Your customers deserve better
If more organisations on the web aimed at improving the web for its human inhabitants, we would do things a little differently, and better.
I can’t say exactly when, why or how, but at some point the web collectively shut its eye to the fact that humans are using it. We got too preoccupied with the inner mechanics of the machine world. Its cogs and wheels. Maybe we got too mesmerised with the potential and possibilities of the virtual reality. The promise of being able to move fast and break things, as a means to improving. Either way, we, the makers of the web lost touch with the fact that on the other end of our creations sits a human being, struggling with using and understanding the digital applications we’ve built for them. In many ways we are as kings in our digital castle, incapable of understanding the needs outside the walls.
We’ve slowly created abstract terms and concepts to describe the humans using our system and their tasks. All the promises of the web and digitalisation will remain unfulfilled if we don’t reconnect with the human factor of our users.
Remain true to your purpose
We think that Task Analytics exists because your customers deserve better. It’s not that our customers don’t know how to do their job, it’s just that the bar should be higher and the current ecosystem of the web isn’t really giving you any helping hands. We are not here to give you flying cars or jetpacks, but that doesn’t mean our goal is not ambitious! The first sad fact is that making great user experiences in digital products is a lot of hard work. There really is no silver bullet to replace effort and time. The second sad fact is that most builders for the web are either too busy navel gazing or hardwired to not understand their customers side of the dice. A handful of common knowledge goes a long way:
- Talk to your users
- Listen to your users
- Involve your users
- Work methodically
- Experiment
You need to free yourself from the navel gazing approach of trying to dictate your users. Don’t be a schemer plotting user behaviour as if you were playing risk instead of dealing with human beings. Put down that plan for marketing push for a moment and focus.
Remember those pesky humans?
We’ve done a great deal to factor our the human part of the web. Even in this text I use the word user all the time, furthering the disconnect to the human behind the screen. We don’t talk about her or him when we discuss our customers. We never talk about the girl or the woman that is using our system. Instead we talk about users and sessions. We talk about sessions bouncing instead of Jane failing to book the room.
We (still) don’t have robots with AI walking the earth, so you’ll do well to remember that those users you refer to are actual human beings, spending their highly finite time using your application. Every single of them deserve to be taken seriously. They deserve that you listen to them and treat them as more than a number. There’s a hell-of-a-lot of talk about User Experience in the same breath as bounce rates and customer acquisition funnels. Maybe we should rename it Human User Experience to make the fact that we’re dealing with humans actually stick.
As a technologist I understand how painful dealing with humans can be though. I fully understand how much this bandaid will hurt when you try to rip it off. Because listening to humans will give you a lot hard-to-decode input, and it will give you a lot of input you didn’t ask for. It won’t be as easy to summarise onto a dashboard as inhuman web analytics.
The devil lies in the details
Any system can simultaneously be viewed at the macro level as well as the micro level. The macro level that the web and its many organisations are so focused on is great for understanding emergent patterns and discovering trends as well as deviations in its regular patterns. However its the micro level that should be your bread and butter. You don’t create a great human experience without diving in and getting first-hand reports from the field.
In order to create useful applications and systems that are enjoyed by your customers you need to keep them pleased. You need to respect your customers time and desires. You need to listen to them and keep a conversation — not just a monolog. I want you to ask yourself two questions.
- What is our purpose?
- Are we talking and listening to our customers about it?
Follow us towards a more human friendly web
