[译]以用户为导向的创新并不能带来突破性的进展；看看苹果和宜家就知道了。
一个任职于上海大众设计战略部门的同学曾经跟我聊过用户研究这个事。期间一句话让我印象深刻：“那些做用户研究的公司是非常扯淡的，我们请他们来给我们做市场及用户研究，基本都是在我们把设计策略及方向甚至产品都已经定出来之后，我们只是想让他们帮我们验证一下，至于结果，我们并不看中。我们绝对不会让一家设计公司做的用户研究报告来决定我们的设计战略方向。”对于大众这个来自于德国的汽车品牌，我想许多人还是很喜欢的。我觉得可以用几个关键词来形容：朴实、低调、高品质、个性。许多人会对前面三个词语没有异议，但对第四个词“个性”肯定会有许多人持不同意见，我想大众的个性正是它一直坚持它自己的品牌形象和造型特点。比如近几年，大家会发觉许多韩系车和日系车都会在造型上（尤其是腰线）出现很多曲线，而大众总体上却依然是硬朗的风格。这是为什么呢？那是因为大众坚持他们所坚持的，他们并不会被别人影响，而为什么那么多其它的汽车品牌出现如此相似的情况？以下这篇文章或许能给你带来一点思考。（译者语）原文作者是Jens Martin Skibsted和Rasmus Bech Hansen。Jens Martin Skibste是知名品牌KiBiSi的联合创始人。 Rasmus Bech Hansen是品牌与设计顾问公司Kontrapunkt的高级合伙人。
以下文译文由任好好翻译，任好好校对，感谢翔子提供资料。
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Companies should lead their users, not the other way around.
The user is king. It’s a phrase that’s repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric. But there’s a problem: It doesn’t work. Here’s the truth: Great brands lead users, not the other way around.
公司就应该引导他们的用户，而非其它的方式。
用户是上帝。这句话被当作咒语一样的话一遍又一遍地被重复着：公司必须以用户为中心。但问题是，即使如些也未见得有效果。还有一条真理：伟大的品牌引导用户，而非其它的方式。
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The Apple and IKEA way
苹果和宜家的方法
Take Apple. One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love.”
以苹果为例。某个入夜的晚上，我问一些工作于苹果设计团队的朋友对于以用户为中心的设计的看法。他们的答案让人出乎意料：这完全是扯淡，是为了兜售他们的咨询项目而吹嘘出来的，这些东西能给那些没有信心的管理者带来错误的幻觉。在苹果，我们从来不浪费时间去问用户，我们通过创造人们会喜欢的伟大的产品来建立品牌。
Another hyper-growth brand, IKEA, has the same belief. One of us had the privilege of working closely with IKEA’s global brand and design leaders; at IKEA the unspoken philosophy is: “We show people the way.” IKEA designers don’t use user studies or user insights to create their products. When I asked them why, they said “We tried and it didn’t work.”
另一个快速成长的品牌宜家，也拥有同样的理念。我们当中有人很荣幸在工作上与宜家的全球品牌和设计领导者走得很近；在宜家有一个默认的哲学：“我们只展现我们的方式给别人”。宜家的设计师从来不依据用户研究成果或用户的见解来设计他们的产品。我问为什么，他们说“我们试了但没有效果”。
Of course, neither Apple nor IKEA will say this publicly since they are both extremely closed companies and would risk offending users (and the design community) by speaking out against user-centeredness.
And since no one will speak up, the false value of the user-as-leader has spread.
当然，不管是苹果还是宜家都没有对外公开表示他们抵制以用户为中心的这个观点，因为这两家对外界来说都是相对封闭的公司，并且也是要冒着触犯用户的风险。
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Be a Visionary
作一个有远见的人
If users can’t tell a company what to do, what should companies do instead? The best brands are all guided by a clear vision for the world, a unique set of values, and a culture that makes them truly unique and that no user insights could ever change.
They define their own rules.The vision must come first. This could come from the client, designers, a team, an organization, or a design leader. It needs to be clear and applied consistently over the project.
如果用户不告诉企业如何去做，企业会怎么办？优秀的品牌都会有一个明确的世界观、独特的价值观和与众不同的文化而这些并不会受到用户意见的影响，并依此来运营品牌。
他们定义他们自己的规则。第一步就是制定远景。这可以来自于客户，设计师们，团队，组织或设计主管。远景必须明确并且始终如一的落实到项目中。
Create an icon
创立一种符号
The same goes for truly extraordinary products, the icons of the world. There are three types of iconic products and none of them are made through user-driven design.
