What user needs!
What user needs, is the million dollar question we Experience Designer tries to answer. There are many practices let alone methodologies we use to answer this question. And it’s also one of the many reasons why industry is disrupting, the way they used to work.
The relevance of this fact is unquestionable. Its simple logic, give your users what they want! If not, they will try other means of accomplishing the tasks. But, instead of going all out on the current industry trends on user research and how it affects the way we operate, let’s see a simple example of ever evolving user need.
Let’s consider Google Search, the first successful product of Alphabet Inc. It all started in 1998 when they where creating a search engine for web, based on PageRankalgorithm by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was precisely the right time too, as the century saw an explosion in the number of websites.
There were a lot of data in the web. And, to find the required information from the chaos was difficult for users. That need in-turn paved way for Google.com.
Google succeeded in letting users filter the content and get information out of the whole data pool. It gained high popularity as it was simple to use and very effective in getting the work done. Compared to Yahoo, which also had a search bar to query information from web(along with so many other gimmicks), Google stood out as it focused on one task(to find the relevant web page)without distracting users.
But, in September 11, 2001 Google failed their users! There was a new requirement, people wanted to know what happened to New York Twin Towers. They wanted to learn about the tragedy that happened. But as google.com scrolls their index a month earlier, the search result had no relevant content.
And that was a defining moment in product’s evolution. Being just a search engine, they could have limited themselves to filtering the web content. But they didn’t! Their vision was to bring people the most relevant content for their search. In this case live information on the incident as that happened. They acted upon the vision and added live news scrolls along with the search result.
As years passed by, the need of users also evolved. People started to perceive Google.com as a single stop to all their needs. Company later introduced Universal Search which, returned users targeted results along with the web links. Regardless of type of content, google provided appropriate search results.
Google has then tracked more user needs and introduced new features to accommodate those needs. Some of them are:
- Google Instant(results are displayed during the typing process)
- Google Suggest(search terms are predicted and offered in real time)
- Improved interpretation of search queries
- Advanced search
- Alternative suggestions
- Auto correct for spelling mistake and typos
- Inclusion of synonyms
Google managed to include all these features at the right time and elevated the experience.
What users need is an ever evolving fact. People operate in different circumstances and their needs vary. It upto the product to track the ever evolving need and address it in a timely manner. That way they retain the users and grow themselves.
But there is a catch, when it comes to adding new features! Google added all those features in consistency with the main task user intended to do. Not as a distraction for users and stopping them from getting the main job done. That is the key for their success. Accentuate the existing flow by adding more features as and when user desires.
As Don Norman says “ User-centered design means working with your users all throughout the project.”.
Let’s think of how best we can make this into practice!
