I thought a user-centered approach was going to benefit the users of my product. And then I realized how much users have given me back in the process. This presentation focuses on three ways in which users have made my life better, by giving me (at least) three gifts:
- The gift of building solid roadmaps
- The gift of teaching efficiently
- The gift of working in a happy team
The gift of building solid roadmaps
A product is a living organism that can choose to develop in different ways. At times, it may seem difficult to make the right decisions and stir the product in the right direction. However, with users’ help, we can gather enough reasons to say “yes” or “no” to different possibilities and we can build the most valuable roadmaps for our products. This section deals with techniques for generating, validating and prioritizing new features, in which our users play the most important part.
The gift of teaching efficiently
No two users are the same. Each user has a different scenario, a different goal, a different set of technical skills, a different level of experience with a product. When we take the time to really understand users, we not only become better at building interfaces, writing documentation or answering support requests, but also learn to ask the right questions and to find the shortest and clearest way from point A to point B.
The gift of working in a happy team
A happy and healthy team is a team that finds meaning in its work and is enthusiastic about it. Simply giving tasks without a context harms motivation and, consequently, performance. When, at my company, we started investing time into just talking about our users’ businesses and goals, the entire team – irrespective of their role – got more passionate about our work. Everybody wanted to help the user succeed and, because of that, the team became more united, productive and proactive.