A Short Note on What Users Really Want from Technology
I just came off an invigorating conversation with a technology founder.
I asked “what is one key challenge startups face?”
His answer?
“What do user want from my technology”
The core of the matter
That response stuck with me.
Most people would say the hardest part of building a product is figuring out which features to build. But this founder went deeper.
He reminded me: it’s not about features, it is about what users actually need technology to do for them - in the context of their real lives.
A mindset shift away from the feature-centric culture
And yet, many teams remain feature-centric because they are in build-to-deliver mode.
In her book Continuous Discovery Habits, Teresa Torres points out that
…teams continued to be measured by what they delivered, not whether anyone used it or if it created any value for the customer or the business.
The antidote is to shift to an outcome-oriented mindset:
… rather than defining your success by the code that you ship (your output), you define success as the value that code creates for your customers and for your business (the outcomes). Rather than measuring value in features and bells and whistles, we measure success in impact—the impact we have had on our customers’ lives and the impact we have had on the sustainability and growth of our business.
Value is only real if it leads to meaningful outcomes.
For businesses, that might mean increased sales, reduced churn, or deeper user engagement.
For users, it might mean answers to real-life concerns like:
“Can this help me better manage my work-life balance?”
“Will this make my job easier?”
“Can I trust this when I’m stressed?”
Final thoughts
It’s all too tempting to get caught up pushing the technical envelope. But just because something can be built doesn’t mean it should. At the end of the day, what matter is what your technology means to the people who use it.