And who is the product for?

I used to think that it is right to design the interface for one person (the target audience). So far, I have not encountered a product in which real users and decision-makers are different persons. And this is often the case. These are children’s products (courses, games), and services for work, which are chosen by managers or middle managers, and paid by top managers or company owners.

And then I realized that it is important to keep in mind the goals of at least two audiences if this applies to your product.

What does it mean? It means that you need to take into account the intentions and goals of the people who will work directly on the product. And these are not necessarily buyers. For example, as in the children’s online school — the lessons are bought by parents, and used by children.

Users will make an effort to achieve the business goals of the decision-makers, in my example — the parents — but will secretly try to achieve personal goals. For example, for children, it can be — to feel good, fashionable, cool 😎 .

To make everyone feel good, you will have to take into account the goals of all these people. Eg:

👉🏻for parents — to show their usefulness and cost justification, for children — to reinforce their sense of self-worth and coolness.

👉🏻for the owners of the company, the tool for teamwork should be optimal in terms of price-quality ratio and safeness, not to allow data leakage. For managers, it is clear and convenient, since you need to use it yourself every day and explain to the team how to do it.

The thoughts are inspired by Alan Cooper’s book “About the interface. Fundamentals of Interaction Design”.