But I’ve gotten ahead myself.  This has been a long time coming. The last 10 years have certainly heralded our arrival.  Starting in 2000 with a butterfly ballot design that was the cornerstone of a disputed election, “usability” was bandied about in the public lexicon.  The years that followed were nothing short of revolutionary: a smorgasbord of digital media, online commerce, immersive gaming, mobile madness and social networking; all of which contributed to the radical and permanent change in the way most of us live and communicate.

Seismic shifts in our behavior, spread across a diverse global audience, have by natural extension brought the tenets of user-centered Experience Design as a strategic imperative to a growing number of companies ranging from LEGO to Ford to Merck.  Even at C-level, the role of Chief Experience Officer is far less exotic than it was just 5 year ago.  And as a portentous bookend to this first decade of the millennium, US News and World Report declared “User Experience Specialist” as one of the 30 Best Careers of 2009. Defining the evolution of this industry in a paragraph will never do it justice; suffice it to say it’s been a fun, exciting and enlightening ride thus far.

So, what makes me say that 2010 is so special?  We’re just two weeks into January and I’m seeing TV – yes, the 800 pound one-way push media gorilla - speaking to the same interactive XD principles I’ve been talking to clients about all these years.  Things like know your audience and undertand the broader context of the experience you’re designing.

The first example: a Domino’s Pizza commercial where they revealed … get this…customers think their pizza tastes terrible.  Their commercial hits you straight between the eyes, directly referencing customer feedback as the key to driving them to change. Executives hang their heads in shame watching focus group sessions where regular folks make acidic comments about how awful Domino’s had become.  And you can see it all, and the resulting “new” media buzz on the website they created to allow other media outlets’ and the general public’s commentary to continue.  Call it standard market research and a smart cross-channel marketing campaign if you want, but Domino’s didn’t just say “Check out Domino’s new spicier recipe.”  They let their customers do the talking…and they listened.

The second example is way more compelling.  About 10 minutes after seeing the Domino’s commercial, I was watching 60 Minutes.  The first story was Steve Kroft’s look into the multi-billion dollar Mexican border security project for the Department of Homeland Security.  Three years ago, Boeing won a project to implement a high-tech, virtual fence solution.  It involves towers, video imaging technology, field support laptops, and monitoring stations in a monumental three year effort.  The 2000 mile system was to be completed this month, but to date only 28 miles is complete, and that is still considered a prototype.  A typical 60 minutes expose, but what struck me was the punch line: the core reason cited for the failure of this project was squarely put to the lack of border patrol personnel involvement in the design.

To quote Mr. Kroft, “The biggest problem, and you might find this hard to fathom, was that no one at the Department of Homeland Security or the engineers at Boeing bothered to ask the people who would actually be using the surveillance system what they wanted, or how they wanted the system to work.”

I admit I was practically screaming at the screen when the new project director admitted, “We didn’t iterate with them…we didn’t do that and it should have happened.”  Steve Kroft saying, “That’s a pretty big mistake.”  And the director saying, “It’s a huge mistake!”

Later Kroft says, “Isn’t that one of the first things you ask?  What does the customer think?  What does the client want?” And the government auditor answers, “Well, you would think so.”

To illustrate one problem, Kroft shows a ranger in the field with a laptop installed in his SUV.  “If anyone had asked the agents, they would have learned that laptops are hard to operate bounding through the desert, and the dust would prove inhospitable to the equipment, and that the agents would be unable to get a signal over vast stretches of the desolate region.” Amazing -  Check out the story here. If you don’t have time to watch the whole segment, skip to minutes 8 through 10 of the archived show (after you watch the mandatory commercials, of course).

For those of you on large enterprise initiatives where your advocacy for iterative involvement of the people who will be interacting with your systems is still seen as a ‘nice to have’, I suggest you send this link to whoever owns the launch of your product, service or application.  When venerated TV journalists can speak the way we speak, encapsulating the core of what we do, calling out those responsible in such an elegantly public way, you can’t help but feel something good is coming.

NBC had a slogan to describe a solid lineup of shows: Must See TV.  I welcome the coming decade where more and more companies will introduce products, services and applications designed using methods that seek to create the best possible experiences for the people that will use them.  I call it “Must See XD” - Bring it on.

