Originally Posted by
Whopity
I was involved with some validation of new Met Office data after I complained about the change over. Two things became very apparent, they had no idea who their main customer base was or how they were going to use the data. They had little or no knowledge of alternative products or data sources and finally they had already made up their mind, so listening to the users whomsoever they might be, was not on their agenda.
Well that's obvious... There is a reason why there is a specific job titled "User Experience Designer" whose job is not just making up where buttons and boxes go to be logical for users without making them look pretty - but specifically - the initial research, talking to the end user, watching them presently use the system, seeing where these users struggle or fail, and help design a user journey to ensure that whatever blocks were present in the previous version don't feature in the future of the product. You then iterate the new user journey, to tailor it to the customers in (oh I cringe at the use of the word because nobody seems to use it or understand it correctly in my industry) "AGILE" way. AGILE in my world means: ask customers, think with team, prepare the work, review with customers, do a small bit so as to not go over budget but enough to see what the end result would be like, review with team and then review with customers, then build v1 as a "minimum viable product" (means: least number of features possible to make it useable) before reviewing it with the team, and again with customers checking concerns have been addressed, again addressing new concerns, before going back to step one to refine current features before adding further features and re-iterating).
This may seem like a longer way to build anything, because criteria is ever evolving and therefore ever changing, as such it is difficult to put a definite timeline, a definite end of the project and hence budget in place. However, the end result, even after v1 or v2 will be so significantly better than any previous version, simply because it is tailor made for the intended customer, that it means that the money hasn't been wasted on a crappy "new" version of their presently offered content (as is what happened here).
It is a shame being one of those people who understand the problems faced by companies, and yet seeing them fail time after time because they refuse to ask the customers what they need and what they want.