Unpacking Myopia
Content, Design & The Blind Spots that
Ruin Products & Experiences
Ron Bronson
#DCC16
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Have you ever read an article,
and thought “this wasn’t made
for me?”
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Marketing myopia
“A business suffers from marketing myopia when a
company views marketing strictly from the
standpoint of selling a specific product rather than
from the standpoint of fulfilling customer needs.”
- Ted Levitt (1960)
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Designer Myopia
“...design with a nearsightedness that results in
websites and applications that please ourselves and
impress our peers but don’t meet user and business
goals.”
- Rian van der Merwe
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We embed biases in products toward our
imagined outcomes. This makes us more
likely to forget about, or at least minimize,
the possibility of other outcomes.
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Architectural Myopia Components
1. Users & Architects don’t see the world the same
way.
2. The roots of training.
3. Justifying their own cognitive dissonance
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By failing to consider the people outside of
our own set of experiences, we ignore active
users with the potential to expand our
product use cases.
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Let’s get real for a second.
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You deposit a check. Your account is
flagged. You find out when you attempt to
withdraw cash, because the customer was
never contacted.
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What’s the process for turning the lights
back on when a customer forget to pay the
bill?
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We believe we know our audiences.
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Canvass a set of workers at your local DMV,
welfare office, retail outlet or airport.
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CX people can give you a snapshot of their
customers from a front-line perspective.
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Perspective influences the goal line
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Takeaways
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What can you do?
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Take calculated risks.
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Ask better questions earlier.
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Highlight the constraints
constructively.
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Focus on team composition.
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Decide your stance.
“...the attitude the product takes, the
personality it has.” - Jon Kolko
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Communicate the value of design & content
through frameworks, tools & metrics that
resonate with your stakeholders.
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Test your own assumptions.
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Realize that most people don’t
want to love your product. They
want it to work for them.