Visualizing the adoption experience
Earlier I blogged about visualizing the customer experience using customer experience journey maps. The experience I’m currently trying to understand and visualize is the experience people go through when adopting a new application at work. The challenge of people adopting of new applications in an organization is a much different challenge than the one of people [...]
Taking a people-centric approach to the design and deployment of enterprise software
There’s been a regrettable lack of discussion on the challenges of designing usable, engaging experiences for enterprise software. Often the business problems solved by B2B vendors were compelling enough that whether or not they were easy to use organizations were willing to put up with poor design. Companies purchasing the software have traditionally been more [...]
Thinking beyond the website
While I’m excited by the rapid growth of the discipline of content strategy as evidenced by last week’s sold out Content Strategy Forum in Paris and the growing buzz about content strategy across the webisphere, most of the conversation is currently centered around web content strategy. I think the reason the conversation has centered around [...]
Bridging silos through story
In the spirit of filter or be flooded (Fast Company) and the Simplicity of Dr. Seuss (a funny must read on the need for content strategy), I’m sharing my draft of “What’s your story? Designing a holistic customer experience” in advance of my talk at the Content Strategy Forum. I’ve crafted something too long to present [...]
10 reasons content strategy is essential when designing a holistic customer experience
Next week I’m attending (and speaking at) the first Content Strategy Forum in Paris. I’m intrigued by the discipline of content strategy because I believe that now, more than ever before, content strategy is critical for designing a holistic customer experience. No longer will content be thought of as a necessary evil (technical how to [...]
Visualizing the customer experience using customer experience journey maps
People discover unseen opportunities when they have a personal and empathic connection with the world around them. For individuals, that means developing the ability to walk in other people’s shoes. For companies and other large institutions, that means finding a way to bring the rest of the world inside their walls. – Dev Patnaik, Wired [...]
Designing with the social brain in mind
We are like a herd of buffalo quietly grazing on a plain until one of our neighbors starts to run… then we start to run, and others start to run, and suddenly mysteriously, the whole herd is barreling forward… Cooperation, altruism, punishment, and free-riding are written into our DNA. – Nicholas Cristakis and James Fowler, [...]
Build design thinking into organizational DNA to infuse delight into customer’s lives
In Designing in hostile territory I talked about injecting design thinking into your organization using a subversive, bottom-up approach. But to really benefit from design thinking, to create products and services that delight customers, an organization has to build design into their DNA, like many of the world’s most innovative companies have done. Some of these companies have [...]
Complexity as opportunity – designing in hostile territory
The tactics outlined in the fun little book Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics provide you with a subversive’s bottom up guide to sneaking user experience into an organization. Like Roger Martin in his article Designing in Hostile Territory, John Rhodes challenges us to apply our skills as designers to the challenge of integrating design into an organization. Replace user experience with design thinking in the tactics outlined below and you’re good to go.
Use design thinking to extract the threads from the giant hairball
[Design thinking] is the ability to create new options and build new products, services and experiences that gives design so much power. It is the ability to understand deeply cultures from digital social media networks to small villages in southern India that gives design its power. – Bruce Nussbaum I first came across the term [...]

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