Design Sapling.com

Interaction Design vs Marketing

Interaction Design (IxD) is the intersection of business and user needs to create a product that fills everyone’s needs. When I was explaining IxD to my dad, he asked if it was like marketing. There are similarities, but IxD is concerned with understanding people at a different phase in their relationship with the product than marketing is.

Marketing is focused on moving the person-product relationship to the purchase point. Convince the person the product is right for them. IxD is concerned with the person-product relationship AFTER the purchase point. Marketing is about designing a message to persuade a person to want a product. Interaction Design is about designing a product that fulfills a persons needs. IxD feeds back into marketing when enthusiastic users spread word of the product through reviews, word-of-mouth, and using it in public.

The key to success in either field is in understanding the customer, but the focus is very different and the way you segment your research participants is different. With marketing, your segments are based on buy habits, with IxD, your segments are based on user goals. People from several different marketing segments might share the same goals in a product, while certain other people from those same marketing segments might have completely different goals.

In order to develop products for goals instead of marketing segments, we do something similar to ethnographic research

Ethographic Research vs Observational Research

Ethnographic research is when you immerse yourself into a society and find out what it’s like to be a part of that society. The idea is that the best way to understand a different culture is to immerse yourself in it.

Observational research does the same thing. For interaction designers, the goal is to understand a corporate environment, a users daily routine, how they use existing tools, etc… With that data, they can figure out how to design a tool that best fits into that environment.

You can’t just ask people what the environment is like. It’s difficult to explain and dynamic. You’ll get different answer from different people.

You can’t just ask people what they want. You need to know WHY they want it. Then, you can develop something they didn’t even think about that could exceed their expectations.

Design = Collaboration

After getting your research, you’ve got to design the product to fit the goals you’ve observed. You don’t get to design whatever you want. The credit for the design lies with the users. They decided how it should work. You are merely implementing their design.

Additionally the business needs are considered. A design ideas that fills both the user needs and the business needs makes for a great design principle.

Conclusion

To be a great designer, you’ve got to be a great researcher and collaborator of ideas.

If you’re interested in becoming an entrepreneur, you may be interested in a show called Start-up Junkies. Educational and entertaining.

You see it more and more. Products are getting better and people are getting used to it. There is a demand for well designed products. And new business owners are going to be designers.

Interaction Design

Interaction Design (IxD) is here to show us a new way of doing business.

1. IxD practitioners do research on people and businesses.
2. Then, they design things in an efficient and effective way based on the results of the research.

So of course they will have some insights into how a business should be organized to meet user expectations. Interaction Designers are concerned with technology, psychology, and design. They are experts in understanding a user’s motivations in order to design a technology to meet the users goals. It’s tied to marketing and business operations.

TED

IxD is similar to the idea behind TED, which is an conference of the most successful and brilliant minds around the world present their works and methods to each other. It stands for Technology Entertainment Design.

• Technology are the tools used to do research and create products.
• Entertainment (loosely) parallels psychology in that to meet a users needs and goals, you’ve got to create engaging applications.
• Design is at the root of a company. The organization must be designed (from a business plan, perhaps?) and the services and products should all be designed.

The successful presenters at TED “get” Interaction Design. They may not call it by name, but they all practice it.
If you want to become a business owner or a better businessman, then start researching Interaction Design.

I’m currently staying at the Galleria Park Hotel.

Is it just be a coincidence that whenever I walk into the lobby, the elevator doors open up, almost anticipating that I’ll want to go up to my room? Perhaps, but I’d like to think that the elevators employ sensors that summon the elevator whenever someone starts walking towards it.

It’s cut down on my elevator wait time and made my stay just a little bit better. That’s good customer service.

And software that seems to read your customers mind is good customer service too. Design your software to remember everything your user does and next time, they won’t have to do it again. They’ll be impressed by your psychic software.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of Kathy Sierra’s last post on Creating Passionate Users.

In March 2007, Kathy was the recipient of death threats from a forum of misogynists who hated that Kathy was successful on the Web. When her home address was posted on a hate forum, she stopped blogging.

Though her blog is no longer updated, it remains online as it was a year ago. If you’re into web design, software development, or even customer service, you’ll benefit from Kathy’s wisdom in usability.

(You can also check out her series of Head First books from O’Reilly Media.)

8 AM – Tuesday (0 hours at the shop)
The mechanic told me their policy: they call before they begin any repairs to get approval. I like that policy. Besides the dangerous condition my rear suspension was in, I also recently lost an electronic keyless-entry fob. I told the mechanic I didn’t want someone finding it and gaining access to my car. No problem, they’ll reprogram it.

