Users Don’t Matter
In his post on Friday titled The Most Frustrating Thing, Matt Mullenweg says,
” Technology doesn’t matter. Design doesn’t matter. ”
He leads this toward the current clarion call that users and usability matters, and then goes on to add that while all 3 are important, they aren’t going far enough beyond the superficial to reach the heart of what matters.
Upon first reading this post, I automatically added to his words:
Technology doesn’t matter. Design doesn’t matter. Users don’t matter.
This is not, as it appears, contrary to everything I’ve said and believe about needing more focus on users in web development. I’m still a big Kathy Sierra fan and not just because I love her new office.
How can users not matter? Exactly the same way that technology and design don’t in the view Matt proposed.
Analogize it all to the real world. Our physical constructs are technology, from buildings to roads to services such as electricity. They have no purpose by themselves without context and use. The way we lay them out to be navigable and decorate them to look pleasing similarly has no purpose by itself. Now picture a billion people. They are sitting or standing or milling around in or through those places and pathways. Their existence, in itself, has no particular meaning.
The conclusion to draw from this is what matters is context and relationships, but that isn’t much use in actually understanding how to participate and build and make things better, so I’ll take it further to personal analogy.
People don’t matter. What they do matters.
Every single thing you do tells me who you are and that is why I recognize that I like or love you.
Things you do tell me whether and how much I can trust you.
How you do things tells me how you think and which things you choose to do or not do tells me a lot about what you believe in.
How you decide to dress and present yourself, what you order in a restaurant, and how you prefer to pay for it, all these things tell me about you, and if I like or am attracted to you, or even if my interest is just based on the fact that you have something I want, watching what you do and how will teach me how to get closer to you, or get something from you or to give something to you.
Even the words you speak, which do have meaning (hopefully), can’t guide my understanding of you by themselves and out of context.
Your behavior can draw me in or repel me.
The last statement works both ways. What we do here will draw people in or repel them as well.
I think that what we, who are developers, users, and potential users, need to do is stop trying to guess what people might want. Asking people what they want isn’t much better either. Knowing who they are and what lights their fire and what gets them out of their chair and out the door, or running to turn their computer on first thing when they come back in, is what matters. What we do is a roadmap to what we want.
So it isn’t your existence that makes me care about you. It is how we can interact, what we do, including for each other or even third parties. It holds true across the gamut from pure personal selfishness to common good and morality. I care about a stranger called Kevin Poulsen because he did something to protect our children.
What I did, and what I wanted, and what I cared about yesterday isn’t necessarily exactly the same today. Maybe that’s because I met you.
