The Metaphor: Companion Planting

Outside of my MISI work, I spend part of my time working in a Philadelphia City Harvest community garden. I employ a gardening method called companion planting.

Companion planting cultivates reciprocal relationships between diverse yet interconnected entities. For instance, nutrient rich soil provides the foundation for healthy growth. Specific vegetables are paired and planted with complementary herbs, flowers or beneficial weeds that work with one another to manage pests, enrich flavor, attract helpful insects and enable resilience. My role as the gardener is to provide the resources for mutually beneficial interactions to unfold over time. The effect is a self-sustaining ecosystem where all integral parts, both human and non-human, participate in its making, flourishing and evolution.

Even though companion planting requires a certain amount of work upfront, the results are manifold. A higher yield of quality vegetables contains the right amount of nutrients and flavor, unmatched by monoculture production. Beneficial vegetation and insects abound. And the positive results travel beyond the garden. People are properly fed with nutritious food. A city corner is beautified. Neighbors work together to maintain the city block. The neighborhood is proud. A proactive community-based movement continues to grow in Philadelphia and beyond.

People’s lives are made a bit better.

Human Approach: Think In Ecosystems

Solutions that don’t encompass or work in concert with others across [the many] aspects of our lives significantly reduce their ability to succeed. – Nathan Shedroff, Author of Design is the Problem and Making Meaning

Urban community gardening and companion planting in particular is part field study for the experience design work I perform at MISI–specifically as it relates to employee engagement, or how employees emotionally engage with their work culture. Companion planting within the context of urban community gardening has taught me the effectiveness of thinking in systems.

Often times as designers, we speak of metaphorical ecosystems when designing employee engagement models, but we tend to focus on assumptions of employee needs and isolated factors like unsuccessful IT tools, failing carrots and sticks programs and declining efficiency and productivity. Isolated factors such as these are artifacts of a troubled community, not the roots of an engagement problem.  And assumptions can lead to counterproductive solutions.

We can address real systemic cultural change by co-creating an employee engagement model from an ecosystems perspective.

 

The following, scalable approach can be employed to unearth points for intervention within a human network:

• Map out the components of a system and related subsystems (employee roles, teams, office and meeting spaces, tools, management processes, work flow, reporting and organizational structures).
• Uncover the intangible pieces, including across-level employee abilities, emotions, perceptions, expectations, personalities, affect, values and needs to derive meaning from work.
• Survey the system’s interconnections and relationships (modes of collaboration, communication, exchange, mentorship and interaction among employees and organizational components).
• Examine the communicated purpose (internal value proposition, messaging, vision or goals) of an organization.
• Observe employee behavior to determine the real drive of the system.
• Compare/contrast the communicated purpose (through messaging and marketing materials) of the system with authentic employee behavior.
• Dissect and analyze contradictions, inconsistencies, alignment issues and successes across strata.
• Pinpoint external factors that impact internal activities.
• Remove ‘they’ from your vocabulary.

Before I continue, I’d like to address the final point: remove ‘they’ from your vocabulary. Employees include all levels of individuals who are employed by an organization, regardless of experience, title, salary or rank. To utilize an ecosystems perspective is to include oneself in the picture. The word ‘they’ unintentionally shows separation between leadership and ‘they’. Each one of us is an interconnected node within a system. How do all of us impact the experience of employees within a work culture?

In order to ensure that employee engagement models avoid quick fixes, uncover the scope of an engagement challenge by evaluating the organization’s ecosystem and then design for its multiplicity through co-creation processes.

Equilibrium: Align Purpose and Behavior Around Meaning

Companion planting works. Interrelated parts are animated by mutually beneficial relationships and a shared drive. The bees pollinate flowers. Geraniums repel harmful insects from vegetables so they can thrive. The list continues. The ecosystem succeeds or fails based on the behavior of its interrelated parts and their connection to the collective drive. If a part of the equation is off, the system is out of balance and cannot function properly.

How does this translate to a human ecosystem? Humans have emotions and are motivated by meaning. The behavior within a human (or employee) system is prompted by meaning-based motivations. An organization that considers these realities will increase employee engagement.

Think about the following:

• When an organizational network does not have a clearly stated purpose (value proposition or vision), it has no reason for being. The people in the network do not have a focused, drive forward.
• If an organizational network has a stated purpose, but that purpose does not reflect the behaviors and natural abilities of its employees, then the network is out of sync. The people in the system are less engaged because they do not derive authentic meaning from their work. In this circumstance, individual employees are not motivated to behave in a way that benefits the whole.

To design using an ecosystems-based lens is to design for what it means to be human. An organization’s purpose should animate the natural abilities, emotions, values and passions of employees–driving behavior. The positive results are endless. Engaged employees derive inherent meaning from their work and culture. Individuals trust and believe in a mutually beneficial community. The employee experience is inspired and self-sustaining, i.e. meaningful.

Collaboration: Design for Companion-Based Relationships

An ecosystem that does not collaborate is not an ecosystem. Collaboration is key to a healthy environment. An organization’s purpose is one step in helping to incite collaborative behaviors among employees. Why? That’s what a shared purpose means: engaged employees are personally motivated to work together to achieve collective success.