Astra Zeneca presents its Accoladez awards every year to brand teams and partners who produce work that provides the biggest breakthrough in how to communicate about a brand or to address a difficult brand challenge. It recognizes a key finding in market research as well as a unique methodology used to uncover a transformational insight regarding customer behavior.  Accoladez is highly coveted among the Brand teams and the competition is quite fierce.

Our Experience Design group recently won finalist status in the category of Commercial Insight for the Physician Experience Research Study we completed in early 2009.  Our work was recognized because it provided the basis and firsthand validation of what Primary Care and GI Specialists were looking for from the Digital channel, both from a preference and behavioral standpoint.

The study sought to understand how physicians use the digital space in the context of treating their patients. It included detailed 1:1 interviews with over 50 physicians in two cities – the highlight of the research was the “day in the life” diaries we asked physicians to complete to track their digital activities. The goal was to get at what physicians’ digital behaviors REALLY are versus what they claim they are in self-reported surveys or large-scale reports. We wanted to answer the “how” and “why” of physician behavior, not solely the “what.” The insights we gathered helped AZ stakeholders both in digital and traditional channels prioritize communications and tactics.

We think this recognition speaks volumes about the value of having a non-agency with no agenda to push for any particular marketing communications tactics doing this type of research. It frees the partnering vendor to call it as they see it and focus on creating value for the client.

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.
  

Personas Help You Focus on What Matters

When your audience is at the center of what you do, it is easier to move past the excitement of a new product or interaction and focus on the heart of why you are making the change in the first place.  In a product design project a few years back, I saw first hand how having a strong understanding of the needs and behaviors of all target consumer audiences helped ensure the success of a new Voice Over IP consumer focused product release.  How?  Consumers had an easier time understanding what the product was, how they would use it, and what challenges it would address in their daily lives thanks to a tighter feature list, clearer product messaging, and an easier end to end experience of learning, buying, getting, using, and servicing the product.

Personas Reveal Unspoken Cast Members

I admit Customer Segmentation is very important for any good CRM strategy. It helps you better understand how your business defines its audiences (internal or external) and what each segment needs in order to meet their goals.  But equally important is understanding how your audiences define themselves, what they need to do, and how they want to do it.  Personas often help align two important groups of people – business stakeholders and target audiences – by identifying the breaks or gaps in their intersecting roadmaps.  In one particular case, a quick look at attention grabbers and influencers of a key target audience helped us revise our overall CRM plan to include touch points previously seen as unimportant.

Personas Are Not Just For “Users”

Myth – personas are for marketers and website designers… only.  Truth – personas can help inform any interaction you are designing as long as there is an audience, a scenario, and a context in which it all comes together.  One of the most interesting and proactive ways I have used personas is in a global Change Management project where personas were introduced to help the team better understand what employees would need from their company in order to adopt and embrace a major change in how they work.  Personas were used to drive communication planning, training programs, and the overarching change management strategy by helping us make decisions around dollar spend, key messages, and channels of delivery.

Personas Bring Customer Segments to Life

Personas turn profiles of people into real people having real experiences.  As a result, personas can provide invaluable feedback on the designs, strategies, and interactions you are working on.  For example, in a recent web design project personas helped us revise overall site design and content focus to speak directly to the audiences that would be using the website.   What was interesting about this project is that the website we were asked to evaluate wasn’t a bad website.  It wasn’t breaking any major usability rules.  That said, it was failing to meet (or even come close to) business goals around conversion rates.  To address the issue, we realized that a better understanding of exactly who was using the website and what they were trying to do was necessary.  After doing a quick study and persona development effort, we were able to revise the design to better grab the audience’s attention.  We also rewrote content to highlight the information they found important and could ultimately inspire them to make the desired change in treatment our client was hoping for.

Personas Drive Decision Making

Because personas can actually walk through the experience you are designing, they can help you make decisions about what to do with the insights you are gathering.  They can help decide which marketing initiatives are no longer providing value or what features will make the difference between a best in class product and a “keeping up with the Joneses” product.  One example of this is a web design project where personas helped us elimate unnecessary scope and better focus the elements that remained to speak to the audience that would be using the website – not the audience that would be visiting it once and moving on to their next task.

To learn more…

If this caught your attention and you want to learn more, please check out my full length point of view on Why Personas Matter or my recent presentation at PhiliChi – available for download and viewing at: http://phillychi.acm.org/?p=256 .