With any product, the goal of a good designer is to anticipate and meet the needs of the user, since it is the user who holds purchasing power.  It is difficult (or impossible) to fully anticipate what a user will do with a product—think of the warning labels on products like irons, which may seem ridiculous (i.e., “Do not use the iron on clothes that you are wearing.”) but which show how far companies must go to protect themselves from the “ingenuity” of users.  However, it is often user manipulation of a product that can lead to improvements in the technology, which is why so many companies clamor for consumer opinions and ideas about how their products can be used.

Steven Johnson, in his article “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live,” describes end-user manipulation of technology in this way:  “It’s like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and seeing that your customers have of their own accord figured out a way to turn it into a microwave.”  There are two levels of value in this scenario:  value was created with the original product, and value was added when it was manipulated for other uses.  With technology, the magnitude of brainpower held by users is a resource, and whether their products are physical items or services like Twitter, companies are tapping into this wealth of user ingenuity.

Apple is one example. The iPhone and iPod Touch have become popular because the physical interface of these products allows for increased and unique interaction by the user (think of the maze game featured in the early Touch commercials that utilized the movement of the device to roll the ball through the maze).  The initial value of the product was strong, but Apple added to that value by taking advantage of the brainpower of users.  They created the iPhone Developer Program, which invites users to create their own applications to sell in Apple’s App Store.  While Apple has maintained strict controls over which applications are sold, many individual designers and technology-design firms are competing in this market, no matter how silly their applications may seem.  This is an incredibly smart move by Apple:  they don’t have to invest in designers to create these additional products, and they still get to take 30 percent of the profits of these applications.  Their only costs are operating the App Store and paying a team to make decisions on marketable applications and run the store’s interface.  For a very low overhead, they are reaping a huge profit by utilizing public brainpower.

Other technologies are following suit.  Delicious.com, a social-bookmarking site, has an area where users can submit their ideas and suggestions for how to improve the service, and Delicious team members respond to these user posts.  By creating this space for user feedback, Delicious is acknowledging the value of user input and improving its services by listening to the consumer.

So why are we talking about this? Part of technological literacy is realizing that the developers aren’t infallible. They don’t know all the unmet needs that a new technology could meet with a little user manipulation. Everyone benefits when there is a relationship between the user and the developer.