However, the purpose of an organization and employee intentions often collide with the limitations of an organization. Limitations could be management processes, tools and workspaces that do not reflect the renewed purpose of the organization. When these components are misaligned, collaboration is seen as a cumbersome method of working. People do not collaborate. The purpose is null and void.

If an organization has a meaningful purpose and its systems, tools and processes reflect that purpose, then employees will trust and believe in the promise and value of collaboration. Collaborative behaviors cannot be forced through tools. They need to be supported across the organization, modeled by leadership and practiced throughout the entire community. Collaboration occurs when all channels are aligned.

How can we sync up a human ecosystem? Perform ecosystems-based research in your organization and with your employees to reveal what a collaborative environment looks like to your specific organization. Develop a collaboration strategy and a multi-faceted plan to implement that strategy. From employee engagement projects, MISI has identified several high-level tenets of a collaborative ecosystem.

They are:

• Enable communities of passion.
• See leaders and managers as service providers.
• Develop and speak a shared language.
• Build a culture of trust.
• Open access to pertinent information.
• Support a learning environment.
• Create time and guidelines for idea exchange.
• Provide opportunities for multi-level, informal and face-to-face interactions.
• Implement and maintain high quality collaboration tools & systems.
• Offer consistent feedback and recognition.

The next step: design the architecture needed to support these tenets. Implement the architecture in meaningful ways across the organization so that employees trust and see the value of collaboration as an inherent work method.

 Why Should Organizations Design for the Ecology of Human Networks?

Human ecosystems are dynamic, resilient and evolving as well as mutually beneficial and participatory. They are human. Organizations, who consider what it means to be human and who balance employee needs with profits, are organizations who are investing in their own sustained success. Co-created (with employees) engagement models from an ecosystems perspective facilitate healthy, productive, companion-based behavior. Employees derive meaning from their work and are fully engaged.

The effects of an ecosystems approach continue. Organizations can: create businesses where employees are intimately invested in an organization’s success (and vice versa); enable environments where collaboration, mentorship and community-centered interactions thrive; foster a trust-based work culture that leads to creativity and innovation; increase employee loyalty and long-term organizational intelligence through authentic relationship-building; make people’s lives a bit better in and outside of work.

These are not new ideas. Nature has been successfully organizing itself in a similar manner for over 3.8 billion years. We have a lot to learn.

Normally when I write a customer experience (CX) related blog post it is about something that went very wrong. After all, I’m just like most people. Something goes right I tell my husband and a couple of friends. Something goes wrong, tell the world! This time, I want to talk about the impact even a small great experience can have on brand loyalty – and how it can lead to changing hearts, minds and behaviors.

Believe it or not, despite all the multi-touchpoint experience design I do, I am 100% an in-store shopper… or I used to be.  The ability to see and touch the actual products I am going to spend my money on is very important to me, as is the money I can save on shipping. (Hey, that extra $10 can lead to an even nicer pair of shoes!).  All of that changed, of course, with the arrival of my daughter a few months ago.  What used to be long afternoons of wandering the mall for a great bargain have turned into wondering the halls of the web for…oh, say the cheapest deal on baby formula.  Sigh…

All during my pregnancy people were telling me to get ready for the world of online shopping.  I insisted that while I might break down for formula and diapers, NEVER would I be “one of those moms” who does all of her personal shopping online.  That said, towards the end, hitting the mall was not so much of an option. Resignedly, I opened up the Mac and went online.  And I hated it – with one exception… Diapers.com.  

What first got me was, of course, the free shipping… SWEET!  Then, I started to realize that they had a great selection and an easy to use website with a very quick and logical shopping cart flow (imagine that – they even got the shopping cart right)…  

But I digress.  Where I am headed with this story is that over these last few months I’ve come to realize that Diapers.com isn’t great just because of the online experience or even the live service and support experience, but because of the very human experience they provide. Here’s an example.

A recent order was, of course, a case of powdered formula. Unfortunately, one of the tins had the seal lifted, so I was a little nervous about not just using that tin, but the whole case.  I sent a note to Diapers expecting them to give me a return / exchange, but that this would probably take a week or so to process.  Not so – the response email was within 15 minutes and while short in sentences, very personal.  Not just an offer to replace the tin, but “we will get the entire case reshipped, toss the old one…” and all of this wrapped in understanding – “I can only imagine how upsetting that must have been with a new baby at your side”… And this is not an isolated instance.  I have had several very impressive exchanges like this with them. Bravo Diapers.com.

Now admittedly I’m an experience designer, so of course I want to share my big takeaways from my experience. Anecdotal and personal as they are, combined with what I have learned researching and designing others’ experiences, there are some significant “truths” here I’d like to reinforce for all you marketers out there trying to figure out how to turn new customers into loyal ones.

1) Make yours a truly human interaction – Anybody can provide standard, generic, “your business is important to us” service or support. It makes all the difference in the world when a product website or a company employee recognizes that I am a human being and would like to be treated as one, not just another customer.  This distinction – “I can only imagine how upsetting that must have been…” – makes all the difference. It makes an emotional and memorable connection and begins to create the relationship and affinity that ensures I come back for more. Remember that online doesn’t mean inhuman – it is an opportunity to be even more human. Here’s how…

2)  Use what you know and remember me – I share info with you so you can better serve me. So go ahead – show my recent purchases when I login, tie your recommendations to related items I have purchased, and be smart about it. If I just bought a little black dress from you, I might need shoes, but the odds are pretty good that I don’t need another little black dress. For example, what Diapers.com does so well is make it easy to reorder what I would logically reorder – e.g. food and diapers. And it doesn’t waste my time highlighting an order I am not likely to reorder – e.g. a specific toy I just purchased.   

