Years ago, before we had talked to any users, my team and I were asked to build a system that unified multiple types of ordering. On paper, it looked great. Instead of having to go through an order flow and checkout multiple times, now all types of products were displayed together. Easy, right?
Keyboards clack, sparks fly, and a new solution is off to conquer the world!
What I did not know was that the users would rarely set out to put in a mixed order - it is usually one or another type. Our “upgrade” was in reality an annoying downgrade. Now, they had to navigate through a jumble of all sorts of items. Even years down the line, we are still receiving requests to undo this “innovation” of ours.
The tech is new and shiny, but the shortcomings of this development-first approach are just as present as ever: developing a tool in a vacuum results in more solutions, not less problems.
All I should have done was to observe the context: in the vast majority of situations, users only do one type of ordering. If I realised this in time, we could have built a fraction of what we built, and served our users better. Instead, we created a solution to a problem that did not exist - and forced it on our users.
Solutions to problems start not with a blank screen and palette of vib(e)rant colours. They are found in the negative spaces between ideas, interests, and priorities. Sketching out the context first is the way to see where the gaps are - and in those gaps is where the solutions live.
Now, I prioritise talking to our users; talking through their work, observing their habits, listening to their pain points. It is only in the gaps of this sketch that we build our solutions.
Compared to two years ago, support tickets are down about half, testing takes hours instead of weeks, no routine re-development of features once they go live. Our users feel that their tools fit their needs, instead of them having to fight them. While our new work is much improved, we are still working on fixing our “innovation”.
So start with the people in the room, not the empty page. Sketch out the context, and build the solution in the gaps.