Xperience This!

Back in April, several colleagues and I entered a competition by the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Design Trust for Public Space that challenged entrants to envision the future of the Grand Concourse, a boulevard in the Bronx whose grandeur has suffered in recent decades. It was a design competition, so the vast majority of contestants were architects, landscape architects, and city planners. Being experience architects, we were the filly running against the stallions – a long shot to say the least. Two months later, our proposal was selected from over 400 entries from 25 countries as one of seven (7) finalists whose designs are now on display for the fall season at the museum.

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. More »

Kathleen Fourte (MISI XD group EA) and I attended the Food & Drug Administration’s Public Hearing on the Promotion of Medical Products using the Internet and Social Media Tools.  MISI had insights to share from countless contextual inquiries and usability tests with patients, caregivers, and physicians (both primary care and specialists).  We wanted to demonstrate how these people’s needs and perceptions shape the experiences they seek when they interact using social media tools. We further wanted to note how core experience design principles can help address questions being asked regarding how pharmaceutical companies should handle key information when interacting with their audiences in the social media space.  More »

Note: This post is an abridged version of Jerilyn’s whitepaper called Why Personas Matter.

So many times when I start a presentation on personas and the value they bring to any organization (whether it is a development team, a creative design team, or yes – even a marketing team), the push back I face is the perception that personas are really just “fluff” that cannot enable decisions and effect the bottom line.  In my experience, that is just not the case.  I have seen great products fail because the product engineers started with a set of cool features and later looked for a customer segment that might use them.  I have also seen mediocre products succeed because instead of building a segment around the product, the team started with a set of individual people, trying to accomplish specific tasks… and then built a product that could help them accomplish their goals.  

How did personas help them do that?  Simple – they were based on research and facts (not archetypes or assumptions) and focused on behaviors, not segmentation data that represents how the business views its customers instead of how customers view themselves. More »

Let me tell you a story…
You probably have one like it, so I’ll keep it short. It’s about a company’s strategic alignment of its people and systems to assure I have a particular customer experience. And it’s about why I’ll never do business with that company again.

This is about the bank that “serviced” (I use the word loosely) my home equity line of credit (HELOC), and it goes something like this…

Chapter 1) I dutifully make my monthly payments early for three years.

Chapter 2) The bank’s automatic reappraisal of the value of my home leads to a form letter saying I can no longer access my credit line.

Chapter 3) I call and am told my house has been compared to selling prices of others in the area. I inform my Customer Service rep the comparables they used don’t match my house. “That’s what our records show for your address. Sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” Of course not.

Chapter 4) I dutifully continue paying down my outstanding balance waiting for the HELOC to be automatically restored at a new, lower level.

Chapter 5) No restoration notice arrives even as I approach a zero balance, so I go to their web site. I find the option to email them. The error message tells me I have to register before I can send them an email. Register? That provides no value to me, but okay. I enter my loan number and it isn’t recognized. I can’t register!

Chapter 6) I call, again. After deciphering the automated call center menu, I reach a Customer Service representative who can’t help me (irony). I need to talk to someone who deals with reactivating accounts, which apparently doesn’t qualify as a customer service.

Chapter 7) I am transferred. Several static-filled muzak minutes later, I have another human being on the line.

Denouement:  Here’s the deal: If I want the HELOC reactivated I have to pay for an appraisal and reapply.

Post Script:  Really!  I mean, really?!  Are you kidding me?

Systems and desired experience not aligned

What I have just described is a bank’s integrated online and offline “Customer Service” system that is seemingly strategically devoted to making my experience of doing business with them so painful that I will refuse to go through the experience ever again. Do you think that is in their mission statement? More »

Xperience This is the new company blog of MISI’s Experience Design (XD) group. Its purpose is to create a place where our employees can share their experiences and insights about their craft: the design of interactive experiences that align the needs and desires of the audience with the business needs of the companies we work for.

Among the questions I anticipate many readers having are: 1) What is Experience Design? and 2) Why should I care?

Wikipedia provides a serviceable answer to the first question. I’ll paraphrase here adding a few edits based on my own language bias. Experience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the entire experience and the facilitation of the desired outcome.

XD methodologies help a business answer three fundamental questions any time it sets out to evaluate or to develop an interaction with its audience: Who is my audience, really? What are they trying to achieve? How can I help them achieve it? The answers to these questions form the foundation of the solutions we design and develop. More »