3)  Make it crazy-easy to do business with you – Design your experience not from the perspective of what you can do and support, but from the perspective of what I need to accomplish and how / when / where.  Designing with me in mind leads me to trust you in a variety of contexts, not just the one I am most familiar with. Most important, keep it simple. Think about your favorite brick and mortar stores: more than likely they make it really easy to find what you’re looking for, to get help if you need it, to stumble upon other stuff you like and to check out when you’re ready. Too often shopping online is characterized by too many irrelevant choices, lousy search results, forced associations and no readily available help.

4)  Do not underestimate the impact of the little things on an overall experience – Before the formula incident, I was a fan of Diapers.com, but now I am a true loyalist. The thing that nabbed me wasn’t how fast or cheap their service is, but literally that little line in the email about knowing how upset or frustrated I might be as a new mother. Just that little bit of empathy, that human touch is all it took to win me over. Fix the problem without that touch and I’m thinking you did what was expected. Include it and you alter how I think about you.

What is probably most amazing about this whole experience with Diapers.com is that now instead of comparing online experiences to live ones I do the opposite. I am comparing live experiences to my recent online ones.  My behaviors have changed as well. I only go to stores when I have to. I shop online not because it is cheaper, but because I am finding it can actually be more human. Now that is a statement to ponder!

MISI XD AD and strategist Lisa Woodley leads a workshop at a Life Sciences Commercial IT Summit. The topic: how to prepare internal teams for the changes to come and create internal advocates when a company implements new technology solutions. Based on her experience helping companies understand and manage cultural change, Lisa writes a white paper. The topic: The Dawn of the Era of iT - how new trends in information technology are forcing IT organizations to be more customer-centric, with their “customer” being the employees they serve.

I travel to Moscow to present a keynote at UX Russia 2011. My topic is Beyond the Interface to the Interaction. I organize the presentation around three of MISI XD’s 10 Immutable Truths of XD. One of the truths I focus on is #6: XD Acknowledges that Employees are People Too. Among the points I make in my presentation is that companies have come to recognize that employees are customer experience professionals’ secret weapon. They experience the customer’s issues, they generate real world improvement ideas, and they build the links between the company and the customer experience.

Customer Experience (CX) - the idea of designing the end to end, multiple touchpoint, multi-modal experience as a whole as opposed to a series of discrete interactions – has been maturing as a discipline for many years. More companies are appreciating the power of CX to differentiate their products, services and/or brands in the marketplace and to create loyalty. Titles like Chief Experience Officer or SVP of Customer Experience are becoming more common. And new CX maturity models – measures of how committed an organization is to a strategy of customer-centricity – are being introduced into the marketplace by a variety of practitioners. What has not gotten as much play as we believe it should, is the role each employee plays in contributing to the desired outcome of a great, loyalty-inspiring customer experience. As Jerilyn writes in her white paper, “If you or your colleagues don’t buy into the value of your product, your brand and the customer experience you are seeking to create, you won’t be able to live that promise when working with your customers.”

No surprise then that Employee Experience has been a major theme at MISI XD in recent months, and will continue to be as the results of our work with our current clients develop into additional insights to the power of individual employees to make or break the customer experience.

Having conducted international research audits, interviews and field research with physicians over the past few years, I’ve noticed 5 commonalities of the physicians’ experience that seem to transcend physical and cultural boundaries. Understanding and appreciating these common themes can provide those desiring to do business with physicians with a foundation for further cultivating their knowledge of physicians and for developing a successful relationship with them.

1. Physicians seem to have a perpetual time deficit – while the reasons may differ – in the US a physician may be spending significant time finding a medication that is on his/her patient’s insurance formulary while a Spanish physician may be spending that time understanding local regulations – a common thread across regions is that physicians are being tasked with increasing responsibilities, more patients and yet there are still only 24 hours in the day. Physicians need tools and resources that help them work quickly and efficiently.
2. Medical school is not business school; practice management can be a struggle – for physicians who are intimately involved with the operations of their facility, practice management is a critical responsibility for which many feel unprepared. This is as true in parts of Europe and Asia as it is in the US. Physicians need advice, tools and resources to help them manage this aspect of their careers.
3. Physicians everywhere are worried about bureaucracy and legal troubles – malpractice and following regulations are concerns for all physicians. They constantly need to be on top of regulations, protocols and best practices so as to avoid legal or administrative issues. In an ever-changing medical and healthcare environment this can be a challenge. Physicians often feel very vulnerable with regard to these issues and value advice from trusted peers and experts.
4. Patient adherence remains a top concern – the challenge to get patients to adhere to treatment regimens is universal. Whether it is because the patient feels he or she knows better than the physician, or the patient has a misperception about treatment, or that simple absentmindedness leads to non-compliance, adherence is a major challenge and physicians take it very seriously. There is a multitude of patient education and compliance-related resources available. Physicians want efficient ways to point their patients toward the most effective information and tools.
5. Physicians are people too, and want to feel respected as physicians – physicians get the most satisfaction from their work when they are working with their patients, taking the time to understand their needs, and seeing them succeed through improved health and wellbeing – not when being marketed to or working out from under a pile of paperwork. Physicians have expressed that when they do not feel their patients appreciate their expertise, their time is undervalued, or when they are distracted by interruptions or burdened with administrative tasks, they do not feel respected and do not find their profession satisfying.  

