Lean UX

Inspired by Lean and Agile development theories, Lean UX focuses on the actual experience being designed, rather than deliverables (an updated edition came out this month). This book shows you how to collaborate closely with other members of the product team, and gather feedback early and often. It shares how to drive the design in … Read more

Joint Application Design

IBM formalized the Joint Application Design process in 1974. In JAD, customers and end-users jointly define and design their solution with the solution provider that is developing and delivering it. It closes the gap in time and cost around understanding requirements early and throughout the application development lifecycle. In the JAD process, sessions are held … Read more

Do You Have the Right User Experience Strategy and are You Spending Your UX Dollars Wisely?

Forrester Research, research has shown that 70% of projects fail due to lack of user experience and every dollar invested in UX brings 100 dollars in return. So how do you ensure that your organization doesn’t fail at user experience and are spending your dollars wisely? Are you familiar with Balanced Scorecard? Balanced Scorecard is … Read more

How to Win I-Want-To-Buy Moments

In a Think with Google I-Want-to-Buy Moments: How Mobile Has Reshaped the Purchase Journey blog, they shared five tips to win micro-moments. I supplemented them with further information that should help you execute: Identify your consumers’ I-want-to-buy moments. Talk to them—in stores, through surveys, in focus groups and forums—to figure out when and how they’re … Read more

Tailor Customer Insights to Prioritize Actions

Just as we discussed how to chart satisfaction and value, you can do the same with tailoring your customer insights to prioritize actions. Somewhat like a SWOT analysis, this charts the most important strengths and weaknesses based on your insight data findings. Important weaknesses are where you need to focus ways to improve your customer … Read more

Word of Mouth Strategies and Tactics

“As far back as 1966 the phrase “word of mouth advertising” was coined in a Harvard Business Review article by Ernest Dichter, the father of motivational research (and the “focus group”). He exhorted the ad community to move from acting as ‘a salesman who tries to get rid of merchandise,’ to the new role of ‘a friend … Read more

Contextual Design

Contextual Design is a process that includes methods to: collect data about people in context of their intents, desires, and drivers; interpret and consolidate that data; use the data to create prototypes; and iteratively test and refine the prototypes with the target audience it is intended to help to ensure delight. Contextual Design is based … Read more

Behavioral Data Insights Drive Personalized, Contextually Relevant Experiences

Customer experiences must be contextually relevant, personalized, and synchronized across the channels that they frequent. Organizations need to go beyond demographic, psychographic and geolocation segmentation and capture, analyze and execute on behavioral data about their customers. Smart organizations deliver the right message or offer at the right time through the right channel to the right … Read more

Context Brokering: The Secret to Personalized Brand Experiences

From Wired Innovation Insight’s blog, The Marketing Tech Differentiator: True Contextualization, Dennis van der Veeke shares with us: “Organizations today often rely on multiple technologies to provide the relevant data points needed to drive customer experience. These systems, however, tend to lack seamless integration with each other, resulting in a disjointed brand experience. To meet … Read more

Innovation Through Empathy Maps

If there is such a thing as a  Design Thinking geek – I’m it. My new favorite Design Thinking technique is Empathy Maps. Empathy Maps are a tool to help synthesize your observations to discover insights about your target audience. Empathy Maps are to Design Thinking what  SWOT Analysis is to business. They are simple … Read more

A Customer Journey Map Workshop

Just last week I ran a customer journey map (CJM) workshop at FICO World 2014. I always enjoy the enthusiasm for customers and engagement around designing better customer experience that happens at these workshops. The secret to any good workshop is to facilitate an environment of trust where the participants can be free to share … Read more

Four Must Dos for your VoC Program

From mycustomer.com’s Voice of the Customer measurement: Which metrics are right for you? by Stacey Nevel, here are four “must dos” for a successful Voice Of the Customer (VoC) program: Engaging stakeholders – align your VoC program with the business goals and provide actionable insights to support those objectives like increase revenue, reduced costs, increase cross sell, increase customer-centricity, … Read more