2020: Prioritize People and Their Needs

2020 will be historically significant for a myriad of reasons. Looking back, I think it will also mark a significant refocus on people, and for brands, their customers. Historically, crises such as wars and recessions have shifted the paradigm back to people - in 2020, the tipping point was a global pandemic. But the truth is, we’ve been ramping up to this for a while. 

In the not-too-distant past, big brands leveraged PR and broadcast advertising primarily to sell goods and services. But over time, consumer trust waned. We’ve become more cynical, and we demand our brands also stand for something. The growth and eventual ubiquity of the internet, and later smartphones, gave room to emphasizing content, influencers and building community through websites and social media, opening brands up to unprecedented amounts of transparency, feedback, social proof, and direct interaction with audiences.

Since that time, consumers have been increasingly bombarded by constant notifications, articles, imagery, and hot takes. Ads can target us in new and creepy ways, but they still deliver like billboards akin to the previous era of impersonal mass communication. Content is great but no longer king, as the premium stuff is likely behind a paywall. Social networks continue to take their lumps (*see the buzz around Netflix’s The Social Dilemma).

All of the above is still important to the marketing suite, but we’ve never withstood more daily stimulation, distraction, clutter, and noise. This underscores that nothing is more critical in 2020 to successful relevance with consumers than reliably serving their needs in utilitarian (and ideally, delightful) ways. Meaning product designers, strategists and storytellers must develop applications, platforms, tools, and resources that address human problems and desires while seamlessly integrating into their complex lives. 

It’s that easy, right? But this illustrates how our roles get more challenging (and more fun) by the day. The playbook can be simplified to:

1. Having a deference to the complexity of understanding people as they live
2. Identifying what problems they have and what might help them
3. Creating products and experiences that seek to address these problems and are accessible, understandable, easy to use, and ideally consumable without a second thought

The pandemic has dramatically changed our daily operations and presented new challenges. Products and services have had to shift rapidly as a result to meet new customer demands. We’ve relied on the healthcare industry, government systems, food suppliers, local schools, and politicians in critical ways. But look no further than these huge institutions to find industries ripe for disruption and historically desperate for a shift to greater focus on the end customer. With this shift comes great opportunity.

A relevant example is video conferencing, which many people had used before, but became critical to our professional and social lives overnight. That’s exciting for an application like Zoom, who now hosts 300 million daily meeting participants. Nextdoor’s user base soared by 80 percent from February to March, as our world shrank to our neighborhoods. The rapid growth of both likely resulted in being inundated with an overwhelming amount of user feedback and a lengthy, daunting backlog to improve the platform and meet new customer expectations.

Domino’s, delivered during the pandemic (no pun intended) as a modern-day case study in persevering due to innovative use of technology and serving customers in useful and gratifying ways. Impressive and adaptable to social distancing, Chick-fil-A blends humans and technology to shepherd a constant stream of customers through its drive-thrus. People still have to eat.

In 2020, we have been limited in our contact, mobility, productivity, creativity, and in the worst scenarios, our health has been compromised. Our limitations as humans can spur remarkable adaptation, as humans will always find ways to satisfy their needs. In fact, a long line of innovations came about by serving people with disabilities. Typewriters were initially intended to help the blind author letters. The telephone and email were both invented to help the deaf communicate. 

The notion that machines must adapt to us, not the other way around, is still fairly novel though. Product designers have always found ways to manipulate users to addicting machines and leave them wanting more. Modern tools are no longer static waiting to be used - they are persuasive products that demand us to take action. It might not be totally ironic that the only two industries that call their customers users is the illegal drug market and software development. 

Last year, I pontificated on the concept of “designing for less”, and since that time, we’ve seen more realizations of what ethical design means. This has led to painful, yet healthy recent self-examination of designing products morally and responsibly as consumers demand the products we use be more humane and make our worlds better.

Fair or not, the experience your brand offers is benchmarked by consumers against technology giants Amazon, Google and Apple and disruptors such as AirBnB, Uber and Warby Parker. The former reshaped huge aspects of our lives (communication, commerce), and the latter addressed small, traditionally painful use cases (calling a cab, buying glasses). What they all have in common is that their products all have seamlessly integrated into our collective lexicon and consciousness because frictionless doesn’t stop with just a useful product. The whole end-to-end experience, spanning sales, training and customer service, is user-friendly. 

The world is as complex as ever. Given everything 2020 has thrown our way, empathy is a super power. No matter your impact, understanding what surrounds your customer, identifying their problems and helping people be better is a smart approach for any role.