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Business Empathy: 6 questions to connect experience with strategyToday

It’s sad to say, but even the most usable, sexy, or innovative design work won’t succeed if it doesn’t fit within the greater business strategy of the organization. But just how do you know what that greater business strategy is?

It’s difficult to quickly get smart about an organization’s overall business strategy when there’s usually no simple Powerpoint deck to spell it out. Below are 6 questions I use to quickly sense the business strategy:

1. What’s their generic strategy? Years ago Michael Porter devise a model of three generic business strategies: cost-leadership, differentiation, and segmented strategy. Figure out which strategy the business follows, then the strategic decisions the organization makes will become more obvious.
2. How is the business different from it’s competition? Good differentiation means a unique position in the market relative to competitors. Example: Bose is the leader in sound quality, and will remain the leader because of its investments in R&D. Done right, the identified differentiators should be deeper than just brand perceptions, stretching to the organization’s competitive advantage. You’re work should embellish these differences.
3. How does the business make money? Look at the public financial reports, read what analysts say, and boil it down to the ess

The essence of strategy for designYesterday

Our old colleague Dan Saffer asked a brief question to the IxDA mailing list, “What should interaction designers know about strategy?” It set off an excellent discussion. I responded in the thread, but I wanted to rephrase the post here for the AP Blog.

For starters, there’s a tendency to equate “strategy” with “business”, and I think that can be harmful. There are many examples of design that aren’t suited to business, but none that aren’t suited to strategy.

When I think of strategy in the context of our design work, I think of three things:

• philosophy
• vision
• planning

Philosophy asks, “What are you about? What do you stand for, what is your approach?” Whatever it is that you will be designing needs to be informed by some underlying philosophy, some point of view. The “design mantras” for TiVo that Margret Schmidt shared with Matt Haughey are an excellent example:

* It’s entertainment, stupid.
* It’s TV, stupid.
* It’s video, damnit.
* Everything is smooth and gentle.
* No modality or deep hierarchy.
* Respect the viewer’s privacy.
* It’s a robust appliance, like a TV.

(Margret Schmidt is speaking at M

Managing Design Projects Has International DrawJanuary 5

Last month we announced Managing Design Projects, a ‘grassroots’ Adaptive Path conference, coming up on February 5th 2009. Since we announced the event, we’ve had people from around the world register. We’re thrilled to create this new community of people that help make design work happen behind the scenes.

We also announced that Scott Berkun will be keynoting at the event. He is not only author of Myths of Innovation, and Making Things Happen, but a kick-ass speaker with great stories from his experience managing projects at Microsoft.

Lynne Waldera, founder and CEO of InMomentum, Inc, a management consultancy, will also be speaking at the event. She’s an expert in organization strategy and one of the wisest people I’ve ever met. She will be talking with us about: Conflict Maneuvers:  Navigating disagreement, politics and emotions to “make things happen”. I’ve had a preview of what Lynne will be sharing with us, and I believe it will be valuable to anyone that’s works with creative teams on making big things happen.

Come join us to hear Scott & Lynne speak.

Space is limited to 60 people for this deeply discounted event, so

9 experiences for 2009January 5

Timing is everything. Take Flickr for example, a photo sharing service that successfully emerged in 2004 not just because of good design, technology, and leadership, but because of the coincidental mass adoption of camera phones and affordable high-quality digital cameras. A good idea becomes a great idea if its time has come.

So as we start off in a gloomy looking 2009, I’ll put on my hunch-hat and share my nine ideas of experiences who’s time has come:

Enabling behavior change — Whether it’s to extend your paycheck or conserve your energy, there’s plenty of reasons for people to change how they behave this year. But behavior change is a complex thing. It’s an experience that needs to be carefully thought through from the human perspective, from the depths of the cognitive psychology of motivation to the breadths of incremental change across weeks and months. People won’t substantively change their behaviors simply because of clever marketing campaigns. To change consumer behaviors we must design motivational experiences that push, pull, and ease the pathway to adopting new habits.
 

UX Week 2009 - Theme, First 3 Invited SpeakersDecember 29 2008

Though UX Week 2009 doesn’t happen for a while now (15-18 September 2009), we’re well into our planning. In 2008, some of our audience’s favorite speakers were folks from outside of user experience design — Jane McGonigal talking about games (video), Michael B. Johnson sharing Pixar’s process (no video — he revealed behind-the-scenes stuff!), Jay Torrence talking about how his theater troupe operates (video). So, we’ve decided to explore that further, and for 2009, we’re looking laterally to all manner of disciplines outside of design, though which all influence our work.

We were able to land three amazing speakers before this year’s end. I’ve already blogged about (and interviewed) Scott McCloud, the mad scientist of comics.

There’s also Erin McKean, lexicographer extraordinaire. We’ll pair her with an information architect and have them talk about the experience of words. If you’ve never seen Erin speak before, I suggest this TED talk.