Backward Approach to UX

I recently abandoned a book in which the author referred to the approach to deriving business requirements should be done "from the inside out" - that the operator of a Web site considers their objectives first, and then decides what the site visitor must do to serve their interests. The author's take is that this is an efficient method for determining software requirements, as it eliminates all the "bells and whistles" that are not necessary to develop a site that delivers its core value to the firm that operates it.

Something about this notion strikes me as being fundamentally wrong - or more aptly, everything about this noting strikes me as being completely wrong, and completely backwards from the way the task ought to be done.

I can't argue that a great deal of complexity is added to a development project by the demand for additional "nice to have" features that, while extraneous to the bare-bones functionality, are nonetheless valuable to the user. And especially when it comes to Web sites, where the user has the option of leaving the site and turning to another that better serves their needs, bare-bones functionality is not only insufficient, but detrimental to the long-term success of the site.

Were the same principle applied to any other aspect of business, the result would be disastrous: determining what the company is willing to deliver, then paring away everything else that the customer might want in the name of efficiency, is not an approach that is likely to result in success.

In effect, this advice is merely a rehash of an outdated business model that hearkens from a time when goods were scarce, and the customer had little choice but to accept whatever the (single) provider of a given good or service was willing to provide.

It's simply not suited to a competitive environment, or even a service mentality. Success in online business is not achieved by limiting what the customer is able to do on your site, but in discovering what the customer wants to do, and empowering them do so.

And so, I've no intention of reading any further - but take from the experience one valuable lesson: don't let IT professionals drive user experience design ... they simply do not "get" it.