Monthly Archives: August 2005

In the hierarchy of customer research listening to your customers is probably the bottom rung of the ladder, the next step is watching what your customers do, and the third is seeing what they create. This is a model pioneered by well known customer research company Sonic Rim. Out side of the context of research [...]

From the standpoint of customer experience the viral campagn used to promote “the ring 2 DVD” in Austrailia is a mind boggling scary mixed media, viral campagn that will scare the shit out of your friends. When visitors enter a friend’s email address and mobile phone number, the site sends an email to the friend, [...]

I’m very happy to report that CPH127 Design+Innovation has asked me to be a pilot (author) on their blog. If you haven’t heard of them you should check them out, here’s how they describe themselves: CPH127 is a community sense-making initiative. We aim to create a open dialogue around the profound understanding of design, leadership [...]

My apartment and tropical storm katrina Originally uploaded by mrkook. Interupting our regular broadcast with a news flash. This is my first hurricane in florida, and ironically enough it has the same name as my mother, Katrina, and as you can see from the google map, it’s going right over my apartment. I happen to [...]

If 96% of new projects or innovation initiatives FAIL to meet or beat expectations then we must learn to “fail faster”. I didn’t coin that phrase but I use it a lot when talking to traditional companies that want to do something innovative on the web. It seems that many companies are not keen on [...]

Anyone who reads my blog knows what a huge proponent I am of businesses co-creating value with their customers. I believe co-creation is one of the biggest drivers of business value and competitive advantage in todays economy. In Chris Lawer’s writing and business I find a kindred spirit talking about the value of co-creation, here’s [...]

Ditch Your Girlfriend Get your girlfriend to download an RSS reader, get her to subscribe to your very special feed only for her. Post some items you would normally write to her via email. Do this for a couple of weeks, then drop the bad news. Expect the subscription circluation to drop off at this [...]

There’s been alot of discussion as to the benefits and the risks to customer experience inherent in the bottom up process of Folksonomies, or ‘tags’ or ‘tag clouds’ (basically the process of allowing users to create their own taxonomies that feed a central ‘community taxonomy’ hence the Folksonomy). Well flickr has taken the concept of [...]

I recently came across a paper published by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, that focused on how US companies were innovating through UX techniques, or what they refer to as PCD (people centered design). I think this is an important document for understanding how a focus on Customer Experience Design techniques contribute to [...]

In this interview of Eric Costello from Flickr by Jesse James Garret we see that rather than a master strategic plan leading to the success of Flickr, it was primarily a large user centered design exercise. Success came from listening and observing customers, as they added features and functionality. An Interview with Flickr’s Eric Costello [...]