The meme that just won't die
By now, we've dispelled the "faster horse" myth once and for all. No longer will we utter this quote, nor will we allow others to do so in our presence, without sharing with them why it's short sighted and wrong. We are also in a better position to correct them because we are thinking with a UX mindset that will guide us to better solutions, right? There is, however, one problem. As I stated earlier, Ford's supposed "faster horse" quote is not the only one of its kind.
"We built [the Mac] for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research." | ||
| --Steve Jobs | ||
Oh no. Here we go again! Let's put a stop to it right now with this: Steve Jobs did not ignore his customers! In fact, Jobs listened intensely to them.
"Really great products come from melding two points of view—the technology point of view and the customer point of view. You need both…It takes a long time to pull out of customers what they really want, and it takes a long time to pull out of technology what it can really give." | ||
| --An interview with Steven Jobs, Inc.'s Entrepreneur of the Decade, by Bo Burlingham. | ||
As we mentioned earlier, listening is key, and interpreting what is said is even more important. To put it another way, don't provide your customers with a more comfortable way of standing when sitting is preferred, and don't provide them with a faster horse when an affordable automobile makes more sense. Good design is not about assuming the truth. Good design is about knowing is the truth based on research, testing and more testing to validate your assumptions and then to compare the data. Only then will you prove that your design truly makes a difference.