真正与众不同的产品都是一样的，它们都是这个世界上的一种符号。目前有三种符号化的产品的类型，但没有一种是通过用户驱动设计而生产的。
democratic Icons/民主化符号
These could also be termed “slow” icons. These products take a long time to become icons. They are usually of plain or simple design, created to fulfill a certain function, such as the paper clip, tea bags, potato peelers, and the mailbox, all of which are valued for their functionality, rather than their aesthetics. Over time, users become attached to them and eventually, these products gain so much meaning that they start to gain cultural currency and layers of connotations. These icons are generally easily available.
这可以被称之为“慢”符号。这些产品需要很长的时间才慢慢变成符号。他们通常是普通的或简单的设计，为了特定的功能而诞生，就如订书机、茶包、土豆削皮器和邮箱，所有这些产品的价值都体现在他们的功能性上，而非它们的形式。慢慢地，用户变得越来越离不开它们，最终，这些产品有了许多重要含义并开始形成文化价值和内涵意义。这些符号会轻易地被广泛使用。
Design Icons/设计符号
This is when a familiar product such as a chair or a car whose design is particularly shape-driven will get a makeover, with an innovative design that alters the look of this familiar object. The first reaction of the mass audience is often negative, claiming the object “looks weird.” But over time, the audience adapts to the change and comes to love the product for its personality; it attains cultural relevance and becomes iconic. Hans Wegner’s Y-chair and the Aeron chair are typical examples of design classics that were adopted late.
设计符号就是那些设计是以造型为驱动的为人熟知的产品如一把椅子或一辆车将会得到改进，这种改进就是这些为人熟知的产品伴随着创新设计所带来的造型改变。对于这种设计符号，许多受众的第一反应通常是消极的，报怨这些新造型看起来“很怪异”。但是随着时间推移，这些受众逐渐适应了这些改变并且因为这些造型特点而喜欢上了产品；这些产品的造型获得了用户在文化上的认同而逐渐符号化。
Instant Icons/即时符号
Instant may be familiar products or offer a familiar function like the design icons, but something about their design that make them essentially new products. They open new markets and create new demand—just think of the Polaroid camera, the Sony Walkman, the Flip Camera, the Blackberry, and the Apple iPod.
即时符号或许可以是一种为了熟知的产品或功能，有点类似于设计符号，但是它们的设计使它们从本质上成为新产品。它们开创了新的市场，迎合了人们新的需求——就如宝莉莱相机、索尼的随身听、翻转相机、黑莓和苹果的iPod。
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Why it’s harmful to listen to the users
为什么说听从用户没有好处
But can’t you create radical new products based on what the user wants? Why do the most innovative brands not care about what users want?
为什么不能基于用户的期望来创造革命性的新产品？为什么最具创新力的品牌都不太关注用户想要什么？
Users insights can’t predict future demand
用户的见解并不能预测未来的需求
The demand for something fundamentally new is completely unpredictable. Even the users themselves have no idea if they will like an entirely product before they start using it (and maybe, only after years of use). Demand for something new cannot be predicted.
The world is driven forward by improbable, high-impact events, both negative and positive: September 11th, the subprime crisis, or the explosive rise of social media. These events completely changed the world and were difficult to predict—perhaps a few individuals saw a glimpse of the future, but the majority of people were totally unprepared. It’s the same with new products and brands—you can’t foresee what will be successful.
对一些新事物本质上的需求并不能完全被预测。在用户使用未来的新产品之前，甚至连他们自己都对这个产品没有概念。对于新东西的需求并不能被预测。
消极性和积极性并存的被认为不太可能发生的、产生巨大影响的事件驱动着这个世界向前发展：如911事件，资贷危机，社交媒体的爆发式增长。 这些事件彻底地改变了世界并很难被预测——可能极小部分人察觉到了未来的变化，但是大部分人完全没有准备好世界的改变。对于新产品和品牌也是一样——你不能预测未来成功的是哪一个。
This is a very scary thought for most business leaders, but the good news is that there are ways to deal with it. All creative industries are dependent on the constant launch of radically new products. And the music, movie, publishing, and fashion industries have tried to find stability in a sea of unpredictability by constantly putting out new products and seeing what sticks.