12 PM – Tuesday (4 hours at the shop)
I get the call: “Your keys are done. It’s ready to go.”
But what about the suspension? I asked him if they’ve looked at it. He tells me that they can’t start on it because some sandbags in the back could throw off the weight. They say I need to take them out. Minutes later, I call back asking if they could take out the sandbags for me. No problem.

8 AM – Wednesday (24 hours at the shop)
I call and ask why they haven’t called me for approval yet. He puts me on with his friendly manager, “What? I thought you said you were gonna take them out.”
Miscommunication I guess. No problem. I ask them again to take them out for me.
He reluctantly agrees.

12 PM – Wednesday (27 hours at the shop)
I call again and asking why they haven’t started on the car, after all, it’s been there over a day. The manager says, “Well sir, I don’t have time to send someone out to get some sandbags out of your car, so it’s gonna be just a minute, OK?”

5 PM – Wednesday (32 hours at the shop)
Still no call. I get a ride to the shop. They have the sandbags out but haven’t started to look at the car. I pay for the new keyless entry signal and take my broken car to someone who knows how to treat a customer.

1 month later…..
I find my lost key fob. Luckily, nobody stole it. I test it to make sure the car won’t accept it’s signal. But the car DOES accept its signal. I paid them for nothing. I call the manager. He refuses to give me a refund. I try to explain how, according to my receipt which stated I had lost my fob, it should be apparent that the service I requested had not actually been performed. He said he watched his serviceman do the reprogramming and thus a service had been performed. He hung up on me after I asked him to explain exactly how the service they performed had actually resolved the problem I asked them to fix.

It’s like going into a restaurant and asking for a glass of champagne. You pay $10 for champagne but they bring you a glass of water instead. You ask the manger for a refund but he insists, “Well, I saw your waiter pour SOMETHING into the glass…therefore you got what you paid for.” But in this case, at least you got a glass of water! The mechanic gave me what I already had.

All this from a 5-Star Chrysler dealership.

This is a good example of bad customer service. Customer service isn’t just being nice, but it’s a good start.

It used to be that newbies to a program would have to read the manual while the geek power users took pride in easily figuring things out on their own.

Now-a-days, it’s the opposite.

Programs should be simple enough that newbies won’t have to read the manual. The power users may still take pride in figuring things out on their own, but they are the ones more likely to read the manuals to find out the shortcut keys and specials options hidden to the newbies.

Sometimes, customer service doesn’t seem to be much of a service at all. A recent bad experience was only made better after I got the company president involved. In the end, keeping me a loyal customer cost them more than it had to simply because they forgot that customer satisfaction is their job.

I recently bought two items at an online store that were on clearance. I accidentally selected the wrong size for one of the items only to realize it after I checked out and paid for it. I immediately sent an email asking them to change my order. I didn’t get a response for over 5 hours. I finally called to make sure they got my email. They said it was too late to make any changes as the item was already being shipped, and there were no returns since it was a clearance. Well poop! I had even mentioned a replacement item that they had in my size that was the same price.

After the call, I sent a second email asking why they hadn’t read my first email, noting they would have had enough time to change the order since I sent the request immediately after payment.

Hours go by and no reply.

Upset that I was being ignored, I sent a third email saying their neglect in answering me was going to lose them a customer. I finally got an email saying “Our records indicate this issue has already been dealt with over the phone. Thanks, Customer Service”!

I sent a fourth email indicating that their dismissive reply was not appreciated and the issue wasn’t the money, but the fact that they simply ignored my request for assistance. I explained that had they been more prompt, my order might have been changed. At this point, I had a useless item coming to me and nobody at the company seemed to care.

I found the president’s profile at a networking site and told him the story. I told him that his customer service staff weren’t living up to his mission statement, which stated that the company was focused on customer service. The next day, I got an email from the same costumer service in response to a message forwarded from the President. It said they were refunding all the shipping costs (since shipping two items costs the same as shipping just one, this worked out to almost the full price the item I was receiving.) Originally, my request was only for a 10% off coupon for a future item purchase. This was a far better deal for me!

So it wasn’t until the president got involved that the customer service folks realized that keeping a customer would be worth much more than the amount they’d lose by giving me a partial discount.

I think that’s pretty sad.
But, since they fixed my problem I’ll continue to be a customer.
(And since this doesn’t paint them in a good light, I won’t tell you which company it was.)

Seths Blog: The promiscuity paradox
What’s the point of having a huge company? Why is growth considered progress? How about being ranked number one in customer satisfaction.