Archive for the ‘Consultants’ Category

Happy Customers and “The Curse of Knowledge”

Friday, December 31st, 2010

Right now I am preparing a workshop to help a client who builds and sells physical products. We are helping them create a “device management” interface for one of their products. They want to make sure they will have happy customers.

Why do companies bring me in to help them? They are experts in their products. Why do they need our services to help ensure they will have happy customers?

Because of “The Curse of Knowledge.” Bob Sutton uses this concept to explain how to be a better manager, but I think it is valid for us to think about why clients need to hire or bring in experience designers.

“The Curse of Knowledge” as he explains it is “the more people know about something, the harder it is for them to package explanations and instructions in ways that others can comprehend.” In terms of customer experience and thinking about happy customers, this curse happens because experts, the companies and their employees, have a hard time putting themselves in the shoes of their customers. More important than happy customers, is being able to put themselves into the shoes of an unhappy customer or a first-time customer.

How can they “forget” their expertise and design an interface that embody simple tasks that allow their customers need to do.  Simple means simple to know and simple to do.  It should require minimum emotional and cognitive effort to turn what knowledge and needs the customer has into action.

I am using my business and industrial anthropology background to help this company see their own product in new ways, most importantly in the way their customer or a first time user of their product sees their product. It is like explaining the culture of a distant tribe to a group of people. More apropos than “explaining” is “translating.” One needs not only to be good at understanding their foreign tribe – the customer. But also to understand the client culture. Then figure out ways to translate the customer world-view into the client world-view.

References

Bob Sutton on “The Curse of Knowledge”

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Follow The Money: Easiest Way to Learn About Your Clients Business

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

How do they make their money?

Whatever client you are working on right now I want you to ask yourself “How do they make their money?” If you are working on someone’s website, especially a commercial venture, you better know how they (the business) makes their money.

I hope you are not out there organizing websites just because you like to have things organized.  Perhaps some people do this because they have a predilection to being obsessive compulsive, but it would be much better if we are getting paid for improving information architectures or bettering usability because of a need.

Far too often information architects have no idea of the answer to the money question. Yes, I will submit that money is a proxy for measuring success. But it is a easy business metric to gain client’s attention.  It is a good variable to pay attention to.  

It is a great variable to put into your “big picture” macro view.  If you can show how what you are doing or changing is going to affect the money that is a incredible thing.  That is a powerful thing.  If you can increase profits or decrease costs you will have all the C-level executives eating from your hand, and actually if this is true you probably should be a C-level executive.  

Now being able to have dollar “metrics” is the ideal that many people have written about.  The point of this article is not to go into that at all.  This article is about knowing your clients business! The said fact is that many people don’t even try to understand their clients’ business because they are thinking ahead to the difficultly of metrics and don’t want to go there.  In terms of knowing your clients’ business this is a cop-out.

In client conversations I love exploring what are some ways that they can make more money? Equally fascinating is what are ways they can save some money?

So, I ask you: How do they make their money?

Here are the basic elements of learning “How they make their money.”

  1. What do they obsessively count? Look in their annual reports, press releases, or even interviews with executives.  The numbers they tout. How do those relate to what is on the website.
  2. What is going to get them promoted, a big fat raise, or get them fired? Is their an easy way for them to measure or predict these from website metrics or traffic?
  3. What is the smallest unit they count?  What is the level of granularity they are looking at? Is it a single transaction or the lifetime value of a customer?  Is it sales or service and maintenance? Consider how the internet experience maps to these different granularities.
  4. If the website is focusing on increasing profits, consider savings.  If the website is focused on cutting costs also look at increasing revenue/profits.  Fiance is a combination of cost structure and revenue streams.

This concern about cost/revenue models isn’t going to transform you overnight into a financial consultant, and that is not the intent, but it is going to raise your appreciation of what the your clients’ world is like.  Knowing more about your client, their infrastructure and finances and what is important to them should be a first step of understanding the design challenge and will help you design a better solution that balances client needs and customer needs. This is true design thinking.

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Three Questions To Ask Your UX Consultants

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Three questions your UX (User Experience) consultant better know the answers to!

UX consultants, be them Information Architects, Search Engine Optimization experts, User Experience Designers, Interaction Designers, or something else can be very important to the success of your product, service, and brand. You are paying them money. Sometimes very big money. How can you get more for your dollar?

To achieve the maximum return on your outlay, you must personally make sure your consultants can answer the following 3 QUESTIONS.

Here are 3 questions that you should ask your consultants every so often, or even better make them write up and give to you:

1. How does MY company make money?

Wow, what a powerful question. You want them to know how your company makes money, how it sustains itself, how it grows. You would be surprised how some UX consultants are not focused on the client’s business side of things. They spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and attention on the user side and don’t balance that with an equally sophisticated understanding of the business needs. It is YOUR FAULT if you let them come up with great ideas that customers like, but aren’t willing to pay for.

2. How are MY customers going to change over time?

This is not as easy. They usually are working from personas that you have given them or perhaps your consultants are researching and creating the personas as part of their deliverables. Do not see personas (or your customers) as permanently static bulls-eyes. People change. The situations change. You need to make sure your plan and design can change too. At the most simple level look at demographic changes, such as your 34 year old customer now in 7 years will be 41. What does that mean for the user experience? Those two age groups are very different, but it was the same person. How do you grow with them, or is the default plan to abandon them as you pay to acquire brand new customers.

3. What will get ME promoted?

Ok, this might seem a little selfish, but I can assure you that if your consultants know what it is that you are being measured on it can only be a good thing. Whether it is for your next promotion, a raise, or a bonus this kind of insight helps them in a micro way in the same way the first question helps them in a macro way. It might not be the focus of their current efforts, but their creative minds will work this over throughout the project and perhaps come up with some great ideas. If they see their fortunes and your fortunes as tied together, a rising tide raises all boats. What a testament to their success.

These questions and knowing their answers are about making sure you are getting the most value from your consultants. The answers change over time and sometimes quite often so at least at the start of every project refresh these mutual understandings and make sure that everyone has the same basic answers. It will help make your UX consultant more valuable and in the end help make your product/service and brand more valuable too.

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