Time to forget the user?

Kieron — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:40:00 GMT

Users live in the digital world, customers in the digital and physical. But acustomer is always a customer and only a user when they interact with a system. Even the word 'system' harks back to technology in its infancy, as consumers interact with more and more technology can we as a company finally put the term User to bed? And instead always focus on the customer; it is not that big amindset change; is it?

Bad user experiences are detrimental to a companies brand image, that iswithout question, but customers now have so many touch points with a brand both offline and online (Face-to-face, telephone, letter, IM chat, email, Internet) that they do not distinguish between being a user and a customer: they are always a customer.

This post has been fuelled by an article written by Greg Nudelman on UXMatters he has tried to redefine the term User Experience to better incorporate how the customer perceives himself or herself. He states that '“The term user lets designers and businesspeople alike describe products in terms of their featuresinstead of customer goals—and in doing so, avoid making difficult designchoices.” In opposition Nudelan proposes the term Experience partner as a new way of thinking about customers when designing experiences.

Rather than focusing on product features, Experience partner asks that we as designers conceptualise holistic product experiences and embody our understanding of how to design products that create delight and become integral, harmonious parts of peoples lives and interactions with our clients.

The article is an interesting (albeit long read so only skim it) and raises some questions about how we should be designing for our client’s customers. So world what do you think? Is Experience partner a term we should adopt or just someone out to make a name for himself?

Immersive interfaces and affordable interactive services

Kieron — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:08:00 GMT

Over on TED right now (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/245) is a video by a young man named Johnny Lee. He has been using a hacked Nintedo Wii remote and $40 worth of additional kit to create some fantastic interactions: A digital whiteboard running photoshop, a touch screen and (My favourite) a head mounted 3-D viewer that changes the perspective of the onscreen interface to match the user's head position. It could work well to look around a website in 3-D, allowing the user t move their head to look around an object.

It is interesting to see how innovative an enthusiast with a small amount of time and using existing retail technology can be. He has already secured an agreement with EA Sports to use the head mounted 3-D viewer technology in a game for the Nintendo Wii.

I would like to put it out to the wider world to see how any of these interactions could be used by Conchango when developing new IP?

P.S. If you see me in the studio with a soldering iron ripping up the Wii, don't worry I know what I am doing! On a serious note if you have a Wii and would like to try out the interfaces for yourself visit Jonny's website (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/).

Kierons' Blog

Time to forget the user?

Immersive interfaces and affordable interactive services