Core Innovation and New-Growth Innovation

The December issue of Harvard Business Review, Build an Innovation Engine in 90 Days, shares the important distinction of core and new-growth innovation. Core innovations enhance existing offerings or improves current operations. They enhance the current strategy and organization structure with the objective of offering rapid and substantial returns in the near future and funded … Read more

Personas, Actors, and Roles

Personas, actors, and roles have been around for a long time. In Greek theater, the persona referred to the “theatrical mask” – a role played by an actor. The Romans expanded the term to indicate a role in a court of law where personas assume roles with legal attributes such as rights, powers, and duties. … Read more

Affective Engineering

Affective Engineering is akin to Emotional Design rooted in Kansei. Kansei is a Japanese word that roughly translates to sensitivity and sensibility. It links the customer’s emotional responses to the properties and characteristics of a product or service. Customers purchase products based on qualities like brand, design, impression etc. People want to use products that … Read more

Designing a Consumer Product Packaging Experience

“We know that consumer purchase decisions are often made quickly and subconsciously, but there are opportunities where it’s possible to influence a consumer’s perception of a brand. People often make buying decisions by using all five of their senses and once product designers discover what each of these sensory influencers are, they can develop packaging … Read more

Making the Complex Simple with Progressive Disclosure

So how do you make the complex simple? How do you accommodate a person’s first-time experience from their familiar routine from their advance experts needs? With progressive disclosure. Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique to help maintain the focus of a person’s attention by reducing clutter, confusion, and cognitive load by presenting only the … Read more

Experience Design in an Agile World

A recent Nielsen Norman Group study found that organizations that have adopted an agile development process are more proficient in execution but some have abandon research and design best practices and degrade their customer experience. Unfortunately, the study found, that most organizations following the agile development process didn’t include research on a consistent basis, if … Read more

Data to Delight in the Age of the Customer

We are in the Experience Economy that Pine and Gilmore predicted – a customer-centric marketplace that Forrester calls the Age of the Customer where: “A customer obsessed company focuses its strategy, its energy, and its budget on processes that enhance knowledge of an engagement with customers, and prioritizes these over maintaining traditional competitive barriers.” We … Read more

Team Personas and Experience Maps

Paul Brooks wrote this article for UX Magazine about developing personas for team. Personas are a stand-in for a group of people who share common goals. They are fictional representatives—archetypes based on the users’ behaviors, attitudes, and goals. Usually we make the distinction between Buyer Personas and User Personas where the Buyer is the person … Read more

50 Year Business Roadmap and Design Thinking

I was having lunch with a colleague – catching up on family and his new gig, when we got on a conversation about the difference in US and Japanese business cultures (he has spent the last 25 years working in both). One thing in particular that stood out to me was that Japanese companies have … Read more

So what is the Difference between Customer Experience and User Experience?

This is one of the most frequent questions that Jeof and I get. If you have read our book or heard us speak than you know the short answer. For the record, I want to share the longer (and more academic) answer. Don Norman is most credited for coining the term User Experience while at … Read more

SDL Innovate 2014 Keynote Session – The Customer Experience Revolution

Jeofrey and I shared our aggregate views of what makes the best customer experience companies better, different, more profitable and sustainable at the SDL Innovate 2014 in San Francisco. We shared that these “Experience Makers” dominate their industries and change customers’ lives. We shared insights about leadership, best practices and decision making, based on the interviews … Read more

Experience Innovation – Going beyond Product and Service and Re-Imagining the Customer Journey

In FastCo.Design’s Move over Product Design, UX is the Future, Rick Wise, CEO LIppicott, shares: “Today’s enlightened leaders are achieving success by crafting the entire customer experience – shaping, innovating, branding, and measuring it. They are mastering a new discipline we refer to as experience innovation by going beyond the discrete product or service to … Read more