What Do Your Customers Want?

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The first step in the design process is to get a clear idea of what your customers want. This can take some time and patience, especially if your customers are not technical people by nature.

Have your customers tell you in their own words what they want, and ask lots of questions to clarify your customers' goals for yourself. It is a good idea to rephrase your customers' requests and repeat them back to make sure that you are communicating on the same plane. For example, if your customers say they want to be able to create reports from a set of data, you must know: Who will be using the reports? Can they be read-only, or must users be able to manipulate the data in the report to present it in new ways? Should the reports be available over a corporate intranet, will they be printed, or will they be e-mailed? The answers to these kinds of questions will begin to eliminate certain design possibilities and shift your focus to others.

You might have to ask the same question several times in several different ways. It might be helpful to diagram or demonstrate multiple possibilities to your customers and ask them to choose the one that best fits what they have in mind. Keep in mind your customers probably find the planning and design process difficult, and they would rather you just went away and came back with what they want. Simplifying choices for your customers, while keeping their goals in mind, might make the process easier for everyone.

See Also

The Design Process | What Do Your Customers Need? | At the Drawing Table | Building a Prototype