If you can dream it, do it for the user.
- acox31
- Sep 1, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 9, 2021
During my first year of teaching freshman-level English, I proudly displayed a poster at the front of my classroom emblazoned with the words “If you dream it... you can do it” in my clumsily styled handwriting. It was intended to serve as our class motto and it hung above the whiteboard as a symbol of inspiration for my students. Whatever their goals were, I assured them during the first week of school, anything was possible if they set their mind to it.
I might have referenced it twice over the course of the school year.
My short-lived commitment to the class theme notwithstanding, I have learned in my time since the classroom that the wide world of technology actually has made it possible for designers, developers, content creators, and so many others to power their dreams. And, if they follow a few ethical and design principals, they might also create something bigger, better, and infinitely more impactful than they originally intended.
One example of a powerful technological innovation can be found on the handheld device in your pocket (or in your purse, or your backpack, or whatever location is at hand and most convenient): social networking sites. With users in the millions, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, are all but ubiquitous. Each of them started as a dream and each of them became a product used worldwide because they were built to fill a need for users. In the first chapter of The Hype Machine (2020), Sinan Aral paints a picture of the early intentions that went into social media design:
“when the social media revolution began, the world’s social platforms had an idealistic vision of connecting our world. They planned to give everyone free access to the information, knowledge, and resources they needed to experience intellectual freedom, social and economic opportunity, better health, job mobility, and meaningful social connections. They were going to fight oppression, loneliness, inequality, poverty, and disease.”
These visions, intentions, and goals for social media, lofty as they may have been, were rooted in an important concept that digital product managers, software engineers, and academics alike analyze with great care and interest to this day: the user.
Simply put, a user is the person who will interact with, consume, or otherwise make use of a technology. Users are the audience and the spokespeople. They are one of the most important factors when it comes to the success or failure of a product. They are the reason to make a product at all (philosophically speaking).
So, when it comes to developing a new technology, my experience working in a tech startup environment, combined with my research, has taught me that it is crucial to center the user.
Although I’m no expert, here are a few keys I would follow to identify user attributes if I were to design a new communication technology:
Design for people, not problems (Devex, 2016). In order to understand whether an idea for a technology will work you first need to consider the people who will use it, rather than the issue you’re trying to solve for. This approach is rooted in human-centered design, which comes from the field of global development. For an introduction to human-centered design, check out this video.
Center the needs of your target users during the design phase rather than relying on your own assumptions. I borrow this approach from Agile software development, which involves identifying who a user is, what it is that they want, so that they can achieve a specific outcome (Rehkopf, n.d.). The practice of writing user stories and creating user personas not only centers the end user, but also clarifies why you're building a new technology, what exactly it is that you’re building, and what value your product creates (Rehkopf, n.d.).
Identify which users are missing and which users you are intentionally not designing for. By considering who isn't represented in the initial research, you are able take a step back and do two things: (1) create space for those users to give voice to their unrepresented needs, and (2) articulate the boundaries of your technology and the users you are not serving. This move is derived from the feminist studies approach to studying users in that it aims at identifying blind spots, introduces diverse user needs and perspectives, and invites users to participate in the design process (Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2005).
In their 2005 essay collection, How Users Matter, Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch emphasize that “a thorough understanding of the role of users in technological development requires a methodology that takes into account the multiplicity and diversity of users, spokespersons for users, and locations where the co-construction of users and technologies takes place” (p. 24). While my approach to identifying user attributes is far from comprehensive, it has served me well as a starting point when I’ve needed to help create solutions for the stakeholders I serve in my day job as a project manager.
All things considered, if I could go back in time to my classroom, I might have tongue-in-cheekily edited the motto above the white board to read: If you can dream it, (chances are) you can (digitally) do it (within reason and, ideally, in service of your users).
References
Aral, S. (2020). The hype machine: How social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our health – and how we must adapt [E-book]. Currency.
Devex. (2016, November 18). Devex explains: What is human-centered design – and why does it matter? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0bxtEqM2TQU
Oudshoorn, N., & Pinch, T. (2005). How users and non-users matter. In N. Oudshoorn & T. Pinch (Eds.), How users matter: The co-construction of users and technologies (pp. 1-25). MIT Press.
Rehkopf, M. (n.d.). User stories with examples and templates. Atlassian. https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/user-stories
Designer thinking photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels
Hi Aspirationally Amy! Love that, btw.
When I was in the classroom, I went with Don't dream it,
Be it, from Rocky Horror Pitcure Show! Very cool that you are a TFA alumni teacher. Did not do that myself, but it's admirable. Being a teacher is a tough gig. I loved it, but needed a new challenge after seven years in a HS classroom.
I like how you took a selfless strategy when deciding on what tech you would design. In my past life in the film business, our elitist attitudes led us to make films that WE wanted to make, not necessarily what the paying audience wanted to see. Sadly, that attitude still exists, but thank goodness for streaming…