It Matters Who You Ask

Dare Obasanjo had an interesting post a few weeks ago that included a link to an old Slashdot article discussing a preview of the iPod, where the reviewer called the iPod "lame."

We all know now that the iPod is not categorically "lame."  But I wonder if the product designers read the post at the time (got to believe they did) and what they thought about it.  This made me think about one of the classic dilemmas in all product design and enhancement:  which feedback should you listen to, and which should you ignore?

I found a great analogy in a book I just finished reading by William Gibson called Idoru.  I'm an avowed Gibson fan -- he's the author of the breakthrough cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, he's credited with the inventing the term "cyberspace," he's the godfather of the Matrix and many other movies. 

Idoru is the story of a mega rock star who wants to marry a synthetic software celebrity (the idoru).  One of the main characters is Colin Laney, who due to drug experimentation in the past has developed a neural, almost psychic skill to tap into large streams of data and quickly sense the most telling bits.  He says he can find the "nodal points" in the data.  The American Heritage dictionary defines nodal as "of, relating to, resembling, being, or situated near or at a node."   In other words, Laney was able to find the meaningful clusters within the data, and to derive understanding from those clusters.

That's essentially what a product designer needs to do.  One way or another, if the product is made available to other humans, you will get feedback, invited or not.  This feedback is data whether it's recorded formally (in a spreadsheet for instance) or just informally (in your memory).  The gifted designer must learn to intuitively sense, identify and act upon the meaningful clusters, or "nodal points," from that feedback so they can improve the product design.

But there's one huge caveat:  it matters who you ask.   If the iPod designers had asked the Slashdot author to help them improve the iPod design, that probably would have been a huge mistake (at least for the financial success of the iPod).  And if the designers had asked a hundred or thousand people like that Slashdot author for their opinion, there would have been clusters of data around some possibly bad ideas.

So whether dealing with customers or just people off the street, it's important to remember that not everyone's opinion should be treated equally.  The product designer needs to find the nodal points that actually connect to where they want to take the product, to the audience they want to reach.  This doesn't mean that we should only seek feedback from people who match our target customer profile, but instead it means that the designer must be able to decide which feedback will be relevant for target customers.  If you're not sure, incorporate the feedback in a prototype and then test that with some target customers.  But it's not a science, it's an art, and like Laney the best designers have an innate sense of where they want to take a product and who to ask for feedback to help them get there.