Xperience This!

I couldn’t wait to get back to the office today after a morning of very exciting conversations at the Museum.  Below is a quick recap:

1. Do You Need a Moose?  Yes – you all ready that correctly.  During our community intercepts a week ago, one of our participants offered the museum a taxidermied moose to add to their animal exhibit.  Apparently the participant’s father was a taxidermist who had donated a brown bear many years ago and in his recent passing, the kids found a moose that they could “just picture standing strong and proud next to the bear”.  See what you learn when you ask your audience how they would like to contribute? More »

Hello everyone, I wanted to give you all a quick update on how things are going on the Morris Museum SEA project. First off – thank you to the many people that completed our online survey!  Your insights have gone a long way to helping us understand what people expect of a local museum or theater and why they choose to support (or not support) those that are nearby.  We used those surveys as a control group to put up against two other key pieces of our research – live, informal interviews with museum visitors, and an online survey we sent to with Morris Museum supporters, visitors, and volunteers. More »

Consider the following language from one company’s leadership regarding the fundamental principles to which they believe the company must adhere to achieve their business goals:

We must act in the customer’s best interest, not once in a while, but consistently. This means offering outstanding products and services and being helpful, courteous and quick to follow up. We need to be keenly aware of the competitive landscape and quick to act. The field – the employees closest to the customer – should drive this process and have ample resources and authority to be the best at serving customers. Our strength resides in the field. We must exceed customers’ expectations and constantly make it easier for them to do business with us. [My emphasis.]

This language may sound familiar. It may even echo the language of your own company’s mission/vision statement. Perhaps there are posters around your workplace boldly proclaiming similar corporate commitments.  As an advocate for your customer, I find these principles and posters admirable; however, I can tell you from personal experience that the mission articulated by the company quoted above and the experience of doing business with said company are in diametrical opposition.

So why does the actual experience of interacting with so many companies often belie the customer-centric principles they claim are fundamental to their success?  Here are six surefire causes we have identified as we’ve helped various companies improve their experiences. More »

The definition of functional requirements for a website or a business application is a critical phase in the development process. Aligning those requirements with the needs of your target audience is a prerequisite to launching a tool that will be quickly adopted and meet business expectations for ROI.

Prototyping is an excellent technique that enables your development team to get valuable audience feedback and address issues pertaining to functional priorities and usability before they become costly downstream problems. Prototyping provides the additional benefit of allowing the team to share its vision and begin building a fan base among your audience members. These fans can become powerful allies in driving adoption of the completed tool.

Despite its benefits, prototyping and early stage audience testing can be perceived as slowing down the development process and creating unnecessary front-end costs. We believe that when done correctly, prototyping’s benefits far outweigh its costs. Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way to help ensure the process is efficient and effective. More »

Surveys show that 2 out of every 3 IT projects fail. Many are even cancelled before completion. Common reasons projects fail range from budget overruns to failure to deliver ROI to no change control system. The list can go on and on….  According to a PMI Survey, one of the top 3 reasons for project failure is not meeting the audience needs. A key factor to avoid this is by simply keeping your audience engaged throughout the “entire” process. Letting your audience have a voice throughout the project lifecycle (Audience Centered Design) while implementing functionality in small dosages (Agile Development Cycle) is a major key to developing a successful website and will substantially decrease your chances of project failure or rework later on.
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