14 Tips For Building Truly Meaningful Tech Users Will Love

Innovation 14 Tips For Building Truly Meaningful Tech Users Will Love Expert Panel® Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Jul 8, 2022, 08:15am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In addition to finding success in the market, most tech companies want to build tech that makes a truly positive difference in users’ lives.

There’s satisfaction in knowing that you’ve helped people save time or money, minimize stress, help themselves or others or simply enjoy using the product you’ve created. And obviously, technology that has a real impact is also the technology that’s more likely to succeed in the marketplace. Knowing that they’re making a positive difference can also inspire your team members, igniting their passion and creativity and further driving success for your users and your organization—it’s definitely a win-win proposition.

Here, 14 members of Forbes Technology Council share tips to help technology companies create truly meaningful tech. Members of Forbes Technology Council offer tips for building truly meaningful tech users will love. Photos courtesy of the individual members.

1. Be Customer-Centric Taking a customer-centric approach is the key to creating meaningful tech that will make a positive impact. Every tech solution being created should improve a stagnant process or provide a more seamless customer experience, whether it’s online or offline.

– Dave Brune , Cover Genius 2. Define The Problem And Those Who Need The Solution Before you build a new technology, ask yourself what problem it solves and who is going to use it. You should have a very clear and compelling answer for both of those questions as well as an idea of how you are making a solution that somehow improves what is currently available in the market.

– Mikael Berner , Edison Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event 3. Have Empathy For Your Users Understand people’s real problems, and have empathy for them.

Design technology to reflect the various different needs and use cases of your developers, business partners, end users and the surrounding community. Don’t trust the numbers too much; instead, have an actual conversation with users to find out what job they’re actually trying to do, and solve for that. – Jason Harmon , Stoplight 4.

Stay Curious When you’re in a business that relies on customer use, you have to invest time and effort into listening to what your customers have to say about the technology, their needs and their vision for how to meet those needs. Part of building valuable tech is to embrace the idea that you’re a learning organization. And the only way to remain that way is by staying curious and continuing to listen to your customers.

– Andreas Pettersson , Arcules 5. Work To Eliminate Day-To-Day Friction Tech is most meaningful when it fits seamlessly into a user’s existing flow. Any new software or gadget should remove friction from their day-to-day routine and give them more space to concentrate on what truly matters to them.

The best tech is the tool you didn’t realize you needed until you could no longer live without it. – Jacob Waern , eduMe 6. Give Users The Data They Need To Make Informed Decisions Prioritize providing end-to-end analytics to your users for the utmost transparency.

Users can make more informed decisions and consider larger industry shifts with more transparent data. Bonus points if you develop a holistic, on-platform model where information is available to users all in one place. – Kristin Savilia , JOOR 7.

Determine What Customers Really Need, Not Just What They Want You can’t just ask customers what they want. Often, what they identify as the problem is not the whole picture; it’s just a portion of the real issue. It’s best to get a wider view from multiple customers and potential customers and then determine what will best solve the issue.

Fixing the root cause is much more beneficial than patching a symptom. – Laureen Knudsen , Broadcom 8. Think In Terms Of The Full Ecosystem Many tech builders focus on what problem is being solved with their solution.

Meaningful tech should be designed with the entire ecosystem in mind—one isolated problem may not require a tech solution. In healthcare, meaningful tech should add value for patients and care providers. Focus on overall value with tech, and the right problems to solve will reveal themselves.

– Trisha Swift , PricewaterhouseCoopers 9. Share Your And Your Customers’ Stories Sometimes, the truly meaningful tech is already created. It’s the leader’s role to inspire the team to see how their tech is making a positive difference.

Bring a customer into the office and hear their story of how they use your tech and how it benefits their day-to-day life. Tell the story of how your company began and the problems and historical perspectives that shaped your current offerings. – Joe Varacalli , SenSource Inc.

10. Seek Feedback From Smaller Organizations If you’re an enterprise seller, set aside time to work with smaller, more agile organizations. Building high-touch, low-cost engagements with small to midsize enterprises won’t dramatically increase your bottom line, but it will give you invaluable feedback, as smaller organizations will want to squeeze every ounce of value from your product.

This feedback will help you design more meaningful tech for everyone. – Lewis Wynne-Jones , ThinkData Works 11. Collect Information For Personalization Any tech that personalizes the customer experience creates stickiness in the product.

In addition to the demographics shared voluntarily by customers, most products capture customer interaction data. This is extremely valuable for designing a customer experience that engages the customer more, addresses their pain points proactively and nudges them to take the right path to achieve their objective. – Deviprasad Thrivikraman Pillai , Techvantage Analytics 12.

Look For Unbiased Confirmation Either create a minimum viable product or find unbiased potential customers who can verify the need for the technology you’re contemplating. You, your friends and your family are biased and will often not speak the thoughts of your potential customers. Creating an MVP or just finding potential customers and asking them about the technology would be a great way to verify the need for it.

– Arturs Kruze , Magebit 13. Share The Good You’re Doing Meaningful tech doesn’t only relate to the tangible product or service of a company. These days, people want to know that the brands they’re buying from are doing good things.

This means putting corporate philanthropy, community engagement and positive employment practices front and center for your customers to see. If they love your company ethos, your products are automatically more meaningful. – Husein Sharaf , Cloudforce 14.

First, Become Profitable Create a profitable business model. In a competitive world, a company that controls its own destiny financially will be able to make the biggest impact on its customers and its employees. – Sayer Martin , Conga Check out my website .

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