Being Good vs Being Perfect
In order for human centered designs to work, you need humans to use the product.
June 28, 2020
When digital products first enter the market—those that actually “make it”—they aren’t usually perfect. They’re good, but they launch with intentions to listen to their users and update accordingly in response.
That stops some folks in their tracks. How could you let your product go out into the world with imperfections? Wonderly founder and Bella Scena creator, Amber Christian, gave us some insight on how letting the beta go to market actually enhanced the overall product in later versions.
In order for human centered designs to work, you need humans to use the product.
In order for human centered designs to work, you need humans to use the product. They need to fall in love with features and they need to express when the product isn’t functioning in a way that helps them. While rounds of iterative design sprints can result in a great outcome, there are a lot of unknowns about how the application will be used until it reaches its audience.
Christian spoke of a conversation that changed how Bella Scena addressed overwhelming number of todos. “A chat with a user that revealed our initial idea for a todo list presented some challenges. We had customers adding a todo by one todo. This wasn’t helpful when someone was already overwhelmed. Understanding that immediate relief was needed led to the Deep Breath feature and the ability to add multiple todos at one time.” Could the team have discovered the insight before the product was launched? Probably not.
Practicing active listening and engaging customers before adding features keeps Bella Scena advancing as a product. With user feedback, we’re able to form better concepts on how to improve the user’s journey and understand how we can make the customer’s life easier.
