Your end-users don't care about you

I see product design, at least in the beginning, as a one-sided love story. Our end-users—those mysterious, yet fascinating creatures—simply don't care about us, our work and what we strive to achieve. The human, whose interaction with our app we are occasionally monitoring does not care about your goal of giving her a perfect User Experience. While it'd be nice if it happened, she is just going about her day, multitasking and trying to fulfil her agenda or satisfy her procrastination instincts. This might sounds obvious, but it's a good reminder especially for product people, as we are often too attached to our creations and lose contact with the outside world:

Our end-users, even for their most treasured apps that they look at every day, skip notifications, ignore updates and messages, and barely touch the settings.

According to recent research (source: Mobian), although users have around 80 apps installed on their devices, they actively engage with only about 30 each month and 10 on a daily basis, dedicating nearly 90% of their mobile time to a small group of familiar apps. When our work falls into the remaining 10%—the narrow space reserved for novelty apps—we face an extra challenge: we are asking users to step away from their established routines and venture into unfamiliar territory, where the likelihood of drop-off is understandably high.

The idea for this post came from my own life as a user: feedback forms are everywhere. After a call, after using an app, they pop up left and right, often creating more interruption than value for the sender. Most users simply don't have the time or interest to help improve your product—and assuming otherwise can feel intrusive. If someone leaves your app right after logging in, they're unlikely to respond to feedback requests or be convinced by a "we miss you" email. By the time they leave, their decision is already made. Esteban Kolsky, CEO of ThinkJar, points out that only 1 in 26 unhappy customers actually complain—the rest simply walk away. The real challenge isn’t handling negative feedback; it’s earning enough attention and delivering enough value for the end-user to consider spending 5 min thinking for you how to improve your services.

I once worked on a complicated funnel involving both online and offline steps. Users needed to be drawn to the platform through an app, become interested enough to sign up, answer a few calls, and then make a decision that concerned their health. After that, they would go through several stages until the process was completed. When a colleague wondered why users were dropping off at a particular step and suggested showing them a feedback form, I argued it wouldn’t work. Users weren’t leaving because our UI wasn’t attractive enough, or even because the process was time-consuming—they were hesitating over the decision itself. What if it’s not the right choice? Can I undo it? The stakes were high: it wasn’t about spending fifty euros; it was about committing to a process that could impact their health. The emotional weight of that moment was far beyond what a feedback form could capture.

What should we do instead?

First, make better use of the information already available to you to understand the experience of the end-user as a whole, even details that fall outside of your control. Ask yourself: is the experience you are offering as a whole, good enough? What are the possible obstacles the end-user is facing? Consider all the possibilities, even the ones that have nothing to do with your business. It's ok to use your imagination. Brainstorming and creating hypotheses helps a lot in creating comprehensive user evaluation studies that capture more parameters. Internal stakeholder research can be extremely valuable here. Start with your call center, if you have one; these employees sit on a goldmine of customer insights. Gather their experiences, listen to what customers have shared with them, and even ask for their own subjective impressions. Then, expand your research by interviewing colleagues from other departments.

What I'm saying here is that in every company, there is all around you, a lot of low-hanging fruit to harvest, before you even go the end-user.

Then of course, proceed with user research. There are many awesome books and guidelines on this topic so I won't further discuss it here. What I find extremely insightful though, as a visual person is the creation of visual summaries. Reports are a great artefact of research, but brevity in a visually appealing format, wins every time. Distill the top 20% of your insights into a map. Google for UX maps to get an idea how others have visualised similar insights. In my work with Clariness, I created a Service Design Blueprint. I believ it's one of the greatest tools to capture the holistic end-user experience and how well it is supported.

Second, reduce the user's decision load. Give them clear, reassuring information that helps them take the next step—even if that information doesn't seem to be in your immediate favor. For example, tell them they can get a full refund, or reassure them (with truthful facts, of course) that you stand behind them even in a worst-case scenario. Think of fast fashion’s generous return policies: we comfortably bring a dress home because we know we can easily return it within a month. That lowers the emotional barrier to commitment. In the meantime, as we get familiar with the dress, a positive decision becomes much more likely.

Ultimately, it's not about you. Making an ask to the user before delivering value, can result in frustration, aka bad UX!

It’s about showing up for users—quietly and with humility. Your app might be only a small part of their day, but if you ease a burden, lower a barrier, or make a moment smoother, you’re already doing something right. Sooner or later, users will reward you with their attention—and that speaks louder than any feedback form ever could.