Xperience This!

For those of you who have been following along – we are reaching the conclusion of our Experience Audit for the Morris Museum and heading into Roadmap time.  Last night was our presentation to the Executive Board reviewing the key themes of our recommendations and the key data points that will be needed as we begin our prioritization and trade off decision for how we are going to address the  areas of opportunity identified.  More »

I went to my local Duane Reade recently and noticed “Get your flu shot here” signs everywhere but no date or time listed. When I asked, the pharmacy employee responded with, “oh, any time during pharmacy hours, but we’re a bit backed up right now, so 15 minutes.”  

I learned as part of being acquired by Walgreen’s, Duane Reade introduced a flexible vaccination service, allowing customers to get a flu shot any hours that the pharmacy is open (albeit not well advertised). Some large survey by a market research company probably told them that 87% of customers don’t get flu shots because of inconvenient timing.

But who cares why they are doing it! This is great, or so I thought, until I started this seemingly ideal patient experience process. More »

The concept of addressing people’s emotional needs in experience design has been around for quite a few years in the consumer world.  Companies like Apple, Disney and Starbucks have become well known for driving intense customer loyalty by infusing their customers’ experiences with a personality to which their customers can relate or even aspire. Interact with your customers on an emotional level and they won’t just become loyal customers; they’ll become your advocates.  As A.G. Lafley wrote in The Game Changer (2008), “Good design is a catalyst for creating total experiences that transcend functional benefits alone and delight customers. It is a catalyst for moving a business from being technology-centered to one that is customer experience-centered.”

So why not apply this same principle when designing your employee experience? After all, employees are essentially your organization’s internal customers. Often companies will focus their internal efforts on improving performance on processes and new tools/technologies, but that misses a big part of the picture.  Process improvements and new tools won’t have their desired impact on your bottom line if your employees don’t embrace them. Simply announcing such changes won’t ensure your employees are aligned with your business goals; and it certainly won’t turn them into advocates.

Design your employee experiences to make an emotional connection, and you change everything. When designed to delight your employees, new processes become something they follow because they want to, not because they have to. New tools become those things they’ve been asking and waiting for to help them do a better job. More »

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 »