The motivation behind writing this post is how “User Experience Design” can help a business to achieve its objectives and potential. If I have to explain UX design to business owner then I would start with mistakes made in software development, share my personal experiences and how to avoid them. This will help business owner to make right decisions.

Why do Startups fail?

Let’s start with failures, why do so many new business ideas fail to make it to the market. I would listen to an expert like Paul Graham.

Paul is founder of YCombinator which is an incubator and resulted in startups like Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox and lot more.

“There’s just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you’ll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don’t do. And if you don’t make something users want, then you’re dead, whatever else you do or don’t do.”

This leads to the question of how can startups make something that user desires. If we have to answer this question than I would think more about the problem than the solution.

Obstructions in creating a Desirable Product

My number one Obstruction : Engineering. More than Engineering its the mindset issue. I will focus on why it’s a devil because our society has been conditioned to invest in engineering. We have heavily relied on engineers to build businesses. In engineering what gets taught is technology i.e. Microprocessors, RAM. There is nothing wrong in understanding in’s and outs of Computer but what is not taught in an engineering curriculum is the human aspect of computing. This aspect covers are you building something that customer wants? Have you tested your assumption before building a software solution?

With the basics missing when an engineering talent joins an organisation they will think in a reverse way i.e. how much RAM I need, how much processing is required, which programming language is better. I have seen technical discussions and meetings going for and endless number of hours. There is endless amount of hours burnt discussing Python is better over Java, AWS cloud is better than Azure and lot more.

Now even VC’s know this fact and are extremely cautious about funding. They are aware that after funding, people will sit in meeting rooms and nothing productive will come out of those meetings. They also want to fund people who are smart. Smartness in this case is being crazy enough to be customer obsessive.

The reason why Amazon is so successful because they have minimised steps to checkout, they have made it very simple. The reason why Craigslist is so successful because it’s such a simple website no jazzy user interface or glittering design.

Are such things taught in Engineering Curriculum?

If one has to start building a business than start with people who are crazy about customers. I call it building a customer obsessive culture. People who are crazy about customers: What are the habits of my customer? Where do they live? How does there life look like?

A tech company is conditioned to think from the perspective of what technology can offer not what the user wants. Steve Jobs has clearly reasoned success behind Apple:

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where can I sell it.

Steve Jobs

Cost Of Mistakes made during Software Development

If a business has built a product that customer doesn’t want than it could result in following:

1. Another iteration of the product

2. Failure of the company or product.

Imagine you have built a product based on your gut feeling and you launched it, it comes in hands of customer and no one understands it. Or it could be there is no need for such a product. You have wasted development cycles, money and time.

In the history of product development there are not one but several instances of this, I call this as heroism. The cost of failing is high.

How to build a Company with roots in User Experience?

Picture above is the abstraction of what a business desires:

It is the relationship of Desirability, Viability and Feasibility that creates sweet spot for a business.

1. Desirability - Having pleasing qualities or properties.

Are we creating a product solution that anyone needs?

What is the unique value proposition?

2. Viability - The ability to live, grow and develop.

Can we build a sustainable business?

3. Feasibility - Capable of being done or carried out.

Will the product work?

Can we see it in real in near future?

To put it simple words one may have a desire to travel to Europe for vacation. In order to fulfil this desire we need Money and Carrier (aeroplane/ship). Carrier covers the Feasibility aspect and its the money which makes the trip Viable.

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For a business to be successful all the pieces have to work in harmony i.e. Value Proposition, Pricing, Financial model etc.

This leaves us with the question how do we start from customer experience and work backwards to create product with sweet spot in our mind?

Will cover this as part of my next blog post.

References

1. From Prototype to Product: Ensuring Your Solution is Feasible and Viable
2. How to Prototype a new Business