The customer thinking

User thinking, as the name suggests, is the thinking of "thinking from the user's perspective". Or more broadly, put yourself in the other person's shoes.

In the field of product design, it is important to have user thinking.

Ma huateng once said, "the most important ability of a product manager is to make a fool of himself", and Zhou Hongyi also proposed that "a good product manager must be an idiot".

The ability of a product manager to switch his or her brain from "professional mode or expert mode" to "user mode" or "idiot mode" at any time is a reflection of the user's thinking. Forget the industry knowledge you've accumulated over time, as well as the background information about the product's skilled operation method and implementation principle.

In addition, user thinking is also important in marketing and life and work. If you do not grasp the user's thinking, it will cause a variety of adverse consequences.

Below, we respectively through some cases, to see the product thinking in "product design, marketing, daily life" in the embodiment.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

The embodiment of user's thinking
I. product design
Case 1 lack of thinking of users of | air purifier leads to ineffective purification

Philips has an air purifier that comes with a four-layer filter. But these four filters are not packaged separately, but installed in advance in the machine.

In this way, after the user gets the device, it is very natural to plug in the power directly and turn on the switch, and think that the work is started. Little do they know that because the plastic cover of that four-layer filter has not been removed, there is no purification effect.

The problem was not detected when the machine was working, leading many users to discover it months later when they tried to change the filter.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

The designers did, though: they stuck a small yellow label on the power plug and indicated in the instructions that the filter should be removed first. The problem is that the little yellow label is easy for users to ignore, and few people start using the product after carefully reading the instructions.

This is a typical case of user experience problems caused by insufficient thinking.

Case 2 | failed to grasp the user's thinking, which led to the blocked sales of router

Zhou Hongyi once Shared a case of user thinking in the design of 360 router.

Initially, they designed a router that was small and elegant, in the shape of pebbles, with a built-in antenna that kept the signal strong. In addition, through user research, it is found that most users are wireless access. As a result, they kept only two network cable interfaces.

But such seemingly perfect products suffer from sales difficulties.

The reason is that users' understanding and expectations of router products are quite different.

Users think, "how can such a small box be so expensive", "there is no antenna, the signal must not be good -- people are three or four antennas", "so few interfaces, the future is not enough to do".

Later, based on the feedback from these users, they actually improved the product according to the user's thinking: adjusted the size of the product, increased the antenna and network port.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

Second, the embodiment of the field of marketing
Case 1 user thinking in | hard advertising

Li wanqiang mentioned a case of hard and wide distribution in his best-selling book "sense of participation".

In May 2013, xiaomi planned to advertise its phones at what was then the GMIC Internet conference. They designed several versions of it, but they ended up with this AD.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

From the perspective of design, xiaomi's advertisements are very simple, while the other three placed side by side are obviously "well-designed". However, they basically can't see anything, is invalid advertising!

Although the sizes of the four advertising materials are large, they are hung on the top of the entrance passage of the site, which is far away from the participants. If the words are too small, nothing can be seen. In addition, everyone is in a hurry to pass, can not see clearly, will not stop to study.

Therefore, without user thinking, information is not concise, design is not eye-catching, advertising money is wasted.

Case 2 user thinking in | restaurant operation

For a small restaurant that relies heavily on traffic in front of its doors, it can be dangerous if potential customers can't see at a glance what kind of restaurant it is and what dishes it serves.

In the food square on the ground floor below my company, there is a small shop called "add a dish bar". From the name, it's really interesting. But the problem is, I passed many times also do not know what is sold, but also found that there are few diners, I have never entered.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

Later, the boss may also find this problem, put "potato powder", "braised chicken" and other words on the door, but still no help. Before long, there was another post on the door -- "transfer of this shop" -- and the shop closed.

You see, since the boss has no user thinking and does not put himself in the shoes of customers passing by the door to think about how to choose the restaurant, the business fails at last.

Third, the embodiment of daily life
Case 1 | has no banner or signboard for user thinking

Li called beast once Shared a wuhan university campus, express station sign copywriting case.

There are many express delivery stations in wuhan university. They all hang signs. Among them, the signboard of shen tong express is written greatly "wu dalibu" 4 words, and "shen tong express" this information is very small however.

This design detail, reflected the user thought flaw.

The problem is that the station itself is located on the campus of wuhan university, and the information of "wuhan university branch" is implicit for the school staff, so it is not necessary to highlight it.

And express company name "shen tong express" this information, is the main. You want to think about it, we look at the past from a distance, are written "wu branch" and can not see which express, so much worry ah.

