My Curious Life

Peter Merholz made a presentation entitled Stop Designing Products (PDF here) at SHiFT 2006 that made a strong point for designing an end-to-end experience rather than limiting your focus to just a specific product. His presentation was based upon then recent work Adaptive Path had done with a financial services company’s website. They found that the website was just one of many touch points that needed to be addressed in order to improve customer experience (and satisfaction).

Frog Design sums it up this way:

The system is the product.

So, then, if the system is the product, how do you design a system that incorporates a variety of touch points, services, devices and experiences? How do you turn your brand into a tangible thing to be experienced and interacted with?

In Cooper’s Interaction Design Practicum, which I can’t recommend enough, they talk about imagining your product (or system) as if it were magic, or as if it were a person. I think that last idea is the key … imagine your brand/product/system as if it were a person … create, if you will, a reverse persona. Invent a person that, were they real, might embody who you want your company to be when dealing with your customers.

One key thing to keep in mind, though, is that just because your company is serving a particular customer, you may not want to “be” like that customer. Taking the banking industry as an example, which person would you hand your hard-earned money to:

Now to be honest, as an individual I’m more like the second pic than the first. For my banking needs, though, I want someone who is more like the qualities I’m projecting on the man in the first picture: trustworthy, financially savvy, and professional. Note that the man isn’t some stuffy, overbearing banker in a three-piece suit sitting behind a mahogany desk. I expect my local bank to be approachable and informative, not demeaning or aloof. It’s these subtleties that can make or break the impression.

Now if I expect this first man to be my local banker, when I interact with the bank’s website I expect many of the same characteristics to be present. If the website is too stuffy or condescending in its language, or comes across as unorganized and overly casual, some loss of trust will happen. The same goes for phone service. When I pick up the phone, call for service and get connected to an agent from Bangalore … you can imagine that I feel a bit of a disconnect between my vision of my bank and the person helping me on the phone. The agent may be very knowledgeable, financially savvy, and approachable, but he’s also forcing me to expand my definition of “local” … my bank became a global organization in just one phone call.

I’d be curious to see if there are any organizations or individuals using personas in this way, and if so, if they’d be willing to share some of their experiences …