DesignOutcome

The power of converging ideas point to hopefully intended consequences.

[Part one – Usability in the real world]

Possibility

If we took best practices of application development and matched them to a deep understanding of what customers do and how they want to do it, we might get a powerful feedback system that allows incremental service or product improvement. It could even affect transactions happening here in Realityville, between the service/product providers and the public.

Usability Convergence

Some years ago the term 'usability' caught my attention and still holds it fixed. Often it is used interchangeably with that marketing buzzmiester, 'user-friendly', usability has been picked up from the web world, consumed by marketing machines and spit out as literally any effort that makes things easier to sell to customers.

I use a web application that sends me anything it runs across regarding the term 'user experience'. So far I have been sorry to see that most of the links are PR missives for software releases. I'm waiting to see how it will be attached to realityware applications - stuff happening without the benefit of getting online. I'd expected to see more connotations involving customer service by now.

It's my impression that product development professions like industrial design, interior design and architecture should be converging on this 'customer experience'. The same should be happening for other service industries as well. The impetus comes from milestone studies like Pine and Gilmore's book "The Experience Economy" that says customers are willing to pay for an event (or the event a product produces) that presents memorable, higher-impact, and personal value - an experience rather than a common transaction, or visit, or trip.

So, if marketers (I'm thinking here mainly non-software, non virtual types) are seeing 'the experience' as the vehicle that sells and up-sells products and services, how do you measure this stuff in daily transactions? A trip to the convenience store does not currently have the metrical connectedness that an 800 number on the door nor a grainy security camera capture might imply. To my mind the world of focus groups and surveys capture isolated individuals who cannot give a wide enough and consistently evident look at what's really happening.

I had a chat with Dave Norton who was then a VP of Yamamoto Moss, a Minneapolis-based experience marketing consulting firm (He's now doing good work at Stonemantle). I attended a seminar he gave in Austin some time back, and inquired about how someone might apply some sort of measurable feedback assessments for organizations, he was visibly crestfallen. He said he doubted if there was a market in doing such work. I got the impression that (keeping in mind the firm's Japanese-named partner) a Zen 'experience' is somehow 'not there' if you try to label it. Hmmm...what does this mean?

Measurements

So, we can qual-itatively comment on 'customer service' in terms of the people hired (and hopefully trained) to supply it. We can quant-itatively comment on transaction times and on other numerical efficiencies, but most of these are provided for the benefit of an organization intent on improving how it copes in a role as a provider of goods or services. The organization's goal is how best to spend their assets of money and time to adequately deal with the public. How to best supply a demand in the most profitable way. Hey, no problem there for me. Sounds like a good idea.

But my concern is that it may not be the best way to operate business on a long term basis. I prefer Mayor Ed Koch's approach to setting an organization's prime goal, "How'my doin?" The answer it provides often proves hard to implement since it demands real change.

Ok, Da Point

We pretty much know how to present an organization on the web to a global public. But not too many people are checking up on the place where the user/customer sees all this conventional marketing stuff really happening; the place where all the visual branding, packaging, signage package lives. Do customers see this happening at the bricks and mortar physical touchpoints, the facilities?

This may sound heretical in an age of virtual sites and portals. Think about it: the physical has many more dimensions and therefore is much harder to get right. It includes the architectural flows and space treatments and all physical means used to guide users - the actual, physical touchpoints. Would best practices here deliver qualitative success AND allow for the quantitative ROI metrics? I think so. With just enough tech to capture strong transactional evidence, and a truly matrixed team of analysts, I believe this is not only possible, but profitable if it takes a holistic view of the organization's environment.

The physical enviro...what?

What about looking at the effects any environment has on three important groups: customers, employees, and the organization itself. In this cohesive way, how does it all work? Gilmore and Pine call this physical aspect the 'stage' on which the play is presented. As such it affects the actors (employees) and the audience (customers). I think we should include the investors (organization) too. Why not comment on how the stage could be better set? And not to stop there, what about out in the 'lobby', at the 'ticket counter', and even 'the marquee' out front? Is it too hot, cold or dark? Are the actors well trained and well versed to handle improvisation? Can investors take the long view and let it run to get the kinks worked out?

Next time: What 'it' looks like