I’ve asked myself this questions many times and at various companies I’ve worked for. I’ve helped build software with little to no consideration for the users. But at my current company I’m going out of my way to speak up for the users. Sometimes it goes over well and othertimes not so well. But it won’t stop me because we will go out of business if we don’t create products and services with the user in mind.
Kathy Sierra’s post just nails it home in her usual concise manner:
“If I attend one more tech company meeting where NOBODY talks about the users/customers (or at least not a positive one), I’m throwing myself out the window of this trailer. Think long and hard right now about some of the company meetings you’ve attended where the entire effen meeting is about everything but what’s good for the users. We talk about deliverables and budgets and TPS reports and why we all need to help keep the refrigerator clean and how “upper management” has a new policy and why filling out those timesheets really helps the company and how we didn’t make our numbers last quarter and how somebody is taking more than their share on Bagel Morning Wednesdays and, oh yeah, don’t forget the team-building workshop next Tuesday. Until talking about the users/customers/members/clients becomes the most important thing, we’re going nowhere good”
So this begs the question: Who at your company is going to bat for your users? If you can’t think of anyone, your company could be in trouble.
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