I worked on a product once that had a kiosk for athletes to measure their performance on an iPad and a web app for coaches to review all of that data. I remember raising the concern that we were building these two things separately without really thinking about how they might talk to each other. It didn't go anywhere. We were moving too fast, the kiosk shipped first, the web app came later and picked up some of what we had learned from initial user feedback, but going back to fix the kiosk was not going to happen. So you'd end up with data visualizations that didn't quite match, metrics labeled or grouped differently depending on where you were looking. Same product, two different surfaces, not so slowly drifting apart.
It's all over the place once you start noticing it. Square has completely different experiences for the person buying a coffee and the person selling it. Health portals, parental controls, scheduling links. Same platform, totally different jobs to do.
I don't know why it doesn't come up more. Maybe it gets lost to speed. Maybe it's just not part of the scope. It's not a hard conversation to have early on. It's a much harder one to have later.
My scheduling link worked out great by the way. All participants were able to book sessions. I was able to facilitate them as my schedule permitted. Someone already asked the question. I never had to notice.
