mind. Nobody wants to INVITE someone to shut down those thoughts or feelings.... but we must. I have a few ideas on my list that I think are really good. But I haven't started building them yet because I know I have to talk to a few people in certain industries first to confirm the ideas are good. They just sit there though. For some of these ideas, I'd rather they continue being a pipe dream instead of talking to someone and possibly have them shot down. Or maybe I'm really not normal.

Udo 13y ago
Sometimes, customers don't know what they might need. The danger of talking to potential customers when designing a piece of software lies in the problem that you're going to get a long list of convolute feature requests that, if implemented, doesn't result in anything usable. On top of that, the exemplary barber is unlikely to ever use anything besides paper. We might not be normal people, and normal people are unlikely to give meaningful design input. In my experience it makes sense to talk to them twice, once to determine general needs, and then a second time to actually have them try out the prototype.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Yeah, that is a common mistake. Customers are experts on their problems. We are experts on solutions. Good products are found at the intersection of those two circles. I never believe uncritically what customers say about solutions. And I never believe what developers say about customer problems. Especially when that developer is me.
gizzlon 13y ago
I feel the same way, and I think it's quite normal. It might not be the stated reason for not evaluating an idea, but I think it's often the real reason. I mean, it's seems so obvious, right? Don't spend lots of time building something unless you're pretty sure there's a market. You can't be "pretty sure there's a marked" unless you actually check. Engineers & programmers are often quite analytical people. Still we somehow miss this obvious conclusion. I know it, but it's still hard to do it.

nine_k 13y ago

At Yandex (Russia's largest search engine) among engineers they/we used to have a motto: "I am non-representational" ("я не репрезентативен"), reminding about just that. Another useful motto was "I'm not your target audience". Some even had these on T-shirts. You, the developer, are not a normal user, by definition (unless you're building tools for fellow developers). Anything user-facing should be tested on real users, on members of the target audience. What they find convenient and useful may seem inconvenient and useless to you. This is OK; such a view is usually reciprocal. BTW this is often a point of contention in open-source software. It is built mostly by engineers. If the target audience does not also consist of engineers, users may find the UI confusing and inconvenient, despite authors' best effort to make it clear and convenient for themselves.

kybernetyk 13y ago

Hmm, sorry but the teaser didn't appeal to me. Where can I unsubscribe? (Can't find a link.)

bsbechtel 13y ago

“I could build this on the Twilio API!” “I could learn that new CSS framework!” "I could use this new tool I just purchased!” I've never thought this way when I learn about some new technology...my way of thinking has always been "This task I'm doing really sucks, how can I make it easier?" This way of thinking seems so much more intuitive and less mentally taxing. Do others here really think the way the author describes? I'm curious.

desireco42 13y ago

Not only that we are not normal as a consumers, but we are also not normal, for most part as developers, there are huge number of people who just are not up to speed with latest technology and simply don't use it. It helps to remind yourself often about that.

_random_ 13y ago

My future recruiter and employer are my customers. I can assure you that they are most certainly interested in technologies I am going to use. Welcome to CV-driven development!

pessimizer 13y ago

I don't know who "we" is, but there's nothing abnormal about programmers as programmers. Currently the profession is dominated by a few narrow demographics which have a limited understanding of people outside of those demographics, but that's a social issue, not one that comes along with technical competence. My major problem with dealing with clients/customers that I'm doing custom work for is that instead of telling me what they do, or what they want to be able to do, in language that they understand, they convert it into their own private techspeak. They incorrectly drop in technical words that they've heard somewhere, and they ask for specific brands of software that they've never seen and often don't understand. I am a normal person. Tell me your goals and your problems in plain English, and I'll figure out how to get it done. I'm pretty good at it, and if I can't help you I can probably find you someone who can.

