User Engagement

About six months ago I started swimming laps. I needed the exercise. What I didn't expect was that I'd take to it — now I'm in the pool almost every day, knocking out a hundred laps a session.

The thing about swimming laps is your mind drifts. That's half the appeal. But it makes counting impossible. I tried using my Apple Watch, but I don't want to break rhythm just to try to read a tiny number on a tiny screen. So I started thinking, while going back and forth, back and forth: what I really need is a lap counter on the wall. My first idea was a simple touch sensor — slap it on every time I come to the wall, +2 laps. Then I thought, no, my watch already knows. Pull a Bluetooth feed off the watch, push the count to a bright LED. Submerge the display just below the waterline, where my eyes naturally fall coming into the wall. Simple. Waterproof. Done.

By lap forty I had a product.

Then it hit me: who else would ever think to build that? You'd have to swim laps every day, hate breaking stroke, and have strong opinions about wall-tap mechanics. That's a vanishingly small group — and I happen to be in it.

I've seen this pattern before. The two biggest projects of my career — the Disability Case Processing System and the National Support Center, both at Social Security — succeeded for the same reason. We didn't design for end users. We designed with them, in the room, every week, until their frustrations became the spec.

It's easy to forget that when you're the executive sponsor. The further you sit from the wall, the less you understand the lap.