There’s an interesting article in the automotive section of the New York Times. It talks about how the Ford Motor Company creates fictional personalities which detail a “typical” end-user for an automobile they hope to design – and then they design the vehicle around that end-user. Ford came up with the process because they found that car designers were designing cars that they themselves would like.
“Invented characters get everyone on the same page,” Mr. Callum said. “Personalizing gives context to the information we have. Sometimes the target demographics are difficult to relate to by, say, a 35-year-old male designer.
“We found in the past that if they didn’t understand the buyer, designers would just go off and design something for themselves,” he added.
One of the interesting things about that broad range of categories we call “IT” – network architecture, software development, even the first couple of days you work tech support – it’s a lot easier to design technology for yourself than for someone else – the intended user – who can’t always articulate what they want or need.
This is perhaps most evident in the user interface for open-source programs. Not to say that open-source programs are bad or anything, but an open-source developer coding an app primarily for his own needs might very well code a console app, or an app with a confusing UI – it doesn’t matter to the developer however, as he knows that he’s designing it only for himself. Even when taken to a broader audience, developers often code for other developers.
We’ve mentioned before that we try to design our products with multiple audiencesin mind – with executive level reporting but an ability to drill down into the details for the network engineer on the front lines, for example. But the NYT article got me thinking about something else – and that is, do network architects design networks with the end-user in mind? Or do they design networks for network architects?
After all, the network for a development house has different needs for a network for an accounting firm, which also has different needs than a network for a video production facility. Should we be thinking more along the lines of designing the network around the business need, rather than adapting a generic network to the business need?
Food for thought.
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