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as straightforward and transparent as possible. The easier it is to use a product, the easier
it will be for the user to apply it to his or her needs. These applications will often turn up
surprises the designer never saw coming. A good designer will learn from these surprises.
Many digital designers are waking up to the fact that they must take user experience
into account. We must develop our skills of observation and become good listeners. Use of
these skills will enable us to see products from the user's point of view. Often this starts
with an 'aha' moment.
For FICO User Experience Senior Manager Steve Dickman this 'aha' moment came
years ago. One day he began to notice software users scribbling account numbers onto
scraps of paper because their software didn't connect with other software. “[If a user] were
working on an account in one system and needed to see additional information about that
account in the other system, the user would scribble the account number down then re-
type it into the other system,” Dickman recalls. This was in the days when the transition
from character-based to Windows-based software was just beginning. A user “could run
both systems in… Windows OS but it was not possible to cut and paste account numbers
between the two systems.”
Seeing this inspired Dickman to begin work on “a design that simply added a function
key in the character system that launched something at the back end that automatically
opened the correct account in the Windows system.” Users could put their pens back in
their pockets. Looking back on this time, Dickman says: “It was that little insight [that] set
me on the path to the career I enjoy today."
Dickman was using the most basic principle of commerce: the customer always comes
first. He saw people working to bridge the gap between products, and he recognized that the
process was inefficient, and, even worse, frustrating. He knew that if a product stretched a
user's patience to the breaking point, the user would find a way to avoid its most confound-
ing functions—or abandon the product altogether. A new product is supposed to improve
the process and reduce workloads while making things flow more smoothly. Dickman no-
ticed a juncture where the opposite happened. A function was missing. Something had to
change. In a narrow sense, Dickman's 'aha' moment led to a way to connect two pieces of
software. In the long term, it helped him see a more substantial connection: the one between
products and their users.
Thad Scheer, Managing Partner at Sphere of Influence, has witnessed many coworkers'
'aha' moments. He says that these revelations increased “when we started being more as-
sertive about doing ethnography. By forcing creative and technical people out of the studio
