The Tale of a ‘Normal’ Person: A Reality Check

This describes almost everyone I know. (Maybe that's why I spend time here).<p>OP, however, never mentions the most important thing about this demographic: <i>they just want it to work</i>.<p>They expect things to work intuitively right out of the box. They don't want to install any add-ons, extensions, or downloads. And they don't want to have to get an education just to try something new.<p>The gas pedal is always on the right and when you enter a room, flip the toggle switch up to get light.<p>So why doesn't your web app work like that? If it doesn't work right with the browser and resolution they got when they bought their computer at Office Depot, if they have to wait for Flash, or they don't know what it is, they'll leave and never come back.<p>This is the 80% in the middle of the bell curve, and they <i>do</i> have money to spend. Pay attention.

I felt Tivo made it mainstream when I overheard a kid in the suburbs ask their daddy why they couldn't pause the movie.<p>I usually keep a tab open to summize (my city as search term), and I've been noticing a lot more 'normal' people talking about life as opposed to technology. Also, notice that most of them have less than 100 followers (as opposed to the pied piper Scobelizer-types 5k+ followers and Scobelizer-wannabees 1k+ followers). It would be interesting to see the distribution of followers on Twitter. My hunch is that as Twitter goes more mainstream there will be more normal people (with 20-30 followers).

This was my thinking 2004-2007 and was my biggest mistake. Targeting late adopters has not proven to be a successful strategy.<p><a href="http://friendfeed.com/e/41230d54-d425-07c8-38a3-4bada029126b" rel="nofollow">http://friendfeed.com/e/41230d54-d425-07c8-38a3-4bada029126b</a>

I once tried to imagine what one of those people was thinking and i felt a strong vacuum in the right part of mi brain. I don't know if anyone of you was ever asked himself what makes these people different. Weren't we the different ones? These people are boring, they live in their own worlds. Thats probably exactly what they think of us :D We understand nerds problems because we are nerds and these problems are our own. But we don't understand normal peoples problems, because they are not our problems. Our best shot is at the common stuff(communication is the most common) In this case we are trapped. We can search for ordinary peoples problems and solve them with software, but those are not our problems and we don't understand them. How are we to know if we are not solving it wrongly? Or if we are solving a completely different problem in a really messed up way? So here is my best shot at it. Get a boring job, get married, have kids and get stupid. Have problems and then get smart again, get divorced and start working to solve the problem. Sounds ridiculous right? :D Boring people not always have boring problems, but they can seem boring if you don't understand them. Im sure average Joe thinks solving the problem with multi-core processors is boring too.

I'm not sure I agree with this description. In my experience, there are quite a lot of people sharing photos online. There are very few people willing to pay for software (that is not already bundled with their hardware).

"As it turns out, there is something special about them — they’re normal people, doing normal things."<p>No, they're people in stock art doing absolutely nothing but standing around and looking stupid.

"They believe that a wild horde of malcontented hackers are watching their every move in unchartered internet waters. . This is most conspicuously manifested in their distrust of giving their credit card information over a webform."<p>Though something like 5% of them will click any link in any email that has either "PayPal" or a misspelling of "Viagra" in it and enter their social security number, mother's maiden, credit card number, address, and waist/inseam sizes.

is it just me or do these guys' post seem to reek of quite a bit of arrogance?<p>Great that they're 'making something people want' but their posts are generally condescending -- stop the incessant chatter and show off this amazing product you've built for 'normal' people that is going to change the world and be uber-profitable.

"Normal", in this sense just describes an imaginary HCD pseudo-human. There is no such thing. There was once a time when normal people didn't have computers, cell-phones, tv's, radios, cars, refrigerators... you get the idea.<p>Don't fear the niche, or the early adopter. Today's weird geek toy might be tomorrow's necessity.

This is the exact audience and mindset we are using in designing our product.<p>If you're young (like me), another way to think of this would be to ask yourself "why would my parents use my product? How can I make it easy and intuitive for them?"

Problem is, a lot of techies aren't "normal" (in the sense outlined in the article) and they've been following the scratch-your-own-itch advice.

I went for a "normal" market, for all "normal" in the domain "speaks Spanish, but no English."

Our target market is the people you described. I'll let you know how it goes.

I don't think "normal people" are as anti-Apple as this post makes them to be. Also, "normal people" are certainly much less tech-phobic than they were, say, 15 years ago.