Do you smell that? The smell of bonfires and pumpkin spice lattes are in the air. Fall is officially here and I am loving it. Autumn has always been my favorite season. Hoodies, hot chocolate, my birthday, and long walks on blustery days? Sign me up.
I am basking in my joy for fall. But then, the unthinkable happened, my friend told me she hated fall. I stopped dead in my tracks and I wish someone had recorded my reaction. What—who hates fall?!? I can honestly say I had never heard that before in my life. She spends an inordinate amount of time raking up leaves and cleaning them from her pool. “My dog thinks a team of navy seals is descending on my house every time an acorn plinks on the roof; there’s months of barking,” was her direct quote.
So…hmmmm…something that I loved and gave me so much joy was hated by someone else. And with good reason. I probably wouldn’t enjoy fall as much if it created a lot of extra work for me and made my beloved dog go mad.
It’s just like an AV install. One user may love the newest widget in the conference room; she finds it intuitive and appreciates that particular technology. The next user despises that very same widget; he thinks it’s difficult to operate and doesn’t like the way it connects with other devices in the room. One technology, two very different experiences, with the installer stuck somewhere in the middle.
Experiences are based on opinions and feelings—not facts. How do you create a positive experience without living in someone else’s head? Truthfully, I don’t know, and it’s probably not even possible. It’s an age-old conundrum that I’m certainly not going to solve in this letter. It’s something we’ll all have to ruminate on and come up with an answer. Until we do, I’m stuck in the middle with you.
