Design in perspective
Karen Holtzblatt is an American computer scientist and experience design pioneer that is known for her contributions to HCI, that’s Human Computer Interaction, and particularly in Contextual Design. She founded InContext Design in 1992 with Hugh Beyer and is its CEO. Karen was elected to the CHI Academy in 2007 and won the first ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Award for Practice in 2010.
“how can we know what to make?”
Contextual Design (CD) answers John’s question because it begins with customer data up front, using that to drive what is made. It’s the data that transformed and directed what companies should do.
CD helps them figure out how to characterize their market, what the people are doing, and what they might need that overlaps with what the business might be able to provide.
The first half of CD, the first four steps produce an understanding of the people, the market, and high-level product concepts. The second half, the second four steps, is how to structure the product so it works for people.
“ mobility changed the way people lived their life with technology.”
We asked the question, “what makes things cool?” We went out to the field, of course, because that is what we do. And we talked with people about anything that they thought was cool, not just their mobile phones.
From that data, we identified the Cool Concepts, which include the experience of what makes something cool in life, and to you as a person, and also the triangle of design, which defines what makes things cool in the product interaction.
These new insights changed the method–the data we collected, how we organized it, used it for ideation, and structured the product.
So real mobile devices changed how people used technology in their daily lives, so the method had to change.
“ The language of business is simple.”
Is it gaining market share? Is the product a priority for this year’s goals? Is the product getting good outside ratings—like in the auto industry. If you go to work for a car company, and we have worked with many, they care about the JD Power score. Or maybe they care about Consumer Reports.
If you look at those evaluations today, they are going to talk about the user experience. So then, companies have to care about user experience. But talking business means knowing that the goal of the project is to raise the JD Power score. That is their motivation for making sure they care about the customer experience—it gets a public score which increases sales.
“ Can we make any money?”
Good managers make sure that they are constantly sharing the business goals and helping shape their people towards the business goals.
As one CEO that we worked with a lot would say, “I don’t care if the customers like it. Can we make any money?” “Please go do a business analysis and tell me if we can sell this.”
This person is utterly committed to Contextual Design. But she wants us to identify the things that will advance the goals of the business.
She’s not saying, make sure they have the best customer experience. She’s saying, make sure they have the best customer experience that we can build that advances the goals of the business—making money.