How the New York Subway Reinforced a Simple Secret of Product Design: Understand What People Value
As I was strolling through the New York Subway earlier this week—I think the 42nd Street/Times Square station—I was moved by this advertisement.
Seen in the New York Subway
As someone in the business of building online services, essentially my job is to build stuff that meet people’s needs.
Often, small, subtle and non-verbal interactions are the cues that allow people to understand the needs of others. Yet, unlike an ordinary store, those of us working online don’t get the opportunity to interact with our customers very often. The result is that we end up making a lot of assumptions about what we think our users want, need and value. And we’ve all heard the expression about what assuming makes out of you and me?
The bottom line is that this message touched me so strongly because, for those working in the online space, it reinforced the importance of user research and understanding.
For example, today at Cheezburger, we were considering an update to the navigation on one of our sites. It felt like too many our insights were based on personal experience, anecdotal data, and assumption. Yes: there is room in product design for instinct, however far too often we actually don’t really know what our users, customers and communities value.
As the ad says, we can only meet people’s needs by understanding what they value. We have big plans for Cheezburger in the coming year, and my hope is that we will put extra effort at understanding our community’s values in order to better serve their needs.
