Experience Immersion
Posted by: Carl Smith on Monday August 21, 2006
We talk alot about user experience as it relates to website development.
Well wouldn’t ya know that common sense transfers to any medium, even real life.
David McQuillen is a smart dude who applies simple observation techniques to improving the customer experience.
According to a recent article in Fast Company, one of the biggest problems most business owners can face is thinking that their customers are just like them.
the problem with thinking they are (like them) is that companies end up creating products and processes that suit them, not their customers. You need to go out and talk to customers to find out what they want.
One of the things I think we can all learn from McQuillen’s approach in the way he gets the attention of a client to show them what customers are going through.
The idea for the immersion came from a presentation McQuillen made in 2004 to 200 of the bank’s senior managers. Most were paying more attention to their BlackBerrys until McQuillen announced he was about to make a call, from the stage, to a Credit Suisse service center. “I saw fear in their faces, because they didn’t know what the experience was going to be.”
Just like usability testing, experience immersion doesn’t cost much and the results can be unbelievably powerful.
I’d like to make it sound like we’re using rigorous science, but we make it up as we go along and stick with the things that work. You can do this stuff in two or three days—you don’t have to spend half a million dollars on research. Just go and observe.
Filed under: Business, Usability
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