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Comment by paulojreis | Hacker News Reader

> I guess it is easier, and more enjoyable, to design and build things that seem useful,

I agree with this. We (IT people) are so self-centred that it hurts. :) We do "everything" - we "entertain" ourselves with new approaches, frameworks, management ideas - except actually "talking" to and "knowing" our users, their life ands true needs.

It's particularly sad, at least for me, to see UX also being "shaped" like this. We can get essay-like posts on building an icon family, yet it's hard to find good content regarding how company X got to know their users and build what they really wanted.

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Most large corporations including Google, Apple, Intel, etc. have an entire department of designers and social scientists (mainly anthropologists) who do ethnographic studies, user studies, etc. in order to understand their customers, new markets, etc. It's really only the startup world that puts less emphasis on user research, but that's in large part because it's resource intensive to do so and many companies have shown that they were able to succeed without it. As startups grow larger and the market more saturated, they must shift from "scratch your own itch" to "user-centered" in order to grow and stay competitive.

Alas, because the startup scene is overwhelmingly centered in the Bay Area and is dominated by white upper-middle-class American men, white-upper-middle-class American male itches get scratched first.

Do you have an example of a white-upper-middle-class American male itch?

Food / grocery delivery startups seem to be intended for upper middle class people only.

I just Googled "biggest startups". First result: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-startups-that-launched-s.... Mostly good examples with a couple of exceptions.

Oh god. Manpacks and The Dollar Shave Club are so hetero-white-male it hurts.

>> yet it's hard to find good content regarding how company X got to know their users and build what they really wanted.

Isn't all the work by steve-blank and the lean-startup deals with it?

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