Good products serve a need and serve it well. A crucial piece of solving problems is good workflow. And to truly have good workflow you need to understand the entire environment people are experiencing during and around the time of the problem you are addressing.
Lately I’ve been spending a good bit of time trying to think through the workflow for idek.net as well as twitwit.us. These two sites integrate with other services, and as such, I need to consider where people will be and what they’ll be doing when the use these apps.
Why do you care? Well, you always need to remember to attack every problem from multiple angles, because your users aren’t just coming at it from one place. They may have different goals and different needs that you may not have considered.
Once you’ve gotten all the variables better understood you can try to devise a workflow and solution that will efficient and enjoyable for your users.
