How Not Listening to Your Users Creates a Better App
When I uploaded my first ever webpage to the infamous Geocities back in 1997, I was probably the first child in my hometown to own a virtual space on the World Wide Web. The sense of excitement was so profound that I began promoting it to my friends and family members just to get some feedback on it. But there was a problem. More than half of them did not have Internet access and they could not even imagine how my simple webpage look like. Those who managed to access my webpage gave good comments, simply because it was done by young kid.
Unsurprisingly, the same situation happened again when I first mooted the idea of developing a mobile application that can potentially change the way language learners learn vocabulary. The idea came to me while I was explaining the meaning of a word to my student through text messaging right before I went to sleep at about midnight. That eureka moment caused me to be awake for at least a few more hours as I started drawing mind maps and flow charts on my notepad. Having been in academia and involved in research activities, I initiated the app development journey in a more structured manner. The next morning, I asked about 5 of my students to stay back after class and I started a focus group interview, which is one of the “must-dos” in gathering user inputs particularly concerning usability. However, the session took less than 10 minutes not because my students did not give any feedback, but because I was overwhelmed with the countless comments that they gave until I decided to stop the interview.
In less than 10 minutes, I had a list of at least 60 user expectations on what they wanted or needed in a vocabulary learning app. More than half of those expectations were not even close to what I wanted to do, simply because the students were drawing their experiences from the existing apps that they had been using. Some cited existing app as the benchmark in which I needed to follow. It was right at that moment, I remembered the famous quote from Steve Jobs, “it’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want”. True enough. Users would not have known they can navigate easily using GPS or engage in group messaging until such things existed. And so, I stopped listening to users. But I observed what they regularly do. When they do not know a word, chances are they will either ask a friend or look for a visual representation of it. Hence, my first app was created to fit this habit, making vocabulary learning more sociable and visualized. LexiMinds subsequently won Gold Medal at the Seoul International Invention Fair (SIIF) in 2013.
In order to allow creative and innovative applications to be designed and developed, somehow we need stop listening to the users but start sampling their experience. Users do not really care how an app works, but once they find a way to use it, they are most likely to stick to it. So, as a developer, we should not pay too much attention to the nasty complaints you get for your application, instead pay attention on how the users are using your application and then try to improve.
And most importantly, remember that the app is never really a final version. Constant fine-tuning and iterating is a must to create an app that enhances user experience and ultimately their satisfaction.
