This post was mentioned on Twitter by MarkWSchumann: Thinking of a brilliant new product? Think again. Just make it work and deliver value, new blog post: http://bit.ly/6ldJei...

End-user training turned out to be pretty simple. People caught on really fast. We did tend to spend a lot of time with managers because of all the cool new things they could do with an STR system. But the regular cashiers hit function keys for almost everything, no big deal.

But I agree with your main point, which is that you can’t just mess with people’s experiences and perceptions. If it doesn’t make sense to the user, it doesn’t make sense.

“Let’s build a better X so that it runs faster, slimmer and gives us more information. Let’s not change the user experience at all, since our customers already intuitively understand how X works.”

However, a quick user research study will refute this. Interacting with software that looks like and behaves like an old SRT cash register won’t be naturally intuitive as was originally thought. Our physical connection to the device influences our natural behaviors. We behave differently in front of a PC than we do in front of a cash register and we need to embrace that.

Whenever you build an improved version of a system, you should dedicate time to some design research. After all, to your customers the user interface IS the product. Fail on that, and you fail completely.

Just sayin’.

And I’m really struck by “Startup Weekend.” That is such a cool thing.