One of the first things that clients ask us about, in those small talk-filled few minutes before everyone has arrived at the meeting, is our name and what it means. It is kind of a weird name for a technology company, which many people believe is the opposite of human, so we get the curiosity. But, for us, making technology more human is a big part of who we are.
We’re Mutually Human
Our name signifies one of our core values: be human. What it means for us to “be human” is to always understand that we are working with, and working for, people that are human and have good intentions.
It is also a constant reminder to ourselves that we need to work hard to make technology more human. We’re not building technology for technology’s sake. We’re building technology for people.
One of the things that we pride ourselves on the most is our ability to bring a human aspect to building technology so that our clients feel comfortable with the business decisions being made and understand the reasons behind them. The last thing we want is our clients to feel pressured into saying yes to a decision they don’t understand.
Making Technology for People
The first thing that happens when you make technology for humans, and not just to build something cool, is to understand the unmet needs and challenges from the start. People practicing UX design know at the start they need to “discover” information and insights about the target audience. What makes our process different is that we really pull that discovery mentality through the whole design process so we’re always making user-centered decisions.
There are a couple of ways we do this:
- User research data
- Having conversations
- Usage stats
- Developing personas
- Putting ourselves in the user’s shoes.
There is a misconception that all user research is expensive and time-consuming. That’s just not true. There’s a huge continuum of what you can do to discover some of the unmet needs and challenges of your market, and much of it can be done quickly and inexpensively.
One thing we hear a lot of, and that we experience as well, is confusing insights, gut reaction, and instinct for research. As experts, it’s easy to believe we know what’s going on but there’s no substitute for putting something in front of real people because our perspective can be so skewed from our in-depth knowledge of the process and product
At the end of the day, the important thing is to take the time to do some user research at the start. We have found that it will save time, money, and energy in the long run.
As humans, we want to make sure we are investing our very best into our clients and our process. If you want to learn a little bit more about how we aim to make technology more human, check out our latest podcast episode here.
