Comments

Mark Schraad | July 24, 2007 12:54 PM

Peter,

I see the strategy for designing consumer experiences as slightly different, but I wonder if this is just semantics.

Strategy must encompass an understanding of the technical capabilities, the business goals, and a thorough analysis of market opportunities (competitive landscape). Using a site map or organizational chart as the mental model these are all top down considerations. From the bottom should come not only an understanding, but also an empathy for user needs and want – including those they are yet to realize. This latter group is typically developed through the vision of the product manager, designers, and sometimes the CEO. It is the ability of designers to move back and forth from the top down considerations to the bottom up that makes them/us uniquely qualified for the development of strategies.

There is a lot of work to prepare most designers for this sort of strategy work. A full understanding of the top down considerations is not typically the worry or concern of designers. But it should be. As designers penetrate the doors of development management they will be required to speak that language.

The role of CEO should be the visionary with the power to drive the company towards that vision. His complement, the president, should over see the day-to-day execution of that vision. As such, the CEO really needs to be the Consumer Experience Officer and the champion of Experience design. This offers potential for not only acceptance, but also an acceleration of the adoption of design thinking methodologies in business.

Great article - I particularly like the diligence in linking your readings.

Peter Morville | July 24, 2007 1:22 PM

Mark,

In the context of strategy, I don't see a meaningful difference between user experience and consumer experience, and your view of the designer as a bridge between top-down and bottom-up fits well with my perspective, so perhaps it's "just semantics." :-)

gcorrin | July 24, 2007 1:43 PM

Hi Peter,

Great idea. I think you may want to consider the word "Story" in the missing comb.

In an application, the story is the user's data - they want to find and use it in a way that makes sense to them. In a demo, there is a
real storyline, but in a web site it is not so much a story, but what the organization wants a user to know and experience about the brand/products/services of that org.

Cheers,
Greg

Peter Morville | July 24, 2007 1:58 PM

Greg,

You're officially in the lead for the best way to fill the empty cell. I had considered "social" but "story" is much better, with hooks to both business strategy and knowledge management:

http://www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/

http://www.cognitive-edge.com/articledetails.php?articleid=5

Still, perhaps there's an even better word. Anyone have an idea? To beat Greg, your word must:

1. Begin with S.
2. Fit nicely into a cell.
3. Make perfect sense.

You should also check out the ideas over here first:

http://www.findability.org/archives/000180.php

Good luck!

William Evans | July 25, 2007 10:06 AM

Peter,

Thanks for sending this to the IxDA list - I really enjoyed this article, and think it fits perfectly into how our roles are slowly evolving.

I love Greg's idea of Story - because I have been trying to bring more story telling into the user scenario design process - from story telling in Persona creation, to trying to realize apps that exhibit empathy with our users by sharing their story with development.
I might as well throw my hat in the ring, and suggest:
"Sympathetic" meaning that UX should ensure that applications are sympathetic. For a stellar UX; sympathetic is exhibiting a feeling of compassion or identification with another. I also like the word, because in music theory sympathetic strings are ones that resonate on their own and enhance tonal quality and the sound of an instrument.

Just my 2 cents - but I like Greg's as well
:-)

~ will

William Evans | July 25, 2007 11:15 AM

Now, of course the problem with my submission, is that all the other words in the honeycomb are nouns, and Sympathetic is not a noun, hence an additional word or three:
sedulous \SEJ-uh-luhs\, adjective:
1. Diligent in application or pursuit; steadily industrious.
2. Characterized by or accomplished with care and perseverance.

satiety \suh-TY-uh-tee\, noun:
The state of being full or gratified to or beyond the point of satisfaction.

Scent. Yeah - we all know what it means -- but I am referring to the concept you brought up in AF from Pirolli's work on information scent -- various marker's on a label, structure, form that, through association, lead users towards certain end results.

From Nielson's UseIt.com :: Information scent refers to the extent to which users can predict what they will find if they pursue a certain path through a website. The term is part of information foraging theory, which explains how users interact with systems using the analogy of animals hunting for food.

~ Will

Peter Morville | July 25, 2007 11:20 AM

Well, the other problem with sympathetic is that it's too long, and I'm not sure the last three are perfect fits, but thanks for keeping the good ideas coming, and for being so sedulous! :-)

Barbara Ballard | July 25, 2007 1:47 PM

I'll be a bit of a contrarian and suggest a "c" word:

Context

The user's physical, social, device, and task context. This is increasingly important with non-computer devices.

Peter Morville | July 25, 2007 1:53 PM

Thanks Barbara! I hoped a contrarian would arrive to violate the "s" rule. Of course, a "c" word might upset folks even more than an empty cell.

Beep | July 25, 2007 5:17 PM

Hi Peter,

Glad to be of service in shaping your consulting process :-)

I think your user experience strategy is a nice extension of my IA Business layer addition to the T-model:

http://www.peterboersma.com/blog/2005/03/shoulder-ia-t-model-extended-with.html

It stretches that layer horizontally to cover all UX fields.

Oh, and here are my suggestions for what could be in the empty cell:
- *sense* (or sympathy, with credit to W. Evans ) for the empathy needed with future users
- *scenario* for scenario planning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning
- *safari* from Mintzberg's Strategy Safari: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_Safari

P.S.: It is not quite clear to me what the Experience Ecologies have to do with UX strategy. Surely we (or "they") are already developing UX strategies for *current* products, aren't we? We don't *have* to wait for ubiquitous computing, spimes and whatever William Gibson came up with in Spook to start strategizing...

