Way back in the past I had an outstanding Interaction designer employed – Henrik Olsen. He pointed me to another great article about the usage of Personas in Scenario building.
He writes:
To Shannon Ford, personas are employed to better understand what
users want to accomplish and to develop design solutions that help meet
the goals and needs of the group they portray. They help avoid the
common practice of trying to design for all users.
Personas have
their foundation in real people, but are never based on any on
individual. They are created to represent a set of characteristics
found across many individuals, and are derived from qualitative
research with actual users.
The best personas will also go the
extra step to describe key behaviors such as a decision making process,
an information browsing approach, or a shopping mode - the drivers that
affect how people approach a given solution. In her article you’ll find
a few samples of home improvement customers and their decision-making
process.
The article he pointed me to was this.
Over the last week’s I’ve visited a few interesting sites that I want to share with you - if you have any other interesting links please share with us.
Here they are, just for a beginning:
- The Design Council - Naturally, this is a well-designed site. It is well-stocked with resources
on all aspects of design, but concentrates on UK sites. A great place to start
your search and to be kept up to date.
- Design Management Institute - Covers all aspects of design, and details membership, conference and
publications details of the DMI. Useful lists of design management sites
covering: businesses, academic institutions, associations, and newsgroups that
discuss design and design management.
- Innovation Management Toolbox - This site is prepared by Tidd, Bessant and Pavitt, to accompany their book
‘Managing Innovation’. It contains a variety of tools for thinking about and
work with themes and issues on innovation management.
- Management of Innovation and New Technology Research Centre - McMaster - A good place for innovation sites. Apart from the research at the centre
itself, there is an up-to-date list of conferences and list of
innovation related sites.
- Management Roundtable - provides interesting articles and discussion on the trends and technology in
the area of product development, including a Roundtable discussion group and a novel Product Development Assistant.
- Product Data Management Information Center - this is an excellent site for PDM related information. It covers every
aspect of PDM for practitioner and academic, as well as a fine overview for the
novice. Covers conferences and seminars, article and publications, industry
groups, vendor services, and a user forum.
A little book for the weekend? Summer Hollidays?
John Thackara has written a brilliant book - it seems.
www.thackara.com/inthebubble/index.html
Do you know of any other interesting books about Design Management Process’s? Feel free to share.
Specialization has created intellectual and imaginative silos in organizations, and a recent Wharton study written up in S+B Magazine
has found that these silos are a huge obstacle
to innovation: "The most effective product development and
commercialization processes encourage dynamic communication and idea
sharing among engineers, marketers, and customers…Failure to
incorporate the customer’s perspective often seriously limits the
potential financial and competitive value of corporate
innovation…Often, engineers are tucked away so far within a company
that they don’t see firsthand what customers really need."
Other key findings of the study:
- over-concentration on technology and under-emphasis of the emotional appeal of products leads to market failure
- better products result when employees are themselves customers of the product
- ‘anthropological research’ — visiting customers to see how
they actually use (and mis-use) products can provide huge insights on
need and innovation opportunities
- when entering new markets, having local partners ‘on the
ground’ can help tweak products to meet needs that are unique to that
new market
- using cross-functional teams and having the R&D people ‘get out more’ can help reduce ‘customer blindness’
- spreading R&D efforts around the world can help global
companies enhance their ‘environmental scan’ and tap into ideas and
adaptations that may not be apparent at head office
- surveys that gather data on customer behaviour are insufficient — it’s more important to know why
customers do what they do, to determine their true wants and needs, and
this usually requires face-to-face contact and collaborative effort to
determine
- it’s important to understand customers’ aversion to change, and annoyance with having too many choices, when developing products
- key qualities needed of the facilitators of dialogue between R&D, sales and customers: humility and curiosity
This study focused mainly on new product innovation, but the same need
for collaboration with all the departments of the company, and with
customers as well, applies equally to other types of business
innovation.
Thx Dave for linking me to the study.
For their 21st issue, icon magazine
asked themselves, "Who are the people who are changing the contemporary
design landscape? What are the products, organisations and ideas that
everyone will be copying in the immediate future?"
UPDATE - this is the right link
Howard Mann from the Dig Tank wrote a blog post about how dull and standardized current sales processes are. And boy do I agree! I have been selling large solutions (from advertising to information technology) for some years now, and if something bores me a lot, it is the sales process. That is why I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to hire a university-degree boy to do the hard work for me. A lot of you know what I mean when I say picking up the phone and calling a client can be HARD work!
In fact some of Howard’s advices make sense to me and it would be interesting to hear real-world examples from companies that have reinvigorated their sales process.
Do all companies worldwide follow the same standard for sales? Call, meeting, presentation, proposal, negotiation and then a little prayer? Or have someone already done something? Please tell me.
If the auto-rickshaw I am traveling in, brakes suddenly and takes a turn - left or right - depending on which side I am seated - left or right - what are the various things that can happen?
Naina Redhu has a comprehensive description og Scenario Planning Processes. Interesting indeed.
Do you remember the time in kindergarten where you made your first drawing? And the teacher asking you what the drawing looked like – and between the lines told you that the drawing was too funny and didn’t look like anything at all?
That’s about the time you stopped making drawings, right?
Some of us still has the ability, the talent to make great drawings, we just need the time to practice, but also a great amount of imagination. I think Imagination is about talent, while ability is about practice.
And that leave me to my question – Can Creativity be thought?
If you look at management literature there is no limits – everything can be thought, but is that the truth? I’m in doubt here – I think that creativity is a gift given to you from Mother Nature, and how companies is using those talents in group processes, strategy formulation, product- and business development that’s another issues.
Do you have any perspectives, any thoughts on the matter?
Evelyn Rodriguez has posted another interesting angle on the topic of companies being in dialouge with their customers, creating products and services together with them and being influenced by them in their business decisions.
My view is that traditional marketing emphazise listening to the market but the tools of doing so i.e. focus groups etc. just dont cut it anymore (if it ever has). This is where more participatory exercises and observations made in the daily lifes of the customers rather than in video-surrveillance rooms are benefitial. Other tools are webblogs, customer listening centers and idea markets.
Evelyn refers to an interview that Tom Peters made with Scott Bedbury regarding his work at Nike in the good old days. According to Scott Nike’s success was due to their deep understanding of their customers and their customers influence on Nike. Evelyn concludes:
Old marketing skill: Influence.
New marketing skill to add to your repetoire: Be influence-able.
I believe the same goes for product development skills. Read the post here.
I came across an interesting post by Kathy Sierra on The Creating Passionate Users blog regarding "wakes" and what I call co-creation. Its all about how you invite and inspire users to be part of a companies wake - where they can add value to that company´s products or services and innovate/co-create additions to the experience of that product.
Some marketing folks have talked about user-created ads, but if you let users enhance what you offer, by adding more features or even just by creating cool fan t-shirts, you’re much further up the passionate users curve (…) Being closed, or trying to keep others from capitalizing on what you provide (in other words, trying to keep the wake for yourself), is a bad idea.
There is a value being open and if your products are software, you might already build in API’s to open up to the surrounding world of potential co-creators and passionate customers. But how do you do it if your products are physical or non-software services? Kathy Sierra has a few ideas.