If you’ve spent any time in tech or building products, you’ve likely heard the expression “put the user first.“ But what you might not know is that this advice extends beyond tech into our personal lives.
Putting the user first is about changing your perspective.
UX design always takes a user-first approach, where it's key to remember "YOU are not the user." It's easy to make assumptions about people based on our own experiences, but when we take the time to talk to and observe users, we're often surprised to learn things about them that we may have taken for granted — Anne Ditmeyer
Most successful professionals are masters at thinking about the audience and how to appeal to them.
If you read the quarterly earnings report of any public company, you’ll notice it has lots of numbers and metrics that essentially say, “We’re a great and growing business!“ The user is analysts and investors.
Yet when the same companies respond to competition in the media, you’ll see the same companies making themselves look much smaller
“We compete with a wide variety of companies, Google, Samsung, Huawei, Vivo, LG, Lenovo and many more,” Daniel Matray, head of Apple’s App Store and Apple Media Services…
“In fact, Apple does not have a dominant position in any market, and we face strong competition in every category, in tablets, wearables, desktop and notebook computers, maps, music, payments, messaging, and more,” he said. — Reuters
The user is the FTC and other bodies responsible for regulating competition.
And putting users first doesn’t stop there. Product Managers, Musicians, Consultants, Teachers, and other professionals also put the user first. This is how to operate in the real world.
Below are 4 non-obvious ways we can extend this concept beyond the professional context.
Your journalling or organization system
One challenge to putting the user first is identifying the user or at least remembering to do so. That includes when you’re the user!
My friend Sophie was impressed by how I considered my future self in my approach to journaling.
When I implemented the Notion system, I asked myself what I would like to read if I already had a journal. Working backward from your own needs may also clarify how you should journal so that you’re consistent.
I realized I didn’t care about the nitty-gritty of what happened each day. I just cared about peering into my older mind to see how I planned each day and what were the results of that planning.
That conversation is what inspired this post. I realized that though I’m certainly still learning how to put the user first, it is clear that there are ways to apply this principle beyond a Product Manager thinking about the user of the product.
Managing Upwards
But let’s go back to the work context briefly.
You can view your job as producing an outcome for your boss (who is a proxy for the company’s users). Since your boss evaluates you, you should optimize your efforts to appeal to them.
How can you make the impact of your work clear?
How can you make it easy to review your work?
How can you eat the frog for your boss? — This means finding the things your boss detests doing and taking them off their plate. Show your value. Don’t assume it’s obvious.
Communicating with others — emails and presentations
It’s hard to understate how easy it is to make a presentation without thinking about the audience that will be present. Or how easy it is to send an email without thinking about the recipients’ interests and priorities.
Now, not every email has to have this transactional undertone, though it’s always worth asking how you can help the recipient further their priorities (like making your request clear, so it is easy to reply).
Presentations, however, should always have the audience in mind. This summer, I worked as a Software Engineer on a backend project for Google Businesses. My manager kept reminding me that even other engineers on my team may not have context on the problem I am solving or the business impact it will have.
And I’ve learned that from writing this newsletter, too — you have to ask yourself what the audience knows and meet them there. This is especially front of my mind when I’m writing book reviews.
After I wrote a review of Sapiens, I had to explain to a friend who had also read Sapiens why I didn’t include other interesting concepts. I explained that I had to write cohesively for a user who had not read the book. This meant leaving out details that would be confusing or less interesting.
Giving gifts and planning trips
A few years ago, I pretty much never gave gifts. This was because of my own experiences with gifts. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, gifts I received would often reflect the gift givers’ own interests, or worse, them forcing their own concept of fun or enjoyment on me.
We usually jump from “I love X“to “Everyone here who hasn’t explicitly said otherwise must also like X.“
For instance, thinking I would love an all-you-can-eat sushi dinner because everyone loves sushi. I hate sushi!
Or thinking that I would be excited to go to dinner with 15 friends and acquaintances. No, I’m an introvert. I’ll mostly be overwhelmed the entire time.
To be clear, I’m not complaining. A vast majority of the time, this is not a big deal. We either communicate our differences, don’t show up to unappealing events, or we just do it anyways because it’s no big deal.
But if you’re planning a Spring break trip with friends, buying a gift for someone, or generally putting in a lot of effort or money, put the user(s) first to maximize success.
Does Daniel really like the idea of hanging by the beach all day? Does Justin actually want to pay that much for pool amenities he’ll never use? Does Annie actually care that we go to the best steakhouse on her birthday? Do my friends really want to listen to my curated Drake playlist during our dinner party?
Before you buy that present or plan that trip, ensure you understand the users, even if they’re your friends!
That’s all for this one.
You learned to put the user first in
Your journalling or organization system
Managing up
Communicating with others
Giving gifts and planning trips
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I have learnt A lot from this