As I think back on the webinar with Eileen Forrester on Learning to be More User Centered, I begin to realize that this concept of pushing ‘things’ out to the user is a general trend and not just in software, or in training as Eileen explained.
For software development, we all know that agile is ‘eating the world.’ We soft-spoken engineers are now expected to contribute and communicate as peers on a team rather than just doing what our managers tell us to do.
With respect to end users, we not only recognize that the end user is king, and that their context is king, in terms of what we develop, but we also have the technology and ability to collect their information. The old ‘log-file’ has taken on new meaning as we mine it to find out.
And with social networking, users are able to give feedback directly to those that need and want it, even if its not wanted! Not only that, everyone gets to see what’s going on. So there are no secrets amongst us end users. That makes us even more important and more powerful.
Think about Uber and Airbnb. It’s all about pushing the power outward to the people rather than having hierarchical structures and business models.
So, Eileen was right, trust the end user to be capable and we will be more than you can imagine…I’m really looking forward to her workshop.
