Re:Why Design Thinking Works
by TheOtherHobbes on Monday December 17, 2018 @01:36AM
(#18697287)
No, it's not plain old thinking then.
Far too much software has almost no concept of user empathy.
Example: yesterday I installed a new webcam. I was supposed to use a captcha to create a new account, and the captcha kept not working.
After roughly half an hour of searching I discovered that the captcha didn't work in Europe, but it did work if you set the locale to US.
Coincidentally, charges for the webcam cloud backup are much higher in the US.
Did a manager decide to ban the EU and force everyone to use the US pricing? Did they tell the developers to make the change as quickly as possible? Did the developers and the sales team forget to inform users? Did something go wrong somewhere else?
Who knows? As with many products, the user experience was irritatingly hostile and irrational, and the result was a firestorm of one star reviews on the App Store and Amazon.
I have no idea if design thinking could have fixed this problem, but more empathy, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail from the industry as a whole can't possibly be a bad thing.
Far too much software has almost no concept of user empathy.
Example: yesterday I installed a new webcam. I was supposed to use a captcha to create a new account, and the captcha kept not working.
After roughly half an hour of searching I discovered that the captcha didn't work in Europe, but it did work if you set the locale to US.
Coincidentally, charges for the webcam cloud backup are much higher in the US.
Did a manager decide to ban the EU and force everyone to use the US pricing? Did they tell the developers to make the change as quickly as possible? Did the developers and the sales team forget to inform users? Did something go wrong somewhere else?
Who knows? As with many products, the user experience was irritatingly hostile and irrational, and the result was a firestorm of one star reviews on the App Store and Amazon.
I have no idea if design thinking could have fixed this problem, but more empathy, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail from the industry as a whole can't possibly be a bad thing.