They have learned to hire the best and the most creative people in the world (whether it’s directors, music producers, or authors), worked hard to launch a broad portfolio of products and to speed up the time it takes their products to reach the market.
这对许多商业领秀来讲是一个可怕的想法，但是还好有办法来解决。持续不断地推出革命性的新产品是所有创新型企业赖以生存的策略。音乐、电影、出版和时尚产业已经尝试了用不断推出新产品进行探索的方法，以期望在不可预见的商业浪潮中寻找稳定点。
他们已经学会雇用世界上最优秀、最具创造力的人（不管是导演、音乐制作人或作家）来为他们工作，努力开发涉及面广的设计作品并加速推进产品进入市场。
User-centered processes stifles creativity
以用户为中心的流程会扼杀创造力
Could you imagine Steven Spielberg starting out new film projects with intense user studies and insights? Not really. There is a reason why Spielberg and all other profoundly creative people don’t work in a user-centered way. The user-centered process is created as linear rational process for innovation and that’s why it’s so popular among managers.
你能想象斯皮尔伯格是带着对用户深入的研究及用户的见解着手开始一个电影制作吗？他肯定不是这样的。斯皮尔伯格和其它以创造性见长的人为什么不用以用户为中心的方式开展工作的原因就是：为了创新的以用户为中心的流程是一种理性的线性过程，这同时也是它受到管理者喜欢的原因。
But as studies of successful innovations and creativity shows, creating something new is a chaotic, unpredictable, frustrating, and very, very hard process. And most of all, it’s the result of extraordinary efforts and visions of a few extremely talented people. These creative people will feel limited and bored, not inspired, if they have to start out a creative process with a lot of user knowledge. Their inspiration comes from a multiple of sources and is highly individual.
Creating a formula will always be in vain and won’t result in something really new.
但是对成功的创新进行研究结果来看，创造一样全新的东西是一种无秩序的、不可预测的、让人摸不着头脑的且非常非常难的过程。大多数创新都是由小部分极具天赋的人用他们对未来的远景及超乎常人的努力所带来的成果。如果这些具有创造力的人从了解许多用户知识开始创新过程，那么他们会觉得受到了限制且没有活力，也就不会有灵感。他们的灵感来自于各种各样的资源并且是高度个性化的。
创造一种程序化的方式通常是无用的也不会带来真正的创新。
User focus makes companies miss out on disruptive innovations
用户焦点使企业错失颠覆性的创新
Focusing on users will lead companies to make incremental innovations that typically tend to make the products more expensive and complicated and ironically, in the long run, less competitive.
Radical innovations typically gain traction in the margins of a market and the majority of customers (at least in the beginning) will dislike change. If a company bases their decisions on user studies, they will conclude that most radically new innovations are not rational to pursue. This often means that companies miss out on new growth markets that can end up eventually eliminating their business.
聚焦于用户会让企业做渐进式创新，这种渐进式的创新通常也会渐渐的使产品越来越昂贵和复杂，相反地，从长远来看，也就越来越没有竞争力。
革命性的创新通常会在市场边缘受到阻力，大部分客户（至少在开始的时候）不会喜欢改变。如果一个公司所做出的决定是基于对用户的研究，他们会得出以下结论：大部分的革命性的创新是不会受理性购买者所喜欢的。这也通常意味着那些公司错失了市场的新的增长点，最终这也会结束他们的市场业务。
The same logic applies to branding. A company will always go for very small incremental changes in their branding efforts if they base their decision on user input. In the short run, minor changes pleases their users. In the long run, it means the big brand will be run over by bolder, often smaller, and more innovative brands that redefine an industry.
对于品牌，也可以用同样的逻辑去思考。一个企业如果基于用户而做出决定，那们它们在塑造他们的品牌时总是只做细微的渐进式创新。在短时间内，这种细微的改变能够取悦他们的用户。但从长远来看，也意味着这个大的品牌会变得越来越没有活力和影响力，那么一些更具创新力的品牌将重新定义产业。
User-led design leads to sameness
用户为引导的设计将导致雷同
Even if user insights were useful, it isn’t a competitive advantage. Even the most advanced users studies are now widely available. Most companies have conducted these studies and they have had the same insights about their users as you have. Therefore, product strategies based on studies will tend to be similar to their competitors. The result is a sea of sameness.
This isn’t a theoretical point—most industries are characterized by very similar products and brand positions, partially because companies have listened too much to their users. Branding is really about differentiation, about standing out. User centeredness leads to the opposite, similarity.
