Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Nice Post by Richard over at UXmag.

[…] Even the most unique product will eventually be commoditized in the minds of your clients. It’s not an issue of if just of when.

So why did she hire us then?

Well, according to her it was for all the little things we do, the things that have nothing to do with the product we supply. My belief is this:

The product and service we offer categorizes us, everything else we do defines us.

The Talent Hunt
Desperate to innovate, companies are turning to design schools for nimble, creative thinkers

Designed in China
With more than 400 design programs in Chinese schools, Asian design education is undergoing its own revolution

Tip Sheet: How To Hire a D-School Grad
Headhunter RitaSue Siegel tells you what to ask — and what to listen for

When MBA Meets Designer
A GE manager learns to think creatively: INSEAD graduate Sameer Agrawal shares his story

Inside the Volcano
Carnegie Mellon graduate Maggie Breslin brings her innovative thinking to the Mayo Clinic

Designing to Help
Georgia Tech design grad Janna Kimel works as a design researcher at Intel

Joining J&J
Justine Dube Donnelly’s joint MBA/Master’s of Engineering Management prepared her for her role in strategic marketing at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals

These require no introduction.

Rule #1
Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anything else. If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do the best you can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.

Rule #2
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.

Rule #3
Motivate your partners. Money and ownership aren’t enough. Set high goals, encourage competition and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs.

Rule #4
Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.

Rule #5
Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.

Rule #6
Celebrate your success and find humour in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails put on a costume and sing a silly song.

Rule #7
Listen to everyone in your company, and figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front line - the ones who actually talk to customers - are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know.

Rule #8
Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don’t make excuses - apologize. Stand behind everything you do. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’ will make all the difference.

Rule #9
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.

Rule #10
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.

…thanks Joyce!

User-Centered Design is a process in which usability engineers, designers and others participate to design a product or service. The premise being that the calculated and structured involvement of users in the process from start to finish will maximize the likelihood that the businesses goals will be met or furthered through a solution that meets the users wants and needs in a way they would expect.

The part that most designers either don’t get, are in denial of or simply ignore is the context of business goals. In fact lots of designers will read what I just wrote and ignore that too.

Now I know what you’re thinking, Challis, doctors, lawyers and other professionals straddle the fence between a code of ethics and the pressures of western capitalism. So why can’t we designers focus on making the world a better place and still find our place within the context of business. I believe the simple answer to this question is really at the crux of what designers are trying to figure out.

Designers do not have the social, cultural and political backing for the type of ethical standards that a doctor owes her patients or a lawyer owes his clients. There is no pressure on business, short of basic safety concerns, to support the making of usable products.

(See also: Do We Need Another Design Organization?)

I believe solving this problem requires a simultaneous top down and bottom up approach. From the top, the formation of an umbrella organization to facilitate lobbying, marketing, etc. ( The American Medical Association). And from the bottomn up, some smaller organizations to represent the specific interests of information architects, art directors, interaction designers, usability engineers, etc. (The Association for Real Estate Law or the American Association For Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus).

-challis

Yodlee’s technology helps users manage and track financial information pertaining to bank accounts, credit cards, stocks, mutual funds, and the like, through one Website. The new service, Schwab My Accounts, will roll out early this year to Schwab online users and later in the year to PocketBroker users. The technologies from Yodlee are reportedly far more advanced than the capabilities of generic portal sites. Read the press release here.

Research firm C. E. Unterberg, Towbin surveyed 200 Financial Services firms and concluded that most did poorly in online Customer Service. They added that, “save the online trading companies, most financial services firms have not been compelled to improve or enhance online customer service offerings. Competition among these firms has not reached the level where improved service could attract/steal/maintain customers.” Really!? Believeing this statement for a second could be the fastest way out of business for many of these firms on 2001!!! Check out the research here.

Nicholas G. Carr writes, “The essential beauty of the Internet - its openness - is also its essential flaw as a platform for business. Companies achieve profits by erecting barriers around markets, locking customers in and keeping competitors out. But since the Internet was designed for communication rather than commerce, its structure frustrates attempts to raise barriers. That’s why one dot-com after another has flopped, despite massive investments to build brands, seize first-mover advantages and acquire customers.” Perhaps this is true. I would argue however that we are moving from an era where business success is measured by sheer profit not the satisfaction of people’s wants and needs, to an era where business success is measured by the degree to which businesses satisfy people’s wants and needs. This is not a bad thing. Businesses will simply have to work hard to understand their customers. Read the entire article here.

724 Solutions Buys Tantau wireless application platform market leader. It is interesting and exciting to see the agressive atrategy of 724 in a time when many are hesitant to make an aquisition. 724 is assembling an incredible portfolio of products and services including the recent purchase of Chicago-based Spyonit.com. Read the full article.