Why Extreme Users Are an Innovator’s Best Friends

Tradition tells us they are a company’s worst nightmare: the complainers, the haters, the ‘I’ve never heard of you’ set. Yet in the context of human-centered design, learning to embrace and be inspired by those on the extreme ends of our user spectrum unlocks enormous opportunity to create standout offerings in a competitive marketplace.

Let’s imagine any typical product or service — a kitchen appliance for example. A traditional approach to design would dictate that in improving the appliance, the designer would listen primarily to the feedback of its mainstream users — or those who use that appliance on a regular basis. While there is nothing overtly wrong with this method, solely following the lead of mainstream users can stagnate the imagination and freeze innovation in a place of ‘good enough’ where ‘great’ is the ultimate target.

In leveraging the value of extreme users, it is important to remember that many of them will have exaggerated needs — needs that when expressed, can help us to stretch our imaginations beyond the atypical or easily foreseeable. In the context of our kitchen appliance, we might begin to observe the way that product is used by someone who rarely, if ever, cooks their own meals. Where the typical design process might have relied on pre-existing knowledge of that product-type, removing cooking-savvy from the equation could allow for more opportunities within the design itself.

Another significant that our extreme users bring is their ability to find creative workaround solutions — or hack, if you will — for the challenges they encounter with your existing product or service. This is why paying close attention to complaints or frustrations of the early adopters of new products and services is crucial, as it is this subset of your user population who might find alternative solutions to any issues that might arise.

What’s more, is that extreme users are traditionally much more willing to share their experiences freely — we need only pay a quick visit to the 1-star reviews on Yelp to witness this openness firsthand.

It’s important to note that once these extreme users have been identified, designing specifically for them is not the primary objective. Rather, they should be used as a source of inspiration as you strive to refine, reshape and better your product or service — and as a means to foresee the circumstances, scenarios and situations that could arise from its use.

In the spirit of extreme inspiration, here are three examples of times that the feedback of these atypical users led to the betterment of a product or service or the creation of a new and dynamic one.

Creation of the Hashtag

One of the most famous and timely examples of extreme usership and innovation comes from the early days of Twitter, when user Chris Messina felt the platform lacked topical organization. He began to write posts and blogs suggesting his fellow users use the pound symbol as a way to categorize topics. Originally the Twitter team wasn’t sold on this idea, with co-founders telling Chris that hashtags were too nerdy to go mainstream. Yet the user persisted with his workaround, and eventually it caught on. The hashtag is now an essential feature of Twitter and has been adopted across all social media platforms, all at the prompting of one extreme user.

Invention of the Typewriter

Great innovators have benefited from extreme users throughout history. Take for example the case of 19th century Italian inventor Pellegrino Turi. Observing the difficulty that his visually impaired had with writing letters by hand, Turi was inspired to create a workaround that would help her to convey her messages more efficiently and legibly. The solution came in the form of the typewriter, which has inspired every computer keyboard design since. Here we have a perfect example the way that empathizing with a user’s specific point of frustration can inspire dynamic and groundbreaking design.

Michael Tubb’s City Council Campaign

Michael Tubbs has served as Stockton, California’s youngest mayor and the city’s first African-American mayor since taking office in January 2017. A former student of the Stanford d. School, Tubb has acknowledged using extreme users to guide the messaging that saw his successful run for city council, which he discusses in a lecture series called Stanford eCorner. Tubb explains that experts had advised him multiple times to “only speak to people who vote”, yet they were inspired to begin with their extreme users — or the poorest development in the city where people were prone to not voting. He explains that in speaking with these individuals about their hopes and aspirations, he and his team were able to refine their goals and campaign messaging, and in doing so, inspired many who may not have been inclined to vote before to do so — and to do so for him.

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