It’s time for brands to step up and trust themselves again.
即使用户的见解是有用的，那么它也不具有竞争优势。即使最超前的用户研究成果现在也已经广泛的被应用。许多公司公司已经应用了这些用户研究成果，他们所得出的见解也是你所拥有的。因此，基于用户研究的产品策略将会使一个企业的产品与他们的竞争对于雷同。结果就是市场上的产品千篇一律。
这不仅仅是理论观点，许多企业的特点就是他们之间的产品与品牌定位非常相似，部分的原因是因为企业过于听从于用户。品牌塑造真正目的是与众不同，鹤立鸡群。以用户为中心却走向了另一个方向，同质化。
对企业而言，是时候建立与众不同的品牌了，且再次相信自己。
以下文译文由任好好翻译，任好好校对，感谢翔子提供资料。
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Companies should lead their users, not the other way around.
The user is king. It’s a phrase that’s repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric. But there’s a problem: It doesn’t work. Here’s the truth: Great brands lead users, not the other way around.
公司就应该引导他们的用户，而非其它的方式。
用户是上帝。这句话被当作咒语一样的话一遍又一遍地被重复着：公司必须以用户为中心。但问题是，即使如些也未见得有效果。还有一条真理：伟大的品牌引导用户，而非其它的方式。
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The Apple and IKEA way
苹果和宜家的方法
Take Apple. One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love.”
以苹果为例。某个入夜的晚上，我问一些工作于苹果设计团队的朋友对于以用户为中心的设计的看法。他们的答案让人出乎意料：这完全是扯淡，是为了兜售他们的咨询项目而吹嘘出来的，这些东西能给那些没有信心的管理者带来错误的幻觉。在苹果，我们从来不浪费时间去问用户，我们通过创造人们会喜欢的伟大的产品来建立品牌。
Another hyper-growth brand, IKEA, has the same belief. One of us had the privilege of working closely with IKEA’s global brand and design leaders; at IKEA the unspoken philosophy is: “We show people the way.” IKEA designers don’t use user studies or user insights to create their products. When I asked them why, they said “We tried and it didn’t work.”
另一个快速成长的品牌宜家，也拥有同样的理念。我们当中有人很荣幸在工作上与宜家的全球品牌和设计领导者走得很近；在宜家有一个默认的哲学：“我们只展现我们的方式给别人”。宜家的设计师从来不依据用户研究成果或用户的见解来设计他们的产品。我问为什么，他们说“我们试了但没有效果”。
Of course, neither Apple nor IKEA will say this publicly since they are both extremely closed companies and would risk offending users (and the design community) by speaking out against user-centeredness.
And since no one will speak up, the false value of the user-as-leader has spread.
当然，不管是苹果还是宜家都没有对外公开表示他们抵制以用户为中心的这个观点，因为这两家对外界来说都是相对封闭的公司，并且也是要冒着触犯用户的风险。
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Be a Visionary
作一个有远见的人
If users can’t tell a company what to do, what should companies do instead? The best brands are all guided by a clear vision for the world, a unique set of values, and a culture that makes them truly unique and that no user insights could ever change.
They define their own rules.The vision must come first. This could come from the client, designers, a team, an organization, or a design leader. It needs to be clear and applied consistently over the project.
如果用户不告诉企业如何去做，企业会怎么办？优秀的品牌都会有一个明确的世界观、独特的价值观和与众不同的文化而这些并不会受到用户意见的影响，并依此来运营品牌。
他们定义他们自己的规则。第一步就是制定远景。这可以来自于客户，设计师们，团队，组织或设计主管。远景必须明确并且始终如一的落实到项目中。
Create an icon
创立一种符号
The same goes for truly extraordinary products, the icons of the world. There are three types of iconic products and none of them are made through user-driven design.
真正与众不同的产品都是一样的，它们都是这个世界上的一种符号。目前有三种符号化的产品的类型，但没有一种是通过用户驱动设计而生产的。
democratic Icons/民主化符号
These could also be termed “slow” icons. These products take a long time to become icons. They are usually of plain or simple design, created to fulfill a certain function, such as the paper clip, tea bags, potato peelers, and the mailbox, all of which are valued for their functionality, rather than their aesthetics. Over time, users become attached to them and eventually, these products gain so much meaning that they start to gain cultural currency and layers of connotations. These icons are generally easily available.