The above form a preliminary understanding of the physician experience across the globe, but keep in mind there are also notable differences between physician experiences in different countries, shaped by local healthcare structure and medical regulation, culture, and the availability of technologies. Even within a single country there can be distinct nuances depending on the type of physician, the working environment such as hospital vs. private practice, and the region. For example physicians in the more rural regions of Italy have expressed feeling isolated as part of their jobs due to limited direct exposure to their peers, a distinct aspect of the rural Italian physician experience that shapes their dependence on online methods of peer communication. So what should companies be thinking about when developing new research initiatives involving physicians so as to ensure new research provides targeted insight and real value? Three things come immediately to mind.

 a)     Optimize what you know – use research dollars and time first to validate and then to probe further: Take advantage of findings like those outlined above and use new research as an opportunity to validate relevant findings in the context of your company’s specific challenge(s) in order to build on what is known. 

b)     Identify what you don’t know – fill in the knowledge gaps:  For example, some companies  have a deep understanding of physician online behaviors (which sites they go to, for which types of information, for how long, etc.) but may not have an equally robust understanding of what  motivates those behaviors, i.e. the “why” behind the physicians’ search for  online information. Many companies lack a thorough understanding of unmet physician needs, the physician’s physical environment, and the impact of influencers such as nurses and other office and hospital staff on physicians’ decisions. The key is to identify unanswered questions and prioritize the areas that will help ensure the success of the physician-vendor interaction.  

c)      Align and make research actionable – research with the company’s and the physician’s businesses in mind:  When forming key questions, think about what will be done with the answers to help better serve the physician. Start by mapping the company’s business goals to the known needs of the physician. With that alignment in place, clearly articulate the desired outcome of the research. Is the goal to identify a new business opportunity? To affirm or rebut existing concepts so changes can be made before proceeding? Thinking about the desired outcome helps ensure that research findings lead directly to specific actions that advance the company’s business goals and align with the physicians’ goals.

Effectively planned and executed physician research that leverages what is already known and focuses on the evolving challenges these professionals face benefits both the company and the physician. Keeping these tips in mind when conducting research drives toward a rich, holistic understanding of the physicians’ experience  and better positions the company to play a meaningful role in that experience.

I volunteered not just because I love shoes and social media, but because I figured I’d learn a thing or two about the burgeoning world of influenced viral marketing. And boy did I learn some things. I decided to write a brief white paper on my experience, Turning the Tables on SM Viral Marketing.  Below I’ve summarized the lessons I learned during my brief time as a product influencer about the do’s and don’ts of running a viral marketing strategy. 

1) Equip your influencers with an understanding of your goals and some tips for how they can help you achieve them. 

While my contact at this High-End Department Store did a great job of getting me excited about my free pair of shoes, she didn’t do too much when it came to making sure I understood her goals for this activity and what I could do to help her.  For some key things she could have done to help my posts be as “influencial” as possible, see the white paper.

2) Make sure your influencers have enough to say about your product and are prepared tweet about it multiple times a day.

Now, I love shoes and have a gift to gab… but even I ran out of steam after a few days. Having some daily suggestions from my contact would have helped me keep the tweets fresh and interesting. It would have also kept me a lot more engaged in the program.  These suggestions could have come in the form of scenarios to work through with the shoes as well as topics I should cover.  And for “filler” tweets, she might have provided links to some good third party reviews of the shoes or other interesting shoe-relevant websites.  There’s more detail on this tip in the white paper.

3) If you enlist your customers to blog for you, be prepared to be just as involved in this activity as they are… and be sure to live up to any commitments you make to them.

In my case, the High-End Department Store contact went dark once the recruitment process was complete.  As a result, when challenges arose – such as shoes not arriving, “hot spots”  not knowing who we were, and general confusion about what we were doing – we had no choice but to tweet and blog about it in hopes that maybe our contact was listening. (As I note in point 4 below, we  later found out she was not.) So what would I have done differently?  My ideas are outlined in the white paper.

 4) Listen to what your influencers are saying (and show your support)… letting them see your level of engagement will only raise up theirs.

This is, of course, a tough one.  There is a fine line between supporting and influencing your influencers – one you don’t want to cross.  That said, no one likes to hear crickets when they are putting themselves out there…especially if it is in front of those who know them in their non-influencer life.  Find creative ways to reward good posts and address issues and challenges they may be expressing in their posts. See my whitepaper for more information on the opportunity lost by my support person’s lack of engagement.

 5) Have a plan.  Social Media may seem all fun and games… but it isn’t. 

It may feel like a casual and spur of the moment channel, but it is ANYTHING but if you are a marketer looking to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and the host of other consumer-focused social media channels to reach your customers.  It is just as calculated, structured, and thought-through as the commercials you shoot, the ads you design, and the marketing events you plan.  After all, if I read about a cute pair of Sam Edelman ballet flats and a Girl’s Night Out Shoe Event on my friend’s blog and I go to the store and NOONE knows about the party, the shoes, or anything else… there is a huge break in your marketing strategy.  For an outline of key plan components, see my white paper.

