Customer insights

People in the wild

What do your customers want? What do your users need? Rather than going with assumptions based on what you think, get up out of your chair, get outside, and test those assumptions with your customers in the wild. Experience what life is like on the shop floor, in the branch. Talk to customers. Look for problems that people have today, identify the sticking plaster and chewing gum they hold solutions together with, and work these ideas with them to come up with something better.

You are (probably) not your customer

Unless you’re building a tool that meets your own specific needs, you are rarely a representative customer/user of the system you are designing. New users will be beginners, but when you’re immersed in the detail it’s hard to think like a beginner. We’ve seen developers get overly possessive and defensive about the way they’ve implemented a feature. It’s an eye-opening experience for them when they see a user struggling to complete a task that they thought was so clear and obvious.