Circumstances

We often pay little attention to circumstances.

This dialectic is usually eliminated in favor of choosing sides between the universal or the particular.

Theory or practice.

Ideas or circumstances.

It seems like a topic far removed from the realm of product creation and management, but it touches its very heart.

In fact, the reason why a large percentage of the efforts employed in this sphere miss the mark—either because they never emerge, or because they do but fail to generate profits—is linked to this neglect of circumstances.

It's a neglect that already informs many ideas, and when they take shape, it accompanies their entire growth, just as an early poor diet determines the course of a body.

The main reason circumstances are the essential ingredient of what we concoct when we make products is that the people for whom we make them—just like us—live in their own world of intentions, needs, and purposes.

Although much has been written about this, from interaction design to perceptual psychology, and a wide range of behavioral sciences, we have not fully realized its implications.

When we lock ourselves in our ivory tower of our product, our attention ends up being stolen by our concerns about the market, customers, and the competition.

It's natural that, from there, we try to create products that connect with the market, customers, and the competition.

But they often don't connect with people's intentions.

People want to do things.

It's no secret.

We don't look at our phone on the table, analyzing its attributes.

We look at our phone on the table to see if that message we're waiting for is coming through.

We don't turn on the TV, analyzing the quality of the display.

We turn on the TV to see if the latest episode of the latest season we're watching is on.

We don't open a website, analyzing the carefully designed color scheme.

We open a website to quickly find some movie tickets.

In those fors lie the circumstances.

Since we are synthetic animals—purposes are synthesis—those efforts at analyzing and assessing attributes made from the ivory tower may satisfy us—as marketing, business, or product experts in general—but they don't connect with the fors.

And what's worse, they ignore them, so we condemn them to never meet.

When we don't have anything yet, not the same product, nor are we clear about it, the smartest decision is to approach people who could be future customers.

Live with them; talk with them; observe their intentions in order to create something that connects with them.

In this coexistence, a sensitivity develops that is the foundation of future intuition, essential for making reasonable decisions in the subsequent phases.

When we already have something, we always have a natural conversation through support and customer service spaces.

In most cases, each conversation is an opportunity to understand the circumstances of what customers are trying to achieve.

User tests and purpose-built tools can be complementary, but they never fill the gap in the day-to-day work that clients face with their goals.