Your objectives will ultimately drive the types of research you choose to conduct – interviews, focus groups, natural observation, journals, card sorting and so on. But when the budget is tight and every piece of a project is under the financial microscope, you can use some of the following guerilla research tactics to gain an actionable level of audience understanding.

1.     Research Before Your Research

Arm Yourself with Knowledge and Hypotheses Prior to Research

Take the time before a study to learn as much as you can about work done on related topics and audiences.  Study relevant prior research done by your compay or others, review data you are already collecting from touch points such as your website, read industry white papers, and examine your main competitors. Use your research to form some solid hypotheses. By testing pre-determined hypotheses, you can learn more about the topic of interest with a smaller number of people.

Good For: Testing with small numbers of people; studies with a highly targeted focus

Not Good For: More exploratory, comprehensive insight-gathering studies; projects with minimal lead time before research

2.     Friends & Family Recruiting

Talking to Anyone is Better than Talking to No One

If the budget can’t afford a recruiting agency, if the client doesn’t have the bandwidth to recruit internally, or if there isn’t enough time in scope for you to undertake formal recruiting, you can always reach out to friends and family. While it may seem very informal, remember that your friends and family are people who use products and services just like anyone else. Friends and family often feel special that they are invited to help on one of your projects, and it gives them a chance to see what you’re working on. 

Good For: Studies related to products/services with general audiences; projects and budgets that do not allow for professional recruiting services

Not Good For: Studies related to products/services with a very narrow audience group; studies involving privacy-sensitive information (ex. needing participants with a certain medical condition); projects where participant “bail-outs” would compromise the entire initiative

3.      Social Media for Broad Audience Outreach

Gaining Baseline Understandings through Your Social Networks

When you don’t have the time or budget for up-front, broad baseline research, social media can be a great tool. Both the researchers and client representatives can pose a question to people in their social networks. People are surprisingly willing to answer quick poll questions and the answers to these questions can help inform decisions in the design process.

For a recent non-profit client, MISI Company was tasked with redesigning their website based on best practices and then validating the design afterwards. In order to make sure that we were on the right path, our research team tapped into their social networks and asked a very simple question that ended up informing several key design decisions – “What three things do you need to know before donating money or time to a non-profit organization?”

Good For: Projects that only have time/budget for testing before or after design – not both; gaining audience insights in preparation for stakeholder discussions or in addition to more formal research

Not Good For: Research studies that are investigating more behavioral aspects of audiences; questions that require long answers or a back-and-forth discourse; studies that aim to understand motivations and thought-processes more so than final actions

4.     Research from a Remote Location

Reaching Global or Long-Distance Audiences from Your Home Office

In many situations, remote testing could be a significant cost-saver. Depending on the type of research study that is being performed, there are a variety of technologies today that allow researchers to hold a valuable conversation with audiences all over the world. For instance, many studies could be performed using a survey tool, a conference line, an online screen-sharing service or a combination of all of the above.

In a recent employee-based global research initiative, MISI Company reached over 150 employees in 8 countries, all from local offices. Through the use of various online tools (such as an audio conferencing/recording service and an online survey tool), our research team was able to gather accurate insights, conduct a confident analysis of a large diverse population, and create actionable goals based on the insights of that analysis. Depending on the goals of the study and how it is being conducted, your international or geographically widespread research still could be highly effective without the costs and time involved in travel and lodging for your research team.

Good For: Studies with participants in multiple, distant locations; projects with very short research timelines and/or budgets that do not allow for travel and lodging

Not Good For: Research that involves complicated tasks; studies with audiences who are not tech-savvy; studies in which body language can be an important observation

5.     Slimmed Data Analysis

The Debate Between Accurate vs. Precise

When analyzing the outputs of a study, researchers can spend months slicing data one million ways, finding and explaining the random outliers, or running numbers to create a pile of statistics in order to provide clients with the most precise data analysis possible. A quicker alternative is to deliver accurate findings that achieve the goals of the research but are not as precise and detailed. For instance, after being active in all aspects of the study, a researcher can often make a statement such as “Most people liked the size of the product, while very few liked the color.” Along with this statement, researchers may look for specific supporting data; however this approach of presenting accurate but more generalized findings as opposed to highly detailed, precise findings could save significant time in the post-research phase and still achieve all of the goals of your study.

Good For: Stakeholders who are interested solely in accurate actionable insights and recommendations

Not Good For: Stakeholders who expect participant statistics and precise findings; findings that will act as baselines for future studies

It is important that when you are planning your research initiative, you consider the impact of any cost-saving measure and ensure that it does not interfere with the effectiveness or accuracy of your research. For instance, some of these guerilla research tactics may not be ideal for large, mission-critical initiatives that will have significant bottom line impact. But when you are working on a more modest project and know that you need evidence to support your decisions, ask your experience design partner about the applicability of these approaches. They have the experience to help you decide which guerilla research tactics will work best for your project so that you don’t have to break the bank.