So this is not reasonable, is the lack of user thinking.

There is a similar example.

During xi's visit to Germany, representatives from the German alumni association of a Chinese university lined up to warmly welcome him.

On the blue flags, the words "German alumni association" stand out, but the key message of the school's name is too small to see.

Just imagine, even if the footage of the live report on that day caught the welcoming team, even xi himself noticed them. But unfortunately, only know is "German alumni association", but do not know which school.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

Case 2 user thinking in | field activities

In March 2016, the qingyuan marathon in guangdong province was hit by an incident of "athletes accidentally eating soap".

How can you eat soap by mistake? What's going on here?

The reason is that, in the "finish bag" handed out to athletes, the organizers were very considerate and provided a piece of fruit-scented soap, which was intended to be used by them after the race.

The soap, which has attractive grapes on the front, looks like a dessert. It only has a small line in English that says "fruity soap/grape," indicating that it's grape soap.

However, at the scene, those who are hungry and thirsty players how can notice this detail, they just tear open the packaging and gnawed. One eats, just discover mouthfeel is incorrect.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

The reason why user thinking is difficult to grasp
Based on the comparison between "designer thinking" and "user thinking", the above cases are summarized as follows:

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

As can be seen from the above examples, poor grasp of users' thinking will cause many problems.

Many of these questions may seem childish and strange in hindsight, but they are true and common.

Why is that?

The reason is that it's hard to have a user's mind.

Below, we analyze the reasons behind from three aspects.

People often say that the user's mind, you really understand it?

The curse of knowledge
The concept Curse of knowledge comes from a paper in the Journal of Political Economy. It refers to the fact that once people acquire a certain knowledge or experience, it is difficult to realize the feeling without it.

Stanford university in the United States has done a "hitter and listener" psychological experiment, people can deeply feel the effect of knowledge curse.

In this experiment, the subjects were divided into two groups and played the "hitter" and "guess who". The hitters were given a list of 25 songs they were familiar with, including happy birthday to you and the U.S. national anthem, the star-spangled banner. The hitter chooses one of the songs at will, and then taps out the rhythm of the song with his fingers on the table. The listener guesses the name of the song according to the rhythm of the beat.

Because the songs were so familiar, the hitters had a 50 percent chance of getting it right. However, after 120 actual tests, only three guesses were correct, with a success rate of only 2.5 percent. The reason that estimates differ so much from reality is that when a hitter hits a beat, the melody of the song inevitably plays in his or her head at the same time. The listeners didn't feel any melodic information, they just heard a series of incoherent taps, as if they had no idea what they were seeing or hearing Morse code ticking away.

It is the widespread existence of knowledge curse that makes it difficult for product designers and event organizers to imagine how users understand and use products.

Because they know too much about the details of the product, there will be no misunderstanding and errors in use. However, this is not the case for users, who do not know this information, so the above problems, such as "unopened filter cover of philips air purifier leads to ineffective purification", "poor sales of routers with small size and no antenna", "marathon runners mistakenly eat soap", etc.

Second, the impact of human nature

We must be keenly aware of the general lack of patience.

This is because everyone is exposed to thousands of information and products every day, so it is impossible to observe and study each one carefully and repeatedly. Otherwise, before doing the work, the energy has been exhausted.

Therefore, for small restaurants on the street, if you can't know what the shop sells when you pass by, then people will just ignore you. Very few people go in and ask unless they are in the middle of nowhere.

Similarly, when a person walks by a billboard, he won't stop and look at it carefully if he can't see it clearly.

Similarly, when people buy anything from a mobile phone to an air purifier to a washing machine to an electric rice cooker to a car to a house (and don't be surprised, houses come with instructions), most people start with intuition rather than perusing the instructions carefully first. Only when faced with a problem will some people think of reading the instruction manual -- even in this case, most people still like to save trouble, call customer service to inquire.

In addition, if your product and marketing pages load slowly and have too much information to fill out, users will be impatient and give up.

It is precisely because of impatience, trouble saving, like to take shortcuts, will lead to not as carefully as the designer expected, carefully read the tips and instructions, and then make some mistakes.

Third, the lack of testing
In the product research and development process, the test link is generally indispensable, and do more solid.

But in marketing and life, testing is inadequate or even absent.

The cases mentioned above, such as "large advertisement placement", "alumni association welcome banner", "wuhan branch sign", etc., will avoid mistakes if they can be tested on the spot.

So how do you master user thinking?

After analyzing the reasons why it is difficult for users to grasp the thinking, we will take a look at the countermeasures.