This content originally appeared on TimKadlec.com on Web Performance Consulting | TimKadlec.com and was authored by TimKadlec.com on Web Performance Consulting | TimKadlec.com
I can’t find it, but I saw a post this morning showing this popular Joy of Tech comic from 2016.
On the surface, it’s a funny and cautionary comic strip. But one thing that bothers me is that it pushes the very dangerous “single visionary” narrative.
We have a tendency to want to look for the single genius—the one individual who is a visionary, who knows what users need better than they do themselves, who knows what a product should or shouldn’t do. They don’t need to talk to users, they don’t need to confer with others, they don’t need to look at the data.
It’s a damaging fairytale. It creates environments where decisions are made in the absence of user feedback or data. It creates environments where teams don’t talk to their users often enough. They don’t look at the data to see if their hypothesis are right or wrong. They don’t spend enough time challenging their assumptions.
You don’t avoid overly complex products by putting your fingers in your ears. You do it by having a clear set of principles to guide what you want to accomplish with your product, and for who. Then you empower your team with those principles as they go out and explore ways to build something better. That’s how you weed out the unnecessary.
The best product teams and organizations are very, very rarely the result of a single visionary mind. Instead, they’re the result of the collective input of a group of people working on the product, informed by data and continuous user conversations, and framed by a series of principles that you want your product to reflect.
This content originally appeared on TimKadlec.com on Web Performance Consulting | TimKadlec.com and was authored by TimKadlec.com on Web Performance Consulting | TimKadlec.com
TimKadlec.com on Web Performance Consulting | TimKadlec.com | Sciencx (2023-02-06T17:33:58+00:00) The Single Visionary Fairytale. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2023/02/06/the-single-visionary-fairytale/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.