Design, this exercise of faith
Posted: 18/11/2010 Filed under: Product design, Uncategorized, user experience | Tags: design process 1 Comment »Design is done by people and people are driven by reason and emotion. This is my emotional cycle while going through a typical UX/innovation project:
1. Hope: I want this project really badly. It’s a dream project, different from all others in my whole career. It can make people’s lives better, maybe change the world a little.
2. Euphoria: We won it, the project is ours. Beers all around!
3. Angst: Down to reality – time, budget, resources – how to change the world with these mean constraints? Two sleepless nights later…
4. Sense of regaining control: We got a plan and some promising ideas and solutions to work with. Phew…
5. Faith: Our ideas need A LOT of work. Sad to see some being trashed, but lovey to see the best ones mushroom into even better ones. Many ups and downs, an exercise of patience and self-belief.
6. Relief: We’ve found the solution – it’s groundbreaking and beautiful! Beers all around!
7. Angst: Late hurdles and limitations invariably come. How far can sacrifices go so the main idea can survive? Am I being objective or precious?
8. Surprise/joy: We made it and it’s beautiful (not a classic beauty, but what they call an interesting beauty). Beers all around!
Service heroes
Posted: 06/08/2010 Filed under: service design, Uncategorized | Tags: service design Leave a comment »One of the main challenges of conducting a holistic service experience design project is that your client is very likely to be a person. A person in an ocean of corporation.
Service/customer touchpoints are almost never the responsibility of one team or individual. Take Telco A for instance: grossly simplifying things, there are VPs and divisions for everything: products, services, marketing, consumer, B2B, customer services, design, retail, IT, real estate, logistics, engineering, maintenance sub-contractors, procurement…
OK, corporations need to organise their ocean of people and activities into manageable parts, but usually they end up with lots of self-contained puddles which don’t network very well.
But customers, oblivious to this complexity, see only BRAND and SERVICE.
It’s no good to invest on a new brand campaign if your customer-services are done by some careless contracting company, not aligned with your brand values. It’s no good pushing your customers towards self-service if your digital channels are badly designed and inefficient. All the touchpoints need to be aligned and complement each other, as they are “the company” in the eyes of your customer after all.
There is where you, CEO, need a champion. If it can be yourself, even better. But you need empowered service champions who can can make sure your vision survives the messiness of divisions, hierarchies and P&L structures which discourage people to have common objectives.
For us, customer experience designers, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing our concepts implemented. But beyond our contribution, it is this strong champion (or champions) from the ranks of our client who will make it a reality.
Making UX design famous
Posted: 28/05/2010 Filed under: Uncategorized, user experience | Tags: job market, user experience, ux design 2 Comments »In the late 80′s, as I was finishing school and choosing a career, the cool thing to go into was advertising. It seemed so exciting and exclusive, maybe because advertising people were so natural and unashamedly self-promoting.
20 years later, its has lost great part of the glamour. So what do kids want to be when they grow up nowadays?
If you read this blog you probably know I work with digital UX design, a field (and market) that has been growing steadily in size and strength, even during this long economy downturn. The strange thing is that it has been a silent growth.
Everyone uses digital products and services (like everyone used to enjoy watching creative ads), our clients certainly see a huge value in our work, but somehow UX design hasn’t become famous as a professional choice.
There is a lot of demand for talented interaction and visual interface designers, it pays well, and it’s damn interesting and creative work. So why is it under the radar?
I think we need to do a better job of communicating all this goodness to the mainstream. I’m just building upon a larger debate about defining what we do and finding talent, which has been going on in Europe.
How would you explain and sell a career in UX design to those bright young things (before they waste their talent somewhere else)?
Things I wish I could find around the corner…
Posted: 20/06/2008 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brazil, Lists, Praises, shopping, UK Leave a comment »
When you move to a new country you miss unexpected things from the place you left. But soon enough you will adopt new consumption habits that you just can’t live without. You move on, the nostalgia list fattens up.
Import/export entrepreneurs in Spain, you would have a definite customer if you brought here:
- Sainsbury’s fresh ready made curries (all 50 varieties ) from the UK
- Sausages from Simply Sausages (UK)
- Marks & Spencer deli/convenience food
- Selfridges – the whole shop (UK)
- BBC and Channel 4 (it sucks that you can’t access the online service from a foreign IP)
- Treacle tart (UK)
- Rio juice bars: 100 varieties in strange personalised combinations (Brazil)
- Sonho de Valsa bombons (Brazil)
- Havaianas flip-flops at 4 euros (Brazil)
- Live samba bars (Brazil)
- Brooklyn Industries stuff (haven’t really lived there, but who cares…)
- Decent bandwidth internet access for a decent price.
First praise – addictive vinyl
Posted: 19/06/2008 Filed under: Friends, Spain, Uncategorized | Tags: ecommerce, praise, Spain, toys, vinyl Leave a comment »“What does Smupf stand for?” – I ask Mamuso, who just gave birth to Spain’s coolest online shop for vinyl and designer toys. “It’s the noise cuddly toys make when you squeeze them, according to my nice…” – he answers.
That says it all – these are toys you will want to squeeze and bite (but won’t). These are for staring at, rearranging and showing off. Getting one won’t do. You will crave for more.
There, my first post had to be a heartfelt praise.
Recent Comments