“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

-Henry Ford

When creating and describing digital products, we in the software industry say “user” to refer to anyone that uses a product. This is a problem. It groups all people into one big entity, when in reality there are many types of people that use our products. The term user, while easy to use in discussion and writing, is an oversimplification. This causes problems in both the ways we talk and think about the invisible people that use our products. The word user, as well as similar blanket terms, lack emotion. When we are building our products, empathy is important. It is difficult to have empathy when you don’t have an emotional tie, and it’s hard to become emotional about “user”.

To solve this problem, we must:

• use a name that doesn’t let us picture ourselves.
• give a personality to the people on the other end. This can be anything from using real names or descriptive names about the audience.
• use names that help use visualize the people using the product - what we think they look like, where are they working, what device are they using, and what is interrupting them.
• use terms that help us promote empathy with our audience.

Finally, our terms should help to define the direction that the product should take - a compass of sorts.

Referring to people using your product by their title/position, demographic, or name (with an attached persona). Identify many different people, even if many of them fit into the same system role, and refer to them directly when describing the product. This helps you think in terms of what the real people will be going through while using your product instead of some made up, faceless entity.

One solution is to refer to people by their job title. This is usually easy when focusing on business products. Take an example where a product is for salespeople. Some names may include “traveling salesperson”, “regional manager”, and “vp of sales”.

These three simple terms provides a lot of different visualizations. You can picture a traveling salesperson working in their car, from a coffee shop or some other co-working location. You can expect spotty internet and a lot of working on the move.

When thinking about regional manager, you think about someone that manages people and performance. They need to track their salesperson performance while doing sales themselves. You expect them to have more of a mix of office setting and working on the go.

With the vp, you picture a big wig in an office with a secretary. They don’t care as much about the individual as they do about aggregate performance numbers.

I can see how the vp of sales would like and use this chart showing the percent of sales each product accounts for. She can use that to determine which products may need to be dropped from the line. But we shouldn’t put it on the salespersons dashboard. the salesperson doesn’t care which products are selling across the company. It’s fine to see, but it’s unnecessary noise when he is worried about his clients. He wants to know the order status of the unfulfilled orders for his clients.

It’s probably safe to assume everyone on your team have similar visuals as I described above. You can also see how the roes can be used to discuss potential features and how the different roles may use them. This approach is typically best when everyone understands the industry or profession the product is built for. It is probably best for a small team that communicates well.

Another solution is to create personas with real names, and using those names directly. This solution requires more work, but can be better for larger teams, or when team members don’t know as much about

Using the same example, you might name the traveling salesperson Jen Smith. Her persona could go something like this:

Jen is a mother of 2 kids. She is a salesperson for a large cosmetic company and makes deals with local boutiques. Her typical day starts by dropping her kids off of school. Then she drives to a nearby Starbucks, gets a latte, and checks her email. Then she will plan her day, which typically requires stopping by client businesses….

From this brief view, you can deduce a lot about the type of person that will be using the product as well as more info about her personal life. You can get an idea for how she will work, what challenges she will face, and what feature will work best for her. It also helps with empathy. There are parts of the description that will connect the creators to the people at the other end - whether it’s having kids, liking lattes, or starting your day by checking email.

A fuller persona will go into much more detail and should be based on research done in the target industry. It should identify goals, behavior, and other personal characteristics. If you want to know more about building personas, I suggest purchasing About Face by Alan Cooper. I find that book to be the best reference for identifying and creating personas — and it has a wealth of other information to help in creating digital products.

Having this name and persona will now help in your discussion about new features.

Jen travels out to businesses to check in with clients. She tries to schedule her route to be as efficient as possible. Can we use machine learning to help her identify a route based on some of the metrics that she typically uses, along with the location and driving distances?

We have cultivated a habit of saying user in any situations when describing people. As such, trying to not use the word user is very difficult. I have personally been trying to remove it from my vocabulary for a while and can attest to the difficulty of not using it. But substituting more meaningful words is an educational experience. It helps with your internal communication, decision making, and empathy. And all of these things are very helpful skills to cultivate if you design or build digital products.