What to do with Late Adopters?
by Alexa“Every time he fired up his Netscape Web browser since mid-February, John Uribe was greeted with a message urging him to switch to one of Netscape’s two successors, Firefox or Flock. Mr. Uribe, a 56-year-old real estate agent in Waldorf, Md., ignored every message. ‘It’s kind of irrational,’ Mr. Uribe said as that deadline approached. ‘It worked for me, so I stuck with it. Until there is really some reason to totally abandon it, I won’t.’” -NYTimes, “Tech’s Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True”
I appreciated this article, because I strongly believe there is always something important to be learned from “how the other half lives.” At the same time, I can’t help but feel a mild sense of annoyance when it comes to late adopters. Late adopters can be a thorn in the flesh for designers and developers. It sucks building backwards-compatibility into everything, or being unable to add, change or discontinue features because a small-but-vocal angry mob might revolt (see Facebook News Feed, the end of Tagworld).
So what are we to do with the people who live by the principle of, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” Here’s a breakdown of possible strategies for handling late adopters…
- Ignore them (assuming they’re not hurting you in any way, it’s their loss, not yours).
- Scare them (security fears are what finally compelled the man in the NYTimes article to give up Netscape).
- Shun them (eventually their Word docs will become incompatible with everyone else’s; then they’ll have to upgrade).
- Tantalize them (create desire/need by showing them what they’re missing or getting their friends to show them up).
- Accommodate them (with “classic” versions, “low-tech” versions, or lowest-common-denominator design).
- Serve them (simply avoid making changes at all, because it would displease “the users”).
- Learn from them (their fear of the unknown and desire for simplicity are valid — how can we learn from this and, in doing so, improve the experiences of all?).
That’s all for now. Eudora’s “new mail” jingle is calling.
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March 13th, 2008 at 6:35 am
I was going to say that another option would simply be to educate them. But I then remembered that late adopters probably don’t care about the logic of upgrading, or getting on board. I think you’re right, that some mix of the options you listed is probably correct.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Another interesting thing here is in that sentence “It worked for me…” It’s often surprising what people perceive as software “working ok.” A bunch of nag messages clearly weren’t enough to say “this isn’t working for you anymore”, and he was probably putting up with broken websites, too.
One of the things it’s often hard to remember is that most people don’t want to learn technology. In a lot of cases it’s not fun for them, it’s not empowering for them, it’s not rewarding for them. Change often doesn’t just mean downloading something, it means asking for help, scheduling people to come to your house to install something, or other annoyances.
The other valuable point in the article is that even though you might be an early adopter of web browsers and software, you’re probably a laggard for some other technology. (What, you don’t have home automation or automatic parallel parking in your car yet?)
March 13th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
[…] adaptive path » blog » Alexa Andrzejewski » What to do with Late Adopters? (tags: design technology) […]
March 14th, 2008 at 8:32 am
This is a strange op-ed piece for a user-centred (even
human-centred) blog, not least because the only ‘learn
from them’ (’them’? vs ‘us’ know-betters?) that seems
to be countenanced is ‘learn from them how to change
them,’ - even though their primary message is clearly
‘please stop trying to change me.’ It might be a hassle
for the individual programmer who wants the world to be
uniform for his/her convenience, but surely the difference
between IT today vs 5 or 20 yrs ago, is the capacity for
multiple-platform customisable diversity. There is a way
in which this post is directly replicating arguments for
accelerated technological obsolescence from the 1930s -
these people must be made to give up their shrift for
their own (not recognized) benefit lest the world grind
to a halt. To take something positive from this, the slow
movement should certainly now add ‘refusal to accept
automated upgrades’ to their strategies.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:58 am
What about “seduce them” (show them the things they’ve missed, not something developers think is neat) “reassure them” (that nothing else will go on the blink if they install it), “promise them” (that the programme will work better / be more stable), “help them” (make installation easy and feedback during the process respectfull)?
March 24th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
[…] What to do with Late Adopters? O que fazer com aqueles usuários que pensam que “se ainda funciona, pra que mudar?”. Do Adaptive Path Blog. […]