Empathize

A short example highlights the importance of understanding needs at all three levels of use, usability and meaning. A number of Native American tribes, and in particular, the Mono Indian tribes in Fresno and Madera Counties in California, subsisted on acorn flour prepared by grinding the acorns . The grinding was done by the women in the tribe who all sat around a large, flat granite boulder with holes in it that served as mortars to do their work. In the early 1900s, the U.S. Government attempted to improve the efficiency and productivity of the acorn grinding process by providing iron grinders.  The attempt failed. Why? The grinding activity served a variety of purposes beyond simply preparing flour for food.  It was the place where women gathered to tell stories and pass along the traditions of their people. The grinding activity provided the backdrop or rhythm for the telling of the stories; the women viewed it as accompaniment to the sharing of their heritage. The U.S. Government approached the problem to be solved as one of food processing, completely missing the much deeper meaning of the activity, and thus failed with its solution. Understanding the broader context might have enabled the development of something much more powerful, and something that would actually be adopted.