j_baker 13y ago
I don't even think that this is even a case of that. The writer is obviously not a programmer (he even uses the "Some of my best friends are x" line where x is some type of person you are trying to convince people you don't hate). It seems to me that the writer is trying to peg programmers into a hole where all we do is say "We have to do this with the newest CSS Framework using the neatest database and the coolest programming language." And I think that's clearly a load of crap. What bothers me most about this is the idea that programmers are some kind of underclass that just doesn't get "normal" people. The truth is that we're people too who have a lot of the same needs as "normal" people.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  You're probably right. I may have been making the mistake of thinking that he was representative of a some large contingent of programmers just because of the "we." Marketing works:)
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  yeah it's weird, we are one the one hand said to be an underclass of social rejects, and on the other hand said to be immensely privileged. And on top of that, somehow being losers makes us more privileged, since it keeps normal people who don't want to be losers out of the profession. Go figure.

talles 13y ago

This is definitely not a rule of thumb, but this point of view does fit in most of (small) cases. Want an example? One of the most beloved practices by the software industry is kanban boards. It's at least curious how people writing systems prefer to have a physical board rather than, well, a system.

antonios 13y ago

Insightful post. I wish I'd read something like that years ago, instead of finding out the hard way. Thank you.

CodeMage 13y ago

I agree with the underlying message, which is to listen to your market. I just feel that the example Justin used is somewhat unfortunate, because I feel it describes a missed opportunity. Of course the barber doesn't think he needs anything beyond a better paper calendar, but what do his customers think? Would they, perhaps, prefer to book online instead of over the phone? I guess that what I'm trying to say is that you should definitely listen to your customers, but you shouldn't let that blind you. It's like that Henry Ford quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The problem, of course, is that very few people are Henry Ford material ;)

itsokintheory 13y ago

Posts with a similar sentiment seem to appear on HN occasionally. I find it entirely reasonable, but it's also quite banal compared to research on product design done by people in Participatory Design[1] and User-centered Design[2]. It has often surprised me how limited many North American PMs and software designers seem to be in their knowledge of these areas. [1] http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/14-p-partic.html http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/14-p-partic.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design

WalterBright 13y ago

I get told constantly that not only am I not a normal person, I'm not a normal programmer. This is in the context of me listing things I'd like to see in a product. The irony is that when I build a product that I'm told that "normal" people/programmers will want, it usually fails. When I build a product that I would use myself, with weird features I'm told nobody wants, it does well.

lutusp 13y ago

Steve Jobs took exactly the opposite tack -- he would say things like "People don't know what they want until we tell them" -- and he succeeded with that outlook. I'm not saying the article is wrong, only that it's not a self-evident position. Chances are a product will succeed or fail for reasons neither the designers nor the customers understand. Consider the personal computer -- the best minds in technology were offered a chance to get in at the start, and nearly all of them turned it down. Hewlett-Packard repeatedly rejected Steve Wozniak's proposals until he quit and developed his ideas with Steve Jobs in a garage. Then IBM created a rather limited knockoff PC, expecting it to serve only as an "entry system" to their main product line, which was large systems. Pretty soon the tail wagged the dog. And the Internet -- no one saw it coming, even when it was on top of them. No one was able to predict any aspect of that phenomenon, something that remains true. About people's tastes and choices in entertainment, Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman famously said, "Nobody knows anything". I agree, and I think it applies to technology as well. The bottom line -- if you ask customers what they want, what they might buy, they won't be able to tell you. I disagreed with Steve Jobs about practically everything, but he was dead right about this.

mgkimsal 13y ago

In that barber example... selling to the barber directly might make the most sense, but better scheduling software would allow people to self-schedule (well, 'better' for end users). I hate trying to coordinate a time with my barber - his schedule is erratic, mine is erratic sometimes, the place doesn't call me back some times, they don't email, etc. What is efficient for them as a business is highly inefficient for me as a consumer, and I may end up taking my business elsewhere because of it. I like the guy and he does a good job, but there are other places to go. If any of them make it easier on me to schedule on my terms, I'll go there. So... yes, it might be easier for the barber to just look at a piece of paper on the wall, does it increase his business? Is he looking for more business, or an easier job?