The most satisfying and memorable interactions are often the simplest. Life is complicated enough, and…surprise…most people don’t want to spend any more time interacting with your company’s call center, sales team, application or website than they absolutely need to. So why are so many interactions between companies and their target audiences so complex? Often complexity is the result of trying to design interactions for everyone, which inevitably leads to interactions designed for no one.

One of the culprits in this drive to satisfy everyone is the edge case. Also referred to as the “Corner case”, the “Outlier” or the “Exception,” these are interaction scenarios that are not typically part of the main set of use cases for a given experience. These scenarios rarely happen, yet unwary design teams can be drawn into spending a disproportionate amount of time and effort addressing them. The solutions typically result in layering complexity on what should have been a simple, streamlined process.

When dealing with edge cases, the stakes can be high. They range from driving up the cost of product/process/system/service design, to the creation of poor employee or customer experiences that jeopardize the achievement of your business goals. The following tips can help businesses and experience designers get the edge on edge cases.

-

1) First Get the Facts:
Research actual usage to understand actual impact

Arm yourself with evidence. Gather available information and/or data to validate that the particular scenario needs to be addressed. Understand the problem from the audience’s perspective and confirm that addressing the scenario as outlined truly is the best way to meet the audience’s need.

If you don’t have evidence you require to make an informed design decision, go get it. Most likely the people insisting the case needs to be addressed have a business case to justify the cost and effort. Ask to see that information. If there is no such business case, insist on doing at least a modicum of quick, primary research with the target audience to make sure the solution has value.

Audience insights are becoming easier and easier to obtain through surveys, remote user testing, field studies, customer reviews, etc. Companies are even using Facebook and Twitter to pose questions and get quick insights for decision making. Of course, the real expertise is in the interpretation of the insights into meaningful stories that will impact business decision-making. If you reach out to a solid representative mix of your target audience, you will start to surface relevant insights to the best way to meet their needs as well as the goals of your business.

Armed with evidence, you can make an informed design decision.

-

Overly complex and convoluted interactions typically reflect organizations and/or processes that are by design overly complex and convoluted. It never hurts to turn the analytical lens on the business and work out the complexity. I’m often surprised how open companies are to a little reflection on their own processes. You can approach the subject by saying something like, “You are asking us to design the experience within the context of the overly complex way in which you currently do business. I’m suggesting we take this opportunity to look into the redesign of the service/process to see if there are ways we can address the root of the problem.”

A good example is Sprint’s recent overhaul of their phone service options. Research into their target audience revealed that they could reduce the number of plan offers to just three (3) and meet the needs of the vast majority of their potential customers. Rather than continuing to add more services in a shot-gun attempt to satisfy a wider base of customers, they re-thought their entire strategy and streamlined their offerings.  They lowered the effort required for a potential customer to choose to do business with them AND they simplified the job of supporting their service options. Win win.

-

3) Create and Use Relevant Personas:
Use data to link audience priorities to business priorities

If your organization hasn’t created personas that truly reflect your audience segments, create them and use them. Personas provide a constant reminder of who you are designing for and what their priorities are. Many organizations we work with already have personas in some form, but they typically aren’t complete and are rarely being used effectively.

Detail of Persona segmentation data

Effective personas include quantifiable segmentation data on the current customers represented by each persona. To help manage edge cases, add an additional layer that displays what your organization’s desired percent audience make up is for each persona. This information helps identify those edge cases that affect highly valued audience segments and, therefore, might be worth addressing.

-

-

-

Final Thoughts:

Not every edge case is evil. Sometimes they are the thoughtful details we strive to have in place to make an exceptional experience. Sometimes, when a recognizable pattern starts to appear, they can lead to the creation of innovative new audience segmentations, services, or product offerings. If that’s the case, then run with it!

I worked with a client in the financial services industry who had a situation where 5-10% of a particular customer segment was bringing in 85-90% of the revenue for a particular niche.  In this scenario, what might have been perceived as the edge cases with regard to the flagship product offering were actually the foundation for the creating of a new audience segment that required a separate experience all together. Rather then going down the path of  a “one-size-fits-all” retrofitted experience, we took those edge cases and used them to inform a custom tailored experience, with its own online tools, its own call center reps, all without jeopardizing the primary brand experience.

A well-designed experience needs to be diligently tended and defended. A design can be well implemented originally, but can be denigrated over time by the retrofitting of ad-hoc business requirements based on edge cases that draw people’s attention from the business’s and its target audience’s main goals. Be on the lookout and be ever vigilant to your design. Your audience will applaud your efforts. Your competitors will wish they thought of it first.

No doubt you are aware of programs that were elegant, motivating experiences for their target audiences and returned compelling business results. The question is how can you ensure that the work your agencies are doing for you will result in such experiences? Do you know what good looks like when you’re watching it develop? 

If you’re not even thinking to ask that question, then here’s

Tip #1: Ask it

After all, something about this headline intrigued you, right? Whatever industry you work in, you have the responsibility to question what it is your agencies are creating and why. And not just questions like, “Are you using the right treatment of the logo?” Rather bottom line questions like, “Will I ever see a quantifiable or qualifiable benefit of that $80,000 Flash video you suggested we put on our site?” or “That 55-e-mail communication stream…how will we know it is working for us?”

