09 Dec The destruction of the Death Star can have a direct influence on your business (It’s true…I promise!)

It’s Friday, it’s cold across most of the nation, and we’re all still trying to figure out how the political landscape might positively or negatively impact our businesses in the coming years. So, let’s take a couple of moments to sit back, enjoy a cup of coffee and (hopefully) have a good laugh. The good news is while we’re smiling giggling, we can also be thinking about to evolve and adapt our business and our customers, users, or target audience.

Have your coffee? If not, go get some and then click the link to play the video below. I promise, there’s a point to this. It’s worth it.

Ready? Go. (and be sure to read the content below the video once you’re done)

Ha. Ha. Funny, right? Who doesn’t love some good Star Wars humor on a Friday morning? If you haven’t seen Star Wars, or you don’t care about Star Wars…well…okay…that troubles me, but the message we can learn from this is still applicable.

Here’s the takeaway:

Space Wizards…the lesson we can learn from the destruction of the first Death Star is that when designing something, you can try to account for all the variables, but sometimes your target audience (or users you had not accounted for like Space Wizards) can use your product, site, mobile app, etc…in a way that you had not intended or expected.

They don’t follow the expected site map. They don’t read the product descriptions. They abandon shopping carts when they thought they had checked out. They use exhaust ports as intake ports….that’s the funny thing about human beings. We’re NOT predictable beings. We do nutty stuff (like create and watch videos from the point of view of the architect of the Death Star exhaust ports).

For that reason, it pays to think creatively and be prepared to adapt and evolve based on the actual use of your product. Don’t just think about how YOU want your audience to use your product. Think about how they MIGHT use it. Expect the unexpected. Prepare for odd usage. Put mesh screens over your exhaust ports.

Think differently.

In the end, not only will it help your customers, but it might lead to new ideas about innovations that could add to your product catalog or result in new lines of business. No stealing my idea about mesh covers for exhaust ports, though. That one’s all mine.

Happy Friday, folks!