Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Rob Sutcliffe

Customers do not think the same as us. They don’t even think the same as each other. Ignoring the weird ones may mean ignoring the best ones!

In the design world, it’s far too common for us to believe we can spot what is usable or even desirable just by looking at it. We know how ‘people’ think, so we can tell if they’ll like it or not. If we could just look at something and accurately assess it to be desirable or usable, then there would be no bad design! Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking everyone thinks like us, but worse still we fall into the trap of thinking everyone thinks like anything. But is it possible that even if we listen to the customers in a target market and see what issues affect most of them, we’re missing the point that the anomalies in our research might be the most critical parts of our research?

Back in the real world we’re constantly measured and benchmarked against the ‘average’. At school, in test results, performance reviews, personality tests…the list of ways we are to be categorised into neat little piles just goes on. Have you ever considered the fact that schools tend to rate pupils on their ability to learn faster than average, designing curriculums to suit the speediest? Learning slowly doesn’t mean that you can’t master a subject, it just means that it will take more time. But it doesn’t mean that you will only ever be average at it.

Example

In the 1950’s Gilbert Daniels carried out research into the safety of planes in the US air force. His findings persuaded the air force to put investment into building planes with adjustable cockpit controls so that pilots of all shapes and sizes could fly more safely. Over 40 years later, pilot Kim Campbell — who may have found it more difficult to fly a plane with static controls because of her height — received the Distinguished Flying Cross for her aerial heroics during the Iraq war.

Prior to Daniels’ research, Campbell would have been rejected from the air force for being too small. By relying on the average the air force risked missing out on an exceptional pilot who saved countless lives.

Research

Professor Adam Grant from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania debunks commonly held assumptions about talent and success by referring to specific individuals and their stories. These include Picasso, who he says “just maximised his output and increased his probability of creating something aesthetically pleasing”, Martin Luther King, who created his famous “I have a dream” speech as a result of last minute scribbling and improvisation and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who despite the reputation of entrepreneurs as being fearless, are not pre-disposed to take risks.
Grant believes that nurture over nature is key, and that we all have completely different life experiences which is what moves us away from the average and into the “you”.

Scientist Todd Rose is the co-founder and president of the Center for Individual Opportunity. He argues that our system of judging people according to their deviation from the mean is smothering our talents. Rose suggests that the system should fit the individual and not vice versa, and says that this is possible.
As a high-school dropout, Rose worked in minimum wage jobs and was labelled a troublemaker by his seniors. He eventually gave up trying to confirm and developed a problem solving method that relied on his aptitude for visual thinking rather than memory. This led to him passing his exams and progressing to become the director of Harvard’s mind, brain and education programme.

Key Takeaways

We are all individuals, despite being benchmarked against averages throughout life.
Sometimes the way people do things won’t fit the curve, and we should be prepared for that.
The system should fit the needs of the individual rather than pigeon-holing them into what it determines as the norm.
Not building products and services that accommodate the outliers might mean we miss out on our best users, students, customers, pilots or directors!

Further Reading

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

We Aren’t The Average Customer was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We Aren’t The Average Customer

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