Some agencies are questioning themselves. Take David Berkowitz and his Inside the Marketer’s Studio blog where he recently ‘atoned’ for sins on behalf of marketers and agencies. Included among his confessions was, “We have killed ideas that were spot on in favor of pet projects that we wanted for our portfolios.” If you’re not lucky enough to be working with an agency that has developed this level of self-awareness and self-evaluation, I’ve provided some tried and true tips for ensuring your agency is gives you good design.

Tip #2: Own the Cross-channel Experience

The ultimate experience of your product or service is only as successful as it is seamlessly integrated across all touchpoints your audience might encounter. You may have a digital agency doing your website, a print agency doing your print materials, an IVR firm doing your call center…the people you’re interacting with don’t care about that. Whether they’re interacting with a mobile device, learning about a prescription medication, paying a bill or booking a flight, they are simply trying to use your product or service to accomplish a goal. And all of their individual interactions with your people and systems across all channels add up to the complete experience of your brand or business. That experience can break down in any single channel/touchpoint and spoil the whole experience. So regardless of any organizational drama over channel conflict, or behind the scenes in-fighting as you manage multiple vendors, someone (why not you?) needs to ensure that the overall experience is seamless and successful from your target audience’s perspective. 

Tip #3: Understand Your Audience….REALLY Understand Them

It will be difficult to do Tip #2 without doing this. No single research or insight gathering approach will give you a full picture of what you need to know about your audience. You may have a 100-page segmentation study that you paid $200K for and are wondering, “So how do I translate this into something actionable for my business?” The answer is to take that broad study and combine it with more targeted research and testing of specific hypothesis that hold promise of getting you to “good.” As David Berkowitz concedes, “[Agencies] have guessed at our target audience’s interests…rather than conducting research that could have provided real answers.” That research he’s talking about does not need to be terribly time-consuming nor expensive, yet it can significantly increase adoption rates, reduce rework and help prevent expensive missteps as you develop an engaging experience for your audience. 

Tip #4:  Make Sure the Customer has a Voice

Similar to Tip #3, someone from the agency’s Customer/User Experience group (research/usability analyst, information/interaction/experience architect, etc.) should be at any meeting involving discussion of the agency’s creative concepts or the desired experience of the design you are working on. If they’re not, explain that you want someone in the room who can be the objective voice of the customer (VOC). If only Creative is represented, you may fall victim to self-deceit or, as Berkowitz describes it, “Falling in love with ideas without considering what would provide value for our target audience.” While it is true that you can’t always rely on people to know what they will want or do at some future date under varying circumstances (how many people asked for an iPod before it existed?), you can construct tests that allow them to give you frank and actionable reactions to what you think they will want or do. And asking them can pay valuable dividends in loyalty and advocacy.

Tip #5: Get Educated

With new technologies and trends evolving every day, it can be difficult to filter through the collection of buzz words to understand where a smart investment lies (“Social Media?” “Web 2.0?” “You-Tube?” “Twitter?” “Web 3.0????”… WT$%^&!!!).  As Mr. Berkowitz confesses, “Agencies have hurried into the newest, most-buzzed-about social spaces without developing a strategy….we have imitated when we could have innovated.” The more educated you are on whatever it is you’re asking your agency to explore, the better you’ll be able to speak the same language, ask relevant questions, challenge assumptions, ensure your best interests are being considered, and, ultimately ensure that you’re getting value for your investment. If you spend just 1-2 hours a week scanning articles and becoming more knowledgeable, you’ll find almost immediate relevance to your business…you’ll also grow more relevant and personally competitive in your chosen profession.

Tip #6: Take Control of Measurement & Evaluation

Chances are agencies pitched you a fantastic program that was going to deliver amazing results based on how you’ve defined “good.” The program likely included some form of ongoing measurement to be conducted and analyzed by the agency. The problem is there’s an inherent bias when an agency measures the effectiveness of a program they create.  Similar to Tip #5, the more you and your business can dictate benchmarks for success to your agency and ensure they are tracking progress transparently to you, the more you can be assured that your program is genuinely fulfilling the value promised in the original pitch. You should insist on participation in the development of an objective measurement strategy that is relevant to the bottom line goals of your business. Ideally, the implementation of the strategy will include both data analysis and access to the raw data so you and/or a trusted consultative partner can dig more deeply into suggested conclusions as necessary. The key is not to measure for measurement’s sake, but to measure with the intent of taking purposeful action to drive the results by which “good” is being measured.

Tip #7: Exhibit Self-Awareness (and Appropriate Self-Lessness)

Unless you’re Apple or one of a few other culturally iconic brands, your product or service probably isn’t all that to your target audience. As much as you might desire it to be a central focus of their day, or as much as your agencies might want to feed your ego (and theirs) with promises that they can make it so, it is much more likely that your audience has more important things at the center of their lives than that new launch you’re working on. Perhaps the most important trait of an effective experience designer (and, I would argue, business or brand manager) is empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Take the time to figure out how they uniquely benefit from interacting with your brand, product or service. Only then can you create compelling experiences that provide value to them, and as a result, to you, and your business.

I’m sure these tips are easier communicated than accomplished, but I can assure you they work. If you’re serious about getting “good” from the work you and your agencies do every day, give these a try. You’ll get better results and save your agencies from having to make more embarrassing confessions.  