prawn 13y ago
Same goes with in-demand restaurants. If I get into a city and want to pick a nice restaurant, am I better off calling around and wasting the time of those booked-out, or using something like OpenTable which shows me what's available? Some of the premium places will be booked out three months in advance, but then make mention of potential cancellations on their web site contact page. e.g., "Sometimes we get cancellations. Please call us just in case." Seems to be like that would make for a huge amount of wasted staff time dealing with those sorts of queries.
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
IME people will do things like book online and then call because they don't trust the booking app. And that's the people that will bother to fill out the form rather than just ring up anyway. If you're relying on an online system too it has to be absolutely solid - which means expense. Or at least more expense than a wall-calendar or a paper diary [book]. It's hard to have an over-view of, say, the next couple of months work with an online system - a big wall-calendar makes things easier to visualise. Of course you could have a massive touch-screen computer ... If you're running a salon, with multiple barbers then I can see it being cost-effective to try and have customers self-schedule but it seems for a single barber that they'd have to be very up-market to make it worth while. Would you go to a worse barber so you can schedule online instead of by phone? Would you pay more, how much, to be able to schedule online? Personally if I use a barber's it's a simple drop-in service. [Any suggestions for an appointments booking system to check out?]

exodust 13y ago

There's no reason a creative developer couldn't foresee the barber's predicament without speaking with the barber. Patiently visualised, devised imagined scenarios. Phone rings, barber says "excuse me" to his client and walks over to the phone. But does he put the comb down first? Perhaps. Barbers have trays handy, but they might walk around, tools in hand. (This is obvious, and doesn't take research to imagine.) The phone needs to be next to the computer - no screen savers, the scheduling software always on, with clear and large fonts, minimal clutter (generally good interface design anyway). Think "high quality app design", not "looks like Excel". A beautifully designed interface that would impress the barber if demonstrated. Custom default views and all that. It's ok to start from the blue sky and work down to the reality instead of working up from "what the barber likes with his paper calendars". Which isn't the wrong way, but could skew the potential. Top down isn't wrong, if you've done your visualising! Not that research and getting out into the world isn't valuable. (obvious). I'd probably take a look at the book anyway... sounds ok.

ludovicurbain 13y ago

Well, Justin, I would have sold your barber a wonderful web application that he would have accessed using a touchscreen TV, just as he did his old paper calendar, but with better faster interaction AND a complete merge of his web and non-web appointment management enabling a successful transition to the modern age of nobody phoning in for a haircut. But then, that may just be because I have some rough idea of what can be done with technology.

GrinningFool 13y ago

Ah, there. Another programmer matures, having the same epiphany that every other decent programmer does at some point in his career. Welcome to [career] adulthood, it's nice of you to finally join us :)

ballard 13y ago

If the business is risky (which is probably is), use safer tech choices. If the business seems boring, use a few extra bleeding edge solutions to engage us technical folks.

dclara 13y ago

Working with software product companies, we always debated on the product is "technology driven" or "market driven". Back to the days of using EJB, often times we were technology drive (not all). That's why we have product team and product manager to work out the requirements before the development team start to prototype and implement. For startup companies, this kind of process may seem too luxury in the early stage, we called it "discover" stage. Once we define the target market and learn the customer needs, we will build the most compelling features first. We listen, but not tight to specific customer needs, because we know the direction we want to build, and gradually lead the customers toward that end product. For any new product, customer friction is always there very naturally. That's why we need marketing and sales team to remove the friction. It's a lot easy to say than to do.

nicolax 13y ago

I wonder why this is a new topic then. Isn't it pretty established in either Lean Startup or Design Thinking that when building product, we should talk to/interview/research the people who will be using it? Especially in Design Thinking, it's required to do needfinding, which is talking to the barber in this case. And solutions in the brainstorming stage are certainly not confined within software. We just need to be constantly reminded that our perception and reasoning about the world is subjective and often conscious. As designers, or product builders, we should be willing to understand other people's reasoning, putting aside ours.

NameNickHN 13y ago

What the barber shop owner doesn't realize is that an appointment scheduling software is supposed to reduce phone calls which would decrease the workload of the staff. Also, what if I want to schedule an appointment when the shop is closed?

ta_tatata 13y ago

There are no normal people. By definition normal people do not exist in the world. With the title and point of the article being formulated in a way showing a lack of understanding of the matter, it is doubtful the rest of the post is any better.

vickytnz 13y ago

Or as usability people say: "you are not your user".