这可以被称之为“慢”符号。这些产品需要很长的时间才慢慢变成符号。他们通常是普通的或简单的设计，为了特定的功能而诞生，就如订书机、茶包、土豆削皮器和邮箱，所有这些产品的价值都体现在他们的功能性上，而非它们的形式。慢慢地，用户变得越来越离不开它们，最终，这些产品有了许多重要含义并开始形成文化价值和内涵意义。这些符号会轻易地被广泛使用。
Design Icons/设计符号
This is when a familiar product such as a chair or a car whose design is particularly shape-driven will get a makeover, with an innovative design that alters the look of this familiar object. The first reaction of the mass audience is often negative, claiming the object “looks weird.” But over time, the audience adapts to the change and comes to love the product for its personality; it attains cultural relevance and becomes iconic. Hans Wegner’s Y-chair and the Aeron chair are typical examples of design classics that were adopted late.
设计符号就是那些设计是以造型为驱动的为人熟知的产品如一把椅子或一辆车将会得到改进，这种改进就是这些为人熟知的产品伴随着创新设计所带来的造型改变。对于这种设计符号，许多受众的第一反应通常是消极的，报怨这些新造型看起来“很怪异”。但是随着时间推移，这些受众逐渐适应了这些改变并且因为这些造型特点而喜欢上了产品；这些产品的造型获得了用户在文化上的认同而逐渐符号化。
Instant Icons/即时符号
Instant may be familiar products or offer a familiar function like the design icons, but something about their design that make them essentially new products. They open new markets and create new demand—just think of the Polaroid camera, the Sony Walkman, the Flip Camera, the Blackberry, and the Apple iPod.
即时符号或许可以是一种为了熟知的产品或功能，有点类似于设计符号，但是它们的设计使它们从本质上成为新产品。它们开创了新的市场，迎合了人们新的需求——就如宝莉莱相机、索尼的随身听、翻转相机、黑莓和苹果的iPod。
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Why it’s harmful to listen to the users
为什么说听从用户没有好处
But can’t you create radical new products based on what the user wants? Why do the most innovative brands not care about what users want?
为什么不能基于用户的期望来创造革命性的新产品？为什么最具创新力的品牌都不太关注用户想要什么？
Users insights can’t predict future demand
用户的见解并不能预测未来的需求
The demand for something fundamentally new is completely unpredictable. Even the users themselves have no idea if they will like an entirely product before they start using it (and maybe, only after years of use). Demand for something new cannot be predicted.
The world is driven forward by improbable, high-impact events, both negative and positive: September 11th, the subprime crisis, or the explosive rise of social media. These events completely changed the world and were difficult to predict—perhaps a few individuals saw a glimpse of the future, but the majority of people were totally unprepared. It’s the same with new products and brands—you can’t foresee what will be successful.
对一些新事物本质上的需求并不能完全被预测。在用户使用未来的新产品之前，甚至连他们自己都对这个产品没有概念。对于新东西的需求并不能被预测。
消极性和积极性并存的被认为不太可能发生的、产生巨大影响的事件驱动着这个世界向前发展：如911事件，资贷危机，社交媒体的爆发式增长。 这些事件彻底地改变了世界并很难被预测——可能极小部分人察觉到了未来的变化，但是大部分人完全没有准备好世界的改变。对于新产品和品牌也是一样——你不能预测未来成功的是哪一个。
This is a very scary thought for most business leaders, but the good news is that there are ways to deal with it. All creative industries are dependent on the constant launch of radically new products. And the music, movie, publishing, and fashion industries have tried to find stability in a sea of unpredictability by constantly putting out new products and seeing what sticks.
They have learned to hire the best and the most creative people in the world (whether it’s directors, music producers, or authors), worked hard to launch a broad portfolio of products and to speed up the time it takes their products to reach the market.
这对许多商业领秀来讲是一个可怕的想法，但是还好有办法来解决。持续不断地推出革命性的新产品是所有创新型企业赖以生存的策略。音乐、电影、出版和时尚产业已经尝试了用不断推出新产品进行探索的方法，以期望在不可预见的商业浪潮中寻找稳定点。
他们已经学会雇用世界上最优秀、最具创造力的人（不管是导演、音乐制作人或作家）来为他们工作，努力开发涉及面广的设计作品并加速推进产品进入市场。
User-centered processes stifles creativity
以用户为中心的流程会扼杀创造力
Could you imagine Steven Spielberg starting out new film projects with intense user studies and insights? Not really. There is a reason why Spielberg and all other profoundly creative people don’t work in a user-centered way. The user-centered process is created as linear rational process for innovation and that’s why it’s so popular among managers.
