the importance of pain in user-focused design
Organizations don’t adopt user-focused design for their web site(s), applications or products because they think it’s a neat idea. They do it because they’re desperate for a way to differentiate themselves in the marketplace or they’re in acute pain from short-sighted decisions made in the past, decisions made without any real understanding of a site, application or product’s actual users.
My philosophy these days is that when the pain finally becomes unbearable, organizations intent on survival will come running into the arms of people like us, folks who have spent long years engaged with this strange craft called user experience design. Organizations that don’t - in most industries, and in most circumstances - will likely perish.
Ask Apple’s competitors in the portable-music-player space whether or not user-friendly design makes any difference in the marketplace, even a marketplace as traditionally open to mysterious or goofy design as consumer electronics.
3 years ago