Buyers Change with the Context
Have you ever fallen into the trap that you lump all buyers (or web users – people who buy with time) into one basket and treat them as a generic entity? Its easy to do and we probably all generalise unconsciously to some extent. As humans this is how our minds synthesise the complex world around us. But as professional designers we need to understand when we’re doing this we’re wrong. We’re punch-us-in-the-nose wrong!
Not only aren’t all buyers the same – a single buyer isn’t always the same buyer. Now that may be a new idea to some people so consider what I said for a minute. When you walk around as a buyer you are not always the same buyer. In fact, as the context changes your intentions, reactions and perceptions change too. Seriously, when you get your head around that small anomoly things can get interesting.
Take a walk with me for a moment. I’m off Christmas shopping and I buy a toy for a child. What do you think my expectations are for this experience? How much money am I prepared to spend? Is brand important to me? What amount of time am I willing to invest? I’m a buyer of children’s toys. Then I leave the toy store and enter the bank because I need more cash. As I do so my buyer hat changes from the toy store buyer context to the get-money-out-of-the-bank context. My expectations change, the amount of crap I’m willing to tolerate changes, the relationship to the money transaction alters and so does the time I’m willing to invest. I leave the bank and go to a pub to buy a few beers. Again, with the change of context the buyer behaviour and associated paradigm changes along with it.
Given that we’re now aware – how does this inform our work as web designers? I’m not entirely sure. But we have to be able to get our head around who our buyers are and the context they’re responding to… a buyer isn’t just a buyer. A buyer on a desktop computer moves to the iPhone and his context changes… his buyer hat alters to something quite different. His task may have been to order restaurant tickets… as the buyer moves through the door of the restaurant he changes again. Just like somebody on holiday is a different buyer to somebody who is on their way home from work; we can be both buyers.
Designing solutions for human beings isn’t about making generic containers with a one-size-fits-all strategy. For heaven’s sake, one-size-doesn’t-fit-one very snugly. Maybe we need to spend more time thinking about the context of a buyer… and build solutions from there.
