<story><title>Apple’s 2016 in review</title><url>https://chuqui.com/2017/01/apples-2016-in-review/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>panic</author><text>&lt;i&gt;How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo well.  You&amp;#x27;ll end up pulled in a million directions as you try to account for everyone&amp;#x27;s feedback.&lt;p&gt;The traditional Apple solution was to give a single idealized user — Steve Jobs — the power to improve his own experience.  Nobody can replace Steve, but I think someone (or some group) inside Apple needs to fill this role before their products can become really great again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fnordsensei</author><text>Notice that the author doesn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;do what your users tell you to do&amp;quot;, but &amp;quot;find out what they need and what they experience as problematic&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Any user research will involve interacting with users, but it&amp;#x27;s not to gather their opinions, which is almost always irrelevant, but to document their behavior, needs and drives.&lt;p&gt;Users will offer solutions, because that comes naturally, but these need to be turned back into problems before being used. For example,&lt;p&gt;User: &amp;quot;I want a big button in the middle of the screen that says &amp;#x27;print&amp;#x27; and then prints my stuff immediately!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Researcher:&amp;quot;So you print a lot during your day?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;User: &amp;quot;Yeah, and each time I have to go down a long list of menus, and then I have to reselect the printer each time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Apple has apparently been able to get by with user studies done on a target group of one (Jobs). However, he&amp;#x27;s not there any more, and the more time that passes, the more it seems that they haven&amp;#x27;t been able to fill his shoes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple’s 2016 in review</title><url>https://chuqui.com/2017/01/apples-2016-in-review/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>panic</author><text>&lt;i&gt;How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo well.  You&amp;#x27;ll end up pulled in a million directions as you try to account for everyone&amp;#x27;s feedback.&lt;p&gt;The traditional Apple solution was to give a single idealized user — Steve Jobs — the power to improve his own experience.  Nobody can replace Steve, but I think someone (or some group) inside Apple needs to fill this role before their products can become really great again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>loosescrews</author><text>Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.</text></comment>