你能想象斯皮尔伯格是带着对用户深入的研究及用户的见解着手开始一个电影制作吗？他肯定不是这样的。斯皮尔伯格和其它以创造性见长的人为什么不用以用户为中心的方式开展工作的原因就是：为了创新的以用户为中心的流程是一种理性的线性过程，这同时也是它受到管理者喜欢的原因。
But as studies of successful innovations and creativity shows, creating something new is a chaotic, unpredictable, frustrating, and very, very hard process. And most of all, it’s the result of extraordinary efforts and visions of a few extremely talented people. These creative people will feel limited and bored, not inspired, if they have to start out a creative process with a lot of user knowledge. Their inspiration comes from a multiple of sources and is highly individual.
Creating a formula will always be in vain and won’t result in something really new.
但是对成功的创新进行研究结果来看，创造一样全新的东西是一种无秩序的、不可预测的、让人摸不着头脑的且非常非常难的过程。大多数创新都是由小部分极具天赋的人用他们对未来的远景及超乎常人的努力所带来的成果。如果这些具有创造力的人从了解许多用户知识开始创新过程，那么他们会觉得受到了限制且没有活力，也就不会有灵感。他们的灵感来自于各种各样的资源并且是高度个性化的。
创造一种程序化的方式通常是无用的也不会带来真正的创新。
User focus makes companies miss out on disruptive innovations
用户焦点使企业错失颠覆性的创新
Focusing on users will lead companies to make incremental innovations that typically tend to make the products more expensive and complicated and ironically, in the long run, less competitive.
Radical innovations typically gain traction in the margins of a market and the majority of customers (at least in the beginning) will dislike change. If a company bases their decisions on user studies, they will conclude that most radically new innovations are not rational to pursue. This often means that companies miss out on new growth markets that can end up eventually eliminating their business.
聚焦于用户会让企业做渐进式创新，这种渐进式的创新通常也会渐渐的使产品越来越昂贵和复杂，相反地，从长远来看，也就越来越没有竞争力。
革命性的创新通常会在市场边缘受到阻力，大部分客户（至少在开始的时候）不会喜欢改变。如果一个公司所做出的决定是基于对用户的研究，他们会得出以下结论：大部分的革命性的创新是不会受理性购买者所喜欢的。这也通常意味着那些公司错失了市场的新的增长点，最终这也会结束他们的市场业务。
The same logic applies to branding. A company will always go for very small incremental changes in their branding efforts if they base their decision on user input. In the short run, minor changes pleases their users. In the long run, it means the big brand will be run over by bolder, often smaller, and more innovative brands that redefine an industry.
对于品牌，也可以用同样的逻辑去思考。一个企业如果基于用户而做出决定，那们它们在塑造他们的品牌时总是只做细微的渐进式创新。在短时间内，这种细微的改变能够取悦他们的用户。但从长远来看，也意味着这个大的品牌会变得越来越没有活力和影响力，那么一些更具创新力的品牌将重新定义产业。
User-led design leads to sameness
用户为引导的设计将导致雷同
Even if user insights were useful, it isn’t a competitive advantage. Even the most advanced users studies are now widely available. Most companies have conducted these studies and they have had the same insights about their users as you have. Therefore, product strategies based on studies will tend to be similar to their competitors. The result is a sea of sameness.
This isn’t a theoretical point—most industries are characterized by very similar products and brand positions, partially because companies have listened too much to their users. Branding is really about differentiation, about standing out. User centeredness leads to the opposite, similarity.
It’s time for brands to step up and trust themselves again.
即使用户的见解是有用的，那么它也不具有竞争优势。即使最超前的用户研究成果现在也已经广泛的被应用。许多公司公司已经应用了这些用户研究成果，他们所得出的见解也是你所拥有的。因此，基于用户研究的产品策略将会使一个企业的产品与他们的竞争对于雷同。结果就是市场上的产品千篇一律。
这不仅仅是理论观点，许多企业的特点就是他们之间的产品与品牌定位非常相似，部分的原因是因为企业过于听从于用户。品牌塑造真正目的是与众不同，鹤立鸡群。以用户为中心却走向了另一个方向，同质化。
对企业而言，是时候建立与众不同的品牌了，且再次相信自己。
