What to build when you’re building?

Ever since Mark Andresen wrote that cult blog ‘Why Software is eating the world’ technologists across the globe programmed themselves to believe in a dystopian world where everything is governed by software. It might hold true to a certain extent figuratively as software forms the intimate driving layer in most industries in today’s world but in the big bad world of consumer products it definitely does not hold much water.

Let me dispel this myth once and for all. Over the years denizens of the tech world have come to a collective conclusion that technology is fundamentally the most important thing in the world. Keeping in mind the disruptions that have happened as part of the scientific revolution Yuval Harari talks about in Sapiens, software definitely cannot be ignored. However things have changed lately in the last 7 to 8 decades ever since free market economics kicked in. The market as one understands inadvertently provides a platform of choice to consumers which is exercised based on innumerable elements of human decision making process.

Let me try to put it in simpler terms. If you look at consumer tech in today’s world you’d find software still driving the product but from the backseat. A product by definition is a tool that helps fulfil a basic human need. Abraham Maslow defined needs in detail using the following Pyramid.

Most successful consumer companies across the globe have been able to build products that have effectively fulfilled a human need and through consistent innovation stayed ahead of the race. Surprisingly if you see the following Michael Porter video you’d see he defines strategy as a plan through which you provide a unique value to a customer-check it out.

Now that we have established the simple fact that a product in simple terms is required to effectively fulfil a human need we could say safely say product creation is a function of human psychology, anthropology and at a cellular level human biochemistry. I’ll touch base each of them one by one. If you delve a little deep into social sciences you’d find happiness is achieved when a need gets fulfilled. Happiness happens at 2 different levels with human beings. At a psychological level happiness happens when expectations are met which is phase one of a two phase process. At the second phase happiness is comprised of pleasant sensations that we experience while tasting food or listening to a favourite song etc.

Now that we have dissected when happiness as an emotion is experienced it is certain that human psychology and anthropology play a vital role in shaping human happiness. If that be the case then products from a 30,000 feet view merely seem as tools that should only take into account human psychology and anthropology towards fulfilling a human need. Now if you take the aforementioned you’d find that technology merely acts as a support function. It is essentially the wheel that runs the cart but the cart is created keeping in mind the user’s persona at a psychological and anthropological level.

Unfortunately the tech utopia is still to make peace with the fact that software in today’s world is just a support function albeit an important one at that. What matters more is how a product essentially fulfils a human need. Ever since YC became a dominant force to reckon with in the valley, startups around the globe are mesmerised by technology. What most startups forget is a customer or more aptly a human being is sitting at the centroid of every human product ever created. Unless companies spend time, money and resources in understanding the human user they’d land up creating assumptive products that by a stroke of luck might end up fulfilling a small want but would never become a need.

Google Plus no matter how much explosive it was during its launch with millions of subscriptions went down the drain because it did not factor in the human need element. Similarly the reason why Amazon triumphs in today’s world is because it knows its customers better than any other company on the planet.Sun Tzu the brilliant Chinese military general in one of his quotes clearly articulated the same by saying,”The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. If we replace enemy with customer then doesn’t that hold worthwhile while designing products? But is it followed by the industry and if it is then why is there so much fad and frenzy surrounding technology. Why are we busting our balls over AI, Machine Learning and IoT than investing resources in research related to understanding the human mind?

Over the years we have seen design coming up in a big way and the entire nine yards related to User Experience Design. What companies haven’t taken into account is a simple and obvious fact- studying data related to a customer’s usage of a mobile screen and the various triggers that prompts him to do a CTA is merely a 35 minute sneak peek into his mind which is insignificant considering how our mind works(Daniel Kahneman talks about two different types of thinking humans undergo while making decisions). So the current methodologies employed by companies are non deterministic in nature far as understanding the human psyche and the decision making process is concerned. Its mostly a trial and error mechanism that almost always fails. So in other words a politician knows his audience better than an entrepreneur knows his customers in today’s world no matter how cliched tools the politician has-thanks to our subservient attitude towards unabashedly, unflinchingly ingesting theories which dictate technology is far more important than anything else far as product development is concerned.

We have made significant progress with the advent of technology but the real question is are we ready to embrace human centric product development or we’d keep on ranting Mark Andresen’s blog time and again decimating the customer centric angle almost always-isn’t that a cardinal sin and a cognitive dissonance of the highest magnitude.So to answer the question I asked in the title I’d put this famous Paul Graham quote: