Generally, your most difficult task when evaluating a product is answering the following question: “How will this benefit me?” This isn’t a selfish question for you to ask, and in no way can anyone fault you for deciding not to use the product. It’s simply a pragmatic way to decide how to divide your free time.

Answering this question proves more difficult with more obscure use cases. For example, consider the microblogging service Twitter. Entirely open ended, it asks the end user to answer another simple question: “What are you doing?” This use case was initially difficult to prove beneficial, but it was the open-ended nature that paved the way for its popularity to snowball. Once end users began to see how the early adopters were using the service, the benefit become more and more apparent.

Or consider DropBox, which uses a very effective demonstration video to go through a few obvious use cases of the product. This serves as a simple way to bridge the divide between an abstract web product and something of value to an end user.

But sometimes, the use case is more obvious. For example, consider our tournament coordination web site Tournology. We aim to provide an easy way for tournament administrators to coordinate tournaments for any game or sport, big or small. We’re doing nothing more than providing a simple and relevant window into a complex flow of information and events relating to a tournament.

But now we must ask the question: “What do you want Tournology to do?”

How do you run your tournaments? What games or sports do you play? What special tournament rules have you established to facilitate fair play and good competition?

And to answer those questions, we’ve set up a simple feedback website using UserVoice. We’ve put a green “Feedback” tab on the right of all of our pages, which you can use to submit an idea. Tell us about your tournament, so that we can better develop Tournology for you. We’re at a crossroads, one where you can play a crucial role in shaping the future of Tournology to fit your needs. A time where you can change “What’s In It For Me?” into “This is what I want.” We welcome your participation.