Unpacking Myopia: Content, Design & The Blind Spots that Ruin Products & Experiences

Design & Content Conference (Vancouver, July 2016)

Transcript

1. Unpacking Myopia
   Content, Design & The Blind Spots that
   Ruin Products & Experiences
   Ron Bronson
   #DCC16
   

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2. Have you ever read an article,
   and thought “this wasn’t made
   for me?”
   

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4. 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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5. 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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8. 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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9. 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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10. 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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11. Let’s get real for a second.
    

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13. 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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15. What’s the process for turning the lights
    back on when a customer forget to pay the
    bill?
    

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16. We believe we know our audiences.
    

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17. Canvass a set of workers at your local DMV,
    welfare office, retail outlet or airport.
    

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18. CX people can give you a snapshot of their
    customers from a front-line perspective.
    

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19. Perspective influences the goal line
    

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22. Takeaways
    

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23. What can you do?
    

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24. Take calculated risks.
    

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25. Ask better questions earlier.
    

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26. Highlight the constraints
    constructively.
    

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27. Focus on team composition.
    

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28. Decide your stance.
    “...the attitude the product takes, the
    personality it has.” - Jon Kolko
    

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29. Communicate the value of design & content
    through frameworks, tools & metrics that
    resonate with your stakeholders.
    

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30. Test your own assumptions.
    

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31. Realize that most people don’t
    want to love your product. They
    want it to work for them.
    

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32. Ron Bronson
    ron@ronbronson.com
    @ronbronson
    

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