Posts Tagged ‘Attending College’
February 5th, 2010 | 
Author: Artist and illustrator Nick Dewar passed away this week. He worked for many different companies from The Atlantic Monthly to Random House, providing insightful illustrations to the interesting words in an article or book. My favorite Nick Dewar work illustrates both my professional and personal philosophy:
Simplicity is the key to successful living.
This is a more professional and eloquent rephrasing of the time tested K.I.S.S. method:
No, not that KISS -
The K.I.S.S. principle – “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
These are both modern interpretations of Occam’s Razor, which states “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or more generally, “the simplest strategy tends to be the best one.”
So why am I telling you this? Why am I dragging a 14th Century philosopher, Ace Frehley, and a newly deceased Scotsman onto a blog? Because in our fast-paced, high-tech, always-on society, we forget about trying to solve problems with simple solutions. Too often everyone is looking for a new technology or a new way to solve a problem when we can use simpler solutions that require little cost and provide better long-term benefits.
This philosophy speaks to features of products as well. Just because your product has more features does not mean it will meet the needs of your customers. If you don’t feel confident in your understanding of your customers’ needs, you have a larger, more fundamental problem than which features to implement. You need to better understand your users, your customers, and yourself. Don’t just treat the symptoms. Keep it simple, and find out what is really going on. And remember -
Simplicity is the key to successful living.
Oh, and also remember that KISS is pretty sweet too!
This post was written by Travis Smith
Travis was born and raised in a far off land called Nebraska, and after attending college in Missouri, he completed his MBA and Masters of Social Psychology at Ball State University. Travis has been many things, including a cameraman, tutor, disc jockey, underwriting salesman, barista, a nomadic tourist, librarian, sandwich artist, office manager, researcher, research subject, HR lackey, and project manager, all of which have prepared him for the role of User Experience Analyst. At Tuitive, he is in charge of user research, user testing, user modeling, requirements gathering, and keeping the human in human centered design.
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Posted in Blogging | 
Tags: 14th Century, Ace Frehley, Attending College, Ball State University, Different Companies, Fundamental Problem, Illustrator, Interesting Words, New Technology, Nick Dewar, Personal Philosophy, Philosopher, Random House, Razor, Rephrasing, Scotsman, Simple Solutions, Simplicity, Social Psychology, Travis Smith | 
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If you are an expert in your business, you know more than almost anyone about what you do and about the details of your product. Your product, by the way, can be a service, a website, or a tangible good. Whatever constitutes your product, you can likely see your expertise and genius in every part of it. The problem is … your customers can’t.
Customers need to complete a task with your product so they can move on to other tasks they need to complete. All your customers see in your product is a tool to help them accomplish a goal.
In order to make a successful product, you need to understand who uses the product and why they are using it. You also have to accept that the product is not being created primarily for you.
How to you find out what your customers want?
- Ask them … no seriously, it is that easy.
- Watch customers use your product. Record any problems they have and what type of information they expect to see in your product.
- Test out new features, functionally, and design. Customers love giving feedback, and they will have a better user experience in the future because they feel like they helped make the new product better.
Learning what your customers want does not have to be fancy, expensive, or time consuming.
Remember, you are the expert, but your customers aren’t.
Give them what you think they need, and they will go somewhere else.
Give them what they actually need, and they will love you for it.
This post was written by Travis Smith
Travis was born and raised in a far off land called Nebraska, and after attending college in Missouri, he completed his MBA and Masters of Social Psychology at Ball State University. Travis has been many things, including a cameraman, tutor, disc jockey, underwriting salesman, barista, a nomadic tourist, librarian, sandwich artist, office manager, researcher, research subject, HR lackey, and project manager, all of which have prepared him for the role of User Experience Analyst. At Tuitive, he is in charge of user research, user testing, user modeling, requirements gathering, and keeping the human in human centered design.
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Tags: Attending College, Ball State University, Design Customers, Disc Jockey, Genius, Giving Feedback, Lackey, Librarian, Many Things, Masters, Mba, New Features, Product Test, Research Subject, Researcher, Sandwich Artist, Social Psychology, Travis Smith, Tutor, User Experience |
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