What is a browser?
I found this on Mike Laurie’s ace blog the other day – it’s a video put together by Ji Lee, Google’s Creative Director at the Google Creative Sandbox (just launched). The video demonstrates how much real people know about the Web. It’s a salutory reminder for anyone whose job it is to discuss complex ideas with customers and end-users: despite the nodding you shouldn’t assume they understand *anything*.
What I like most about Mike’s post is this bit, about inviting a bit of creative destruction into the design process, something we feel very strongly about at Made by Many:
No matter how clear, simple, relevant, engaging, interesting, entertaining, usable or smart you believe your communication or interactive media is, the end-user will always destroy it for you in a heartbeat. Which is why you need to get people destroying your ideas before they grow so that you can get on and create something that really does make sense to the people you want to interact with.
See also:
About the author
Tim has been creating innovative online community stuff since 2000 and was recently named as one of Revolution Magazine's 'Future 50' - one of the the "marketers, authors, entrepreneurs, and thinkers who will shape the digital industry of tomorrow". It also called him "disruptive and challenging". Tim is a founding partner of Made by Many, Agilist, strategist, Dad and designer of social software.
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Comments (4)
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Responses (1)
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¿Qué es un navegador? « Soy un curioso
[...] “The video demonstrates how much real people know about the Web. It’s a salutory reminder for anyone whose job it is to discuss complex ideas with customers and end-users: despite the nodding you shouldn’t assume they understand *anything*.” Vía. [...]
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You have no idea about how much I agree with this. Let’s look at and incorporate user behaviour into our design, rather than just their goals and preferences. Concentrate on motivations, expectations and actions, rather than on metrics and statistics. Jakob keeps banging on about paying attention to what users do, not what they say, so let’s all put that into practice…
And if we talk to them at the beginning, middle and end, we might actually all be able to produce something quite awesome.
Chris Petzny
June 23, 2009
at 12:37 pm
Brilliant. It seems a lot of people think Web = browser = google. I’d be vaguely flattered.
Forget early adopters. This is mass market and the people you need to engage and offer value to if you want to be insanely successful.
Oliver
June 26, 2009
at 7:11 pm
Why don’t they call it a ‘web browser’ or ‘internet browser’ like it is instead of using just the word ‘browser’. Even people searching a antique book store can be classified as a ‘browser’. This is what happens when IT Technocrats start using an existing word in a new way and assume the rest of the world is supposed to know what it means.
Secondly, I think to some extent people must have gotten over excited by being interviewed by Google, thinking this must be the answer to the question.
Mark
July 9, 2009
at 3:50 pm
Hey, thanks for the mention Tim.
Mike Laurie
July 30, 2009
at 10:59 pm