Overestimating likely user engagement
As a web development company we still get involved in numerous projects where the likely engagement or traction of an idea is overestimated by our customer to a significant degree.
This is surprising given the economic climate we are fast becoming used to operating in, but perhaps it is just the nature of certain types of entrepreneurs to believe those columns of excel data which based on simple projections extend ever higher over time – reaching total world dominance in just a couple of nimble tabs.
As a contrast those of us that work in intranet projects know how hard you have to work to capture and retain users, and how easy it is to disappoint them and lose them for long periods of time.
Both as users and as customers we are increasingly demanding and sensitive – if we cant find exactly what we want with minimum effort we will just go to where we can – without leaving a trace in a project that tried hard to work out what we might be looking for, but didn’t get it quite perfect.
My question is why some people are so optimistic about the external world but so realistic about the likely behaviour of our colleagues. Perhaps this is nothing more than replacing some idealized version of a dissatisfied and excited consumer with reality, having got to know our workmates over extended periods of time.
But perhaps the workplace constrains both our imagination and our behaviour – it places us in a routine where we will simply not respond and change only because we did not do that yesterday.
If that is the case then intranet project teams need to bring a dose of external optimism into their projects, work hard to deliver exactly what their colleagues need and not let old practices continue to constrain both behaviour and innovation.