Does it work?

I was using this hand dryer yesterday and while my hands were getting increasingly dry I realized something completely unexpected, it was working!  I had pushed the button once and by the time the preset cycle was done, my hands were actually dry!

This was a surprise because what I had not realized until then is how ineffective most hand dryers are.  We could create the Angie's list of hand dryers in restaurants, airport washroom and other places all around the world and I sense that the global evaluation of users would not be positive.  We need a global revolution in hand dryers, because I realized through my experience yesterday that we came to not expect much from them.

When it doesn't work, it's expected. When you have to press 5 times on the activation button and your hands are still soaking wet, it's expected. We are just not surprise by these poor performances, but yesterday was different and I started to ask myself why?

Was it because the designer who work on the prototype actually test it? Was is that they had the end-user in mind and therefore manage to calculate how much time you need with a certain amount of water to dry to average human pair of hands? My sense is that they did not built it just to make a profit, but somehow they also cared about the people who were going to use their product.

What about you?  It's great to come up with a solution, but what space to you give to empathy in your conceptualization? When do you start to think about the user of your product, the audience of your presentation, the people that your foundation is going to help, the assistant you are delegating to? If you care, you will think about them sooner rather than later.