Peter Morville | July 25, 2007 7:55 PM

Thanks PeterBo! Yes, we should already be designing strategies and solutions with an awareness of the broader ecology or system that influences the user experience. No need to wait. The future's already here. Speaking of which, thanks for the pointer to Gibson's new book:

http://www.amazon.com/Spook-Country-William-Gibson/dp/0399154302/

That'll make for some great summer vacation reading!

AJK | July 26, 2007 10:31 AM

I think that a lot of the management structures (as mentioned by Mark) have always been there, but the methods by which products are now created have changed. In the old days we used to create a product and then convinced the consumer that he needed it. A lot of the times the companies with the "best marketing" won. We ended up creating a lot of products which lost out (even if they were better products).

Now and in the future with User Experience, we look at what users needs are and what their needs might be in the near future (by looking at the users themselves, their social environment, their physical environment, possible changes, etc.), before we create a product.

The focus has moved from selling consumers something we think they need; to selling them something that would facilitate a better and more productive social life (may it be in the workplace or at home). In essence I think products should only live to serve functions.

Your honeycomb will keep expanding as our lives become more complex. The IA in all of us will add/change/remove more blocks while the UX Strategist will use them. The one is built on the other and your model shows it; something I don’t always find that other people acknowledge.

Nate Davis | July 27, 2007 1:32 AM

Peter and Greg,

Since the role of UX will be driven by the instruction of business and marketing, you may want to consider speaking their language.

As a former marketing director-turned information architect, I think we're talking about "Segmentation" - a strategic method already in practice and well understood in the business community;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segment

The concept of segmentation embodies the effort to "know" the customer and fits well with the topics of knowledge management and business strategy.

If you're concerned about length, bring the size down a bit on the text. "Segmentation" won't appear so long then. Oops! Did I just cross over into giving design advice?

Oh well, while I'm at it: If you don't have a particular reason for placement, consider placing Segmentation in the middle for visual balance and as a subliminal reminder of the importance behind who the UX strategy serves not what [strategy] it serves.

Although you might be able to get away with "Segment".

Peter Morville | July 27, 2007 9:55 AM

There's been a useful discussion about this article over on the IxDA list:

http://beta.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=18656

If you scroll down a ways, you'll find quite a few interesting links.

AJK, I like the image of an ever-expanding honeycomb, sorta like some strange mashup between dominoes, tetris, and a jigsaw puzzle :-)

Nate, segmentation is a good suggestion, and thanks for finding a new designery way to bend the rules!

Paula Thornton | September 14, 2007 10:30 PM

Peter: You've got a bunch of conflicting dimensions going on here. I understand your original hesitancy over 'experience' (although, when looked at from a conceptual perspective, people don't want to have experiences -- they just do -- everything IS an experience, otherwise you're dead -- ok, we're ruling out afterlife for simplicity).

If you were to be hesitant about any term it should be USER. So let's look at the model sans-user. That means that they're not the object of our discussion, they're the subject of our discussion, thus the terms should be from their perspective. In that case "Story" is perfect (and I agree -- the first thing I saw missing was Context -- but I can relate to the alpha pain).

What the heck does Surface have to do with it? What's the surface of my interaction with a teller on a phone (that's an experience). Remember -- unlike my USER-focused colleagues -- experiences are the transactions of relationships.

Test the terms -- do they represent dimensions of optimizing relationships?

The other struggle I'm having is that there's a difference between an interaction and an experience. I know the logic doesn't hold here, but for some reason I want to say that "Social" fits more with interaction and not so much with experience. I think that again, it's more about perspective. "Experience" is my personal assessment of an interaction. The same interaction can have totally different experiences.

But then you're going to run into the need to split hairs when you're approaching an intent to frame the philosophy of the practice.

At one time I had started a list of attributes for Interactions...I need to dig it up (it was still in 'test' mode).

Peter Morville | September 17, 2007 8:44 AM

Paula: The main purpose of this model is to encourage reflection on the relationships between strategy and each facet with an eye towards designing the user experience.

So, the user is not the subject, though perhaps you could create a new honeycomb to explore that scenario.

It is interesting to evaluate how well these facets perform across channels. You could make the case that the sound quality constitutes "surface" in the telephone interaction, but it's a stretch.

So, I'd agree that this model is biased towards web sites, software products, and interactive services. Cheers!

Richard Dalton | September 27, 2007 11:40 AM

I wrestled with many different shapes and configurations but I really wanted to preserve both the user and business aspects of "strategy" and give them both touchpoints to Jesse's other planes - hence the rainbow ;-)

theproductguy | March 25, 2008 12:56 AM

When I need to perform a rapid evaluation of user experience (product experience) I use a methodology I have (over time) devised that I call Quick-UX...

Check it out...
http://tpgblog.com/2008/03/24/quick-ux-quick-heuristics-for-user-experience/

And let me know what you think. What approaches work for you when you are light on time?

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy
http://tpgblog.com

Peter Morville | August 21, 2008 10:13 AM

Stuart Candy, a researcher and guerilla futurist, found me via this article, and we had a great conversation. Here's the blog post:

http://www.findability.org/archives/000219.php