On Findability and Visual Tags

January 4, 2006

Interfaces are not what they used to be. The computer-human interface is both more and less than it was a few years ago. Interfaces are not only, or even primarily, a screen anymore. Yet, screens remain important to most design efforts, even though interfaces are increasingly part of the environment itself. As John Thackara and Malcolm McCullough both recently pointed out, entire cities are developing into user interfaces as ubiquitous computing environments expand.

Peter Morville has outlined one approach to the challenges posed by ubiquitous computing for people who need to go places or find things. He calls it “ambient findability”: “…a fast emerging world where we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime” (p. 6). Read the rest of this entry »


Customer Experience Management vs. Self-Orientation

January 3, 2006

“The best companies find ways to tune in to customers’ voices every day,” The Three “Ds” of Customer Experience

Focusing on how to engage customers in dialogue, how to converse with customers is among the greatest challenges, and opportunities, facing companies today. Conversing with customers requires a focus on their experience with existing products and services as well as the design of new ones. It means developing business processes to deliver products and services that are not self-oriented, but customer-oriented; not inside-out, but outside-in.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a term used by many people to describe the methods for developing customer-orientation instead of self-orientation in business processes. CEM is one of those terms offering something to lots of different people. As a result, it is sometimes confused with the very services it claims to offer management advice on applying. A recent series of posts on LivePath provide an interesting discussion on what makes CEM different from CRM, User Experience Design, and Experiential Marketing. If you employ these buzz words in describing the services your company offers, I strongly encourage a close reading of these posts by Leigh Duncan. Although I might quibble with some of the distinctions made within each functional area of CEM that Leigh outlines, the overall strategy for making sense of what CEM offers is sound.

Share this post…

add to del.icio.us : Add to Blinkslist : add to furl : Digg it : Stumble It! : add to simpy : seed the vine : : : TailRank : post to facebook


Everyone Doesn’t Love the IPod

January 2, 2006

Three of the four people in my household own an IPod, with yours truly the only holdout. I love what the device does, but since I first toyed with my wife’s, I’ve been reluctant to buy my own. Why? Well, I just found it cumbersome to use without knowing exactly the reasons. Finally, someone who uses one on a regular basis took the time to think about why people like me find IPods too difficult to use. Thanks to Mobile Community Design for their analysis of the issue.