Why did our unorthodox entry resonate with the judges? Because we were the only entrants who, instead of immediately diving into a design solution to answer the question, “What should be done to revitalize the Concourse?” considered the most appropriate approach to be the one we would apply to any experience design challenge – ask the audience.

The results of our research are on display at the museum. You can also see facsimiles of some of the deliverables by going to the case study on our website. What I’d like to share here are some of the things we found important when applying basic experience design research principles to this particular challenge.

1. Define success
Defining success for a public space redesign is a research goal, not a starting point.

The definitions of success for a street are less straightforward than many design challenges we face. Since any public space has hundreds or thousands of stakeholders who also use it, finding the definition of its success is a process, not a known goal. Our subject matter experts and highly invested stakeholders for the Concourse made for a diverse group:

            – Artists
            – Community activists
            – High school students
            – Urban Planner for the Bronx
            – Director of Education Policy for the Bronx
            – CEO of a housing and economic policy organization
            – Author and New York Times reporter
            – Professor and amateur rapper
            – Lifelong Bronx residents
            – Recently moved resident
            – Former resident
            – Non-residents

It is inevitable that a wide variety of stakeholders for any project will generate a wide variety of responses to the question, “How would you define success for this initiative?” This means that the first objective of experience research on a public place, where different types of stakeholders exist, is to develop that definition of success. (See 4: “Understand audience goals”)

2. Identify your audience

Identifying your audience requires identifying the multiple uses of the space.
Residents aren’t the only users of a street like the Grand Concourse – professionals, students, visitors, drivers, sanitation workers, unemployed people, retirees, and people who come to access services (e.g. a hospital) also experience it regularly. Depending on where certain destinations are located, the population may be different: a university area draws people from near and far, a supermarket draws local residents, a hospital draws a mix of visitors and locals. But these destinations are not isolated locations –  the roadway connects them to transportation hubs as well as each other. So, identifying audiences for a public roadway must take into account the multiple uses of the space for each audience profile.

3.  Identify the context of use

Many audience profiles + many uses of space = many contexts for experiences.
The diverse population on a street does not complicate user research as much as it may seem. It simply means that recommendations for improvements of a public space must be based on a variety of contexts of use. Context is determined by the services and destinations near a location, as well as the day, time, and the needs of people accessing them. For example, on a Saturday afternoon, Jocye Kilmer park along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx is a safe place for kids to throw around a baseball or hold little league games. During rush hours, hundreds of commuters walk through the park from their homes along the Grand Concourse to the subway station on the other side. On weekday evenings a local artist gives tours of the Tree Museum that begins there. On Yankee game days fans cut through the park as a shortcut between their parking places and the nearby stadium. And every day, the man whose apartment on the Concourse looks out on the park admires (or laments) its aesthetic value.
 
4. Understand audience goals

Public space is not only for individual experiences.
In outdoor public spaces like parks and roadways, people with different purposes and aspirations affect each other’s experiences. When looking at public space, we have to pay equal attention to people for whom a park is a destination and those for whom it is a way to get elsewhere. The tourists coming to see the Tree Museum may prefer a calm, quiet environment. The rowdy Yankee fans disrupt the quiet of the Tree Museum tour on their way to the game. And the kids at little league practice need a place to play to keep them involved in safe after-school activities. Understanding, appreciating and accommodating the validity of these various uses is the ultimate goal of any final design recommendation.
 
5. Identify Positives and Negatives

Public space users expect usable space for all types.
Despite the contrasting goals that different people bring to an outdoor public space, asking them about their likes, dislikes, and areas for improvement does not necessarily result in irresolvable conflicts. Public space is not meant solely for one individual’s experience. Most people tend to expect and tolerate, if not actively appreciate, the presence of other people around. In fact, the presence of other people is often one of the key benefits of a public space. This means people’s ideas for the improvement of a roadway may include improvements for people with different needs than their own: A single, childless working adult may primarily use the street as a transportation corridor to and from work or the store, yet she appreciates the amount of families she sees on her way. Therefore, her suggestion might be to create more playground space nearby, to encourage that kind of activity. A long-time resident may see new immigrants struggle with a language barrier on public signage, and hope to facilitate their integration into the community by suggesting that signs be bilingual. This kind of feedback is focused on a community, not individuals.

6. Determine how to make improvements

Research-based audience-centered design extends beyond physical space.
We have determined that experience research of outdoor public space involves different people/profiles using a place in different contexts with different goals. They know what would improve their own experience, but that experience often includes other people, so needs are not individually-focused. 

So how does an experience architect pull all of this into recommendations for the improvement of a public space? As I mentioned earlier, understanding the multiple definitions of success for stakeholders and the various people using the space is key. Once we know who uses the place, why, how, and what about the place helps or hinders their experience, we can prioritize their needs and recommend solutions.

Summary

Complex initiatives like this go well beyond physical redesign. Any solution needs to speak to the soul and aspirations of the people who use the space. Coming up with a “cool” visual design concept or an environmentally friendly technological solution is a fun exercise for the architect as artist. But without the audience-centered research process, the designer does not have the advantage of knowing the deeper community-based issues that must be considered for the redesign to be truly successful. In public space experience design, the solution serves a diverse community of stakeholders, so it is not only worthwhile from the designer’s standpoint to look at the place from multiple perspectives, understanding how changes affect the whole community is the responsible, respectful approach to take.