In the world of business, no contrast is as stark as the one between the seller and the buyer, between the interests of business owners and those of their customers. Each encounter between the two, be it in a shop or workshop, is an epic clash of two contrasting worlds. It’s hard to imagine a more contrasting pair of perspectives.
The former is at home. The seller is on their home turf, in the centre of their own universe, surrounded by their property; self-assured, self-centred, with detailed knowledge of each and every nook and cranny, with exhaustive awareness of stock levels in store and every last penny in the register. They have built all this with their owns hands, by the sweat of their brow. Look at that wee scratch on the counter, that’s when we were putting up the new shelving, hard work that was, I’m telling ya. But ain’t it nice? The shop is their world, and this world revolves around making money. Buy, sell, turn stock, one customer, another one, that’s twelve fifty, thank you for your custom, next please, no messing about, pile them high and get people over here, let’s make some cash before we close for the day.
The latter is a foreigner in a foreign country. Only popped in from the street, maybe just to grab a sausage roll for lunch, or to check out fridges for next year’s home refurb, to see what sizes they come these days and roughly how much they are. Or has a phoned glued to his ear, searching his pockets for a post-it note from his wife, attention turned to a Premiership match. Bread, cheese sticks (but not the ones with the mouse logo, they make the kid sick), a couple tomatoes, washing powder, two packs of nappies. What do you mean? What promotion? What socks? I don’t want a third one for free – sorry, Josh, nothing, they want me to buy socks or something. So was it a valid goal or… – what card?! I don’t have one, and I don’t need one.
The trader’s objective is to sell and keep selling. Drive up prices, drive up volume, just to scrape by – or perhaps to save up for a Tesla Model S and hols on Seychelles? Who knows. Be that as it may, selling is the main thing. The trader wants happy customers who will keep buying more stuff, because they will come back and send their wives and dads and neighbours her way, and there will be sales, sales, and more sales. That is the objective of the day, week, month, and decade.
The visitor’s objective, on the other hand, is… – well, you would expect a real contrast, „to do cheap shopping“. But no way, Jose. The main goal of the day for Mr Valued Customer does not involve shopping at all. Not even a little bit. Not even on the cheap. Not even good value. Discounted. Great quality. On offer. Their goal of the moment is to remember if they switched off gas at home. To make it to a meeting on time. To remember to pick up the kid from kindergarten, because their wife is doing a training course. Oh, right, cook dinner. Maybe instant noodles? And the main thing: could the Sunderland lads please manage to score just one damn goal? Is that really so much to ask for?
Yes, he happens to be in a shop. A small inconsequential episode in the course of the day. Probably wants to buy something. Or maybe not. Maybe he does not really know. Walks up and down the aisles, thinking about who-knows-what. The noble beauty of the shelves – the shopkeeper’s pride – is wasted on him, as he wanders between them, considering whether to go for noodles after all, or a frozen pizza. And where the hell are the blasted tomatoes. He missed an aisle because there was a palette in the way (in which a five-star cognac might have caught his eye). And finally he gets judgement from a grumpy cashier, because obviously, he should have put the tomatoes on the scale before walking up to a till. It’s just common sense, innit? It happens a hundred times a day. How is it he doesn’t know that? And now a penalty kick, damn, is the ref a complete tool or what? No, I don’t collect points. (Oh for goodness sake!)
These are two different worlds in conflict. All interactions are viewed from two fundamentally different perspectives. Superhuman effort and maximum concentration on the centre of their own universe, in which plenty of the company’s personnel have been investing their attention, diligence, sweat and tears for years, from dawn till dusk or even longer on one side – meeting only the marginal interest of a visitor, for whom the same encounter is but a negligible bit of daily business, a tiny incident among millions, unimportant, marginal, at the very bottom rung of what really matters. A fleeting instant, an indiscernible and insignificant interaction in a pile of one million of this kind that are experienced in a single day. It makes little difference whether we are talking about the daily encounters of a shop owner in Didling with Jimmy the Farmer buying his lunch, or the hugely disproportionate interests of the operator of a giant online plane ticket reservation system and his Frank the User. The concept stays the same.
Our task, as the designer, is to resolve the eternal conflict between the intentions of those who create and run applications, and their users. To search out the point of contact of the interests and objectives of both sides, and to build a way towards it that will be nice and comfortable for both sides.
Sometimes it makes one wonder, though, how within the paradox of perspectives, the two worlds can ever meet at all. Whenever it happens and some common tune is found, we should think it a small miracle. Every discovered link between these two – so contradictory! – interests and goals is incredibly fragile, and must be nourished and developed as if it were a precious treasure.
