Beware the Expert Fallacy

The fact that the relationship between business and technology is so contentious at times is due to behaviors on both the business and technology sides.  I’ve been writing mainly about the technology side primarily due to my familiarity with it, and not due to its relative importance.  If business and technology are to work together as one team, though, business leaders need to change too.

A friend of mine told me of a conversation they had with a co-worker that exemplifies a serious problem in the business community when it comes to technology.  In this scenario, person #1 (whom I’ll call "John") hired an outside firm to redesign a website, and person #2 (whom I’ll call "Jane") was looking at the results.

John: I’d like you to take a look at the design for our new web site.

Jane: I’d love to, our current site could use a new look.

John: Here it is.  I think they did a great job, didn’t they?

Jane: Yes they did.  I like the colors and it’s much easier to read than our old site.  I have a question, though.  This new design put a secondary product line under a different tab.  I know that’s technically correct, but are any of our users going to be able to find it there?

John: Don’t think about it too much.  This design was created by experts. [Emphasis added.]

I come across John’s attitude all too often.  Technologists are often experts in technology, but they too often know little about your particular business, or in this case, they know too little about marketing.  I wasn’t involved in the design process of this particular project, but I’m reasonably certain that the design team created a site using an existing color palette and the design specifications given to them, but didn’t give much thought into how people would want to use the site.  The result was a site organization that made sense to the business team but not to the end user.

I can tell you from personal experience that Jane’s observations are not unique.  The design team created a mediocre design, but why didn’t John say something?  Essentially, John put too much responsibility on the technology team to build a business product.  Technology can be confusing at times for anyone, so trusting the technology team to technology seems like a safe thing to do.  The problem is that while the design team knew the technology, they didn’t know the business.  In this case, no one, neither the design team nor the business team, was really focusing on the user’s experience.  Because the user’s experience was overlooked, user satisfaction will almost certainly suffer.

The solution is straightforward, though not simple: the business team must not view technology as its own area, but instead integrate the thoughts on technology into the thoughts about the business.  Any software that is created should involve as much communication as possible between the technology team, business team, and a representative sample of end users.  By working together, and not treating technologists as experts in anything that seems technology related, businesses can create software applications that are a pleasure to use.