Creating Passionate Users The hi-res user experience - The Diigo Meta page

• 12 Apr 09
  

  Vincent Chan
  • If we want passionate users, we might not have to change our products--we have to change how our users experience them. And that change does not necessarily come from product design, development, and especially marketing. It comes from helping users learn.
  • And the change happens not within the product, but between the user's ears. The more you help your users learn and improve, the greater the chance that they'll become passionate.
  • 13 more annotations...
  • • They knew enough to appreciate and enjoy subtleties that are virtually inaccessible to everyone else.
    • Of course I don't mean the music technically changes, but if the way we experience it shifts, it is AS IF the music itself shifts.
    • But imagine Joe were to learn the deeper power and subtleties of not just the app itself, but the way in which the app could be used as, say, a modeling and simulation tool. For Joe, now, the software itself has transformed from a spreadsheet tool to a modeling and simulation tool. More importantly, the way Joe thinks as he uses the software also changes.
    • People are not passionate about things they know nothing about. They may be interested. They may spend money. But without the enhanced skill and knowledge that adds resolution, there is no real passion.
    • a passion for one thing can spill over into a passion for life itself. And for many people, the loss of passion/desire for once-loved things is a clear symptom of clinical depression
    • what can you change for people? Or rather, what can you help others change for themselves? How can you increase the resolution of the products and services you offer--without touching the products? That doesn't mean you can take any old piece of crap and by teaching people to become expert, magically transform it into a work of art. But if there's potential for a richer experience--an experience the non-passionate don't see, taste, hear, feel, smell, touch, or ever recognize...why not see if there's a way to help more people experience that?
    • I believe that passion requires learning, and that means we all have to become better "learning experience designers", I'm working on a big "crash course in the latest learning theory" post that summarizes most of the key principles, in one place (with pictures : )
    • But you raise the key points -- for a lot of us, our products aren't the ultimate *destination*, but a means to doing something else that we ARE (or can be) passionate about. 37signals creates products that let users spend more time in flow -- using 37signals software to do something ELSE, which could be the thing they ARE passionate about.
    • some of that passion spills onto the product/tool that allowed you to experience that optimal experience or "flow state".
    • Nikon has an outstanding online photography course (free) to help me kick ass with my new Nikon, but that course teaches me how to be a photography expert, not a *camera* expert. When people are passionate about tools (like cameras, skis, software, learning books), it's because those tools have allowed them to learn/grow/kick-ass doing the REAL thing they're passionate about.
    • That's what's so cool about 37signals stuff--it steps back and lets you do what you're REALLY passionate about. With your example of the resolution list, you're right that in the example you gave it's more about discovery, but discovery is itself a form of learning--in the end, you have more knowledge and/or skills around, say, hacking your life : )
    • if I say that 37signals (or even Nikon) has "passionate users", it's because people are passionate about what they're able to do with the tools 37signals and Nikon provide, rather than passion that's explicity FOR the products themselves. In reality, we don't have to make much of a distinction, though.
    • whatever tool or company helps me do what I REALLY am passionate about, is potentially the object of some of my passion.
• 25 Mar 08
  

  Michael Richards

  business design education leadership learning management marketing technology

• 30 Nov 06
  

  Michael Giles
• 24 Jul 06
  

  Matt Vance

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