customer centered design - briefly explained

Customer Centered Design

Briefly Explained

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Want to..

“The job of the product manager is to

create a product that is valuable,

useable and feasible”

Marty Cagan , Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love

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Innovate?

“First users of a product, rather than

the manufacturer, are responsible for

over 75% of breakthrough inventions”

Von Hippel, “LEAD USERS: A Source of Novel Product Concepts,”

Management Science, 1986

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Do things differently?

“Design is no longer a discrete stylistic

gesture thrown at a project just before

it is handed off to marketing..”

Tim Brown, Change by Design

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To minimise risk?

“..Design is now part of product

conception right through to

implementation, and allows a

customer to write the last chapter

of the book” Tim Brown, Change by Design

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And grow.

“When the user’s personal

goals are met by the design,

business goals are far more

effectively achieved” Alan Cooper, About Face. The Essentials of Interaction Design

Customer centered design is not new..

..in fact it’s one of the most successful

market-pull strategies used in product

development over the past decade

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It delivers 2 major benefits

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Firstly, customer centered design can

dramatically reduce the risk of failure in

market.

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Secondly, your product lifecycle is

greatly extended through incremental

innovation that meets or exceeds

customer expectations

User,

Customer or

Human

Centered Design?

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These are three terms used to guide what is

essentially the same design process.

But there are subtle differences:

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The work of Von Hippel in the late eighties pioneered the term Lead User as a design philosophy stating..

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..that first-time users of a product are in the best

position to articulate their problems and derive

innovative solutions to those problems.

10 years later the design thinking of

authors Beyer and Holtzblatt made

popular the term customer

centered systems..

.. and focused on a subset of the product development

planning phases by excluding the build phase

Recently human centered design

has become the buzz word but in

reality it simply applies..

.. a set of lenses to same planning phases

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During the Research phase we strive to hear

the voice of the customer. Qualitative

research techniques are used to extract

goals, needs and product requirements

desired by the customer.

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The Concept phase uses

the insights gathered from

Research to create

desirable, new concepts

that are validated through

ongoing consultation with

customers.

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Finally the Design phase

delivers a technically

feasible and commercially

viable prototype that meets

the needs, goals or wants of

the target customer.

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So, how do I conduct

research on my

customers’ needs, goals

and desires?

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As a Product Manager you can :

Spend time observing your subject matter

Interview an individual

Conduct a group interview

Ask your target market to document their opinions

Cross fertilise using solution design from another

industry

Perform secondary research (leverage existing product

data and subject matter expertise within your

organisation)

Where is customer centered design

most powerful?

Software development for established

products.

Incumbent service providers seeking to

increase their net promoter score.

Incremental innovation within mature markets

eg.

Customer Care and Hospitality

Banking and Finance

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The Financial Services industry has been

leveraging customer centered design during the

past two decades and their products now score

consistently high in customer satisfaction polling.

“Financial Services firm USAA earned the highest

NPS across all brands and industries examined at

87%”

Satmetrix 2011 report

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But there are limitations to customer

centered design and it is not strictly true

that customers always know what is best

for them.

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Think about products

heralding new

technology disruption

or radical innovation.

Also, many products operate in a market with

minimal opportunity for post sale customer

interaction eg.

Fashion industry

Retailers

“Retail consumer brands would kill for the number

of built-in interactions that your average retail bank

already has with its customers.”

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Global marketing strategist, Jonathan Salem Baskin

Whilst customer centered design dominates current UX practitioner thinking it can prove resource intensive to gather primary research.

In his 2009 article titled “5 Design Decision Styles” Jared Spool shares design techniques requiring less research than customer centered design:

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Less resource

intensive

More resource

intensive

The key is knowing when to deploy these techniques:

Unintentional – sometimes good design is pure luck.

Self Design – putting yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Genius Design – anticipates customer need.

Activity Focused – addresses customer tasks rather than needs.

Customer Centered – generally perceived to be the least risky way of delivering successful innovation.

In conclusion:

The best Product Managers are not

only familiar with the process and tools

of customer centered design but are

also aware of its limitations and

embrace innovation through alternate

design processes when needed.

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Brainmates applies a repeatable Product Delivery Framework that embraces innovation.

Connect with Brainmates

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Brainmates Group @Brainmates

#prodmgmt

Facebook.com/Brainmates

www.brainmates.com.au info@brainmates.com.au + 61 2 9232 8147