The Only Direction

However, even if it is difficult to implement this kind of process in your company and it becomes frustrating and demoralizing, it doesn't mean that it will never happen. The ideas behind user-centered design have been floating around for more than two decades, slowly penetrating even the most user-phobic, inward focused companies. The pressure to create more successful products than your competitor will always be there and user-centered, user research-based methods are one of the best—if not the best—ways to do that. A user-centered company communicates better, makes fewer guesses, solves more pressing problems, and responds better to changes. It is, in short, a company that runs with less friction and a clearer vision.

Such companies may be few today, but there are more of them all the time because there have to be. As the Information Revolution—which only began in earnest in the late 1980s and early 1990s—penetrates societies all over the world, the habits of the Industrial Revolution melt away. With a world where it's no longer necessary to mass-produce and mass-market and mass-distribute products and ideas, it no longer makes sense to think of mass markets. It's no longer necessary to create one solution for everyone based on the limited knowledge of a few. And as economic times get tougher and the bite of competition more painful, companies everywhere learn that good business does not end with the end users of a product or service; it begins with them.