Coordinating your dance with the users
One of Danah Boyd’s recent talks contains a Jenny Holzer-like nugget:
The key lesson
from the rise of social media
for you
is that a great deal of software
is best built
as a coordinated dance
between you and the users.
Note that she says “a great deal of software”, not “all software”, “websites only” or “social software only”.
Note too that she says “a coordinated dance”, not “a haphazard mess of customer input”.
All dances have a set of rules – tacit or explicit, simple or detailed – that govern behavior. Without coordination, a wealth of input turns into a muddle – more ingredients make the pie worse, not better. Without a framework to attach to, all that activity makes nary an anthill. Also, the high pace and now-now-now focus of ever-new services can trick us into thinking there’s no longer-term perspective. Of course there is. However else did we get here?
When engaging with your users, strive for enough consistency (tone of voice, response times, mechanisms for capturing and utilizing input) to enable scale, and enough variability to deal with the uniqueness of each situation. With that framework, you can coordinate that dance with the users.
Last, but not least, don’t expect your users alone to tell you where to go precisely. Keep planning, keep working and stay close to where the action is. Helmuth von Moltke’s quote “No plan survives first contact with the enemy“ (Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung) is not advice against planning. It merely recognizes that things do not work out as anticipated, that you need to keep plan b, c, d and e handy for you rainy day.
We lower risk by building change into our systems from day one. We manage risk by keeping our ear to the ground and working to understand what forces are at work in our service. Last but not least, we know when to take the lead, when to step back, and when to to follow.
A great deal of software is best built as a coordinated dance between you and the users.