Lean & User Experience, again
Over the years I’ve written a few posts about the relationship between Lean and User Experience. But in looking back on those, I don’t feel like I ever did as thorough of a job as I would like in connecting the two domains. So when I was asked last year to contribute to a new book called The Handbook of Business Anthropology, edited by Rita Denny and Patty Sunderland (who also wrote Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research). I proposed a chapter about Lean and Agile, because I feel that these are two critical trends for user experience professionals to understand. As I...
Read MoreRecognizing Lean
Here is my list of the Top 7 ways to know you’re working in a Lean environment: You keep hearing references to Lean that don’t refer to Cuisine or cuts of meat. You keep hearing Japanese terms like kaizen or muda. People are talking about Flow, but they are not referencing the positive psychologist Csikszentmihalyi. You hear references to Value Stream and you’re not sure what people are talking about. You’re told that the team is trying to achieve Customer Pull, but you’re not sure you want to be pulled by a customer. You learn later that this means a rate of production based...
Read MoreHumanizing Business Technology
I attended the The Qualitative Report’s Fourth Annual Conference at the end of this week. I enjoyed listening and learning to many of the sessions, and on Saturday morning I presented the Closing Plenary. In addition to sharing a bit about my own personal and professional journey, I also had a chance share my thoughts about the impact that social sciences and design can have on technology in the business setting. Humanizing Business Technology View the complete presentation on SlideShare. Abstract How can methodologies from the social sciences – and from other fields...
Read MoreMultiscreen mobility
Over the past few weeks I’ve encountered a number of interesting articles which describe how the device landscape (and their patterns of use) are complex, and vary significantly by the user, the device type, and the task at hand. This creates all kind of challenges and opportunities for those of us working in the fields of user experience, software development, and related fields! A visualization of broadband usage data by device type starts to paint a picture of how usage varies by device: One of the first posts I read in this vein was by blogger Luke Wroblewski, who evaluated the...
Read MoreForget willpower
As people start the traditional making and breaking of New Year’s resolutions, willpower seems to be at top of mind for many. I have been ruminating on what I want to accomplish this year, and how I’ll put the right steps in place to get there. I’m sure many of you have been doing the same! But I dislike making resolutions just because it’s January, and I really dislike pretending that something is going to change unless I am really sure I can establish and execute on an plan. Corporate training meets real life, I guess! So when one of my ZS colleagues posted...
Read MoreFriday yumminess
This week I had a chance to dig into my RSS reader this week for the first time in months, and I found a few things I thought I would pass along for fun. And in honor of this post I’m introducing a new tag – yummy. For those of you that know me in real life, you know that I use this word all the time. Let’s see if I can bring it to the blog with any consistency. :) The first site is a great sampling of well-done Customer Experience maps. What an great format for visualizing workflow, experience, and opportunities for future work! I may have to...
Read MoreSmiling city
This week I was talking to one of the Principals at ZS, helping him to prepare for a client engagement. His consulting team is putting together a proposal regarding the use of iPads for sales enablement. They are preparing to do ride-alongs with local pharmaceutical reps, and they wanted my help to help them prepare. I’m hoping I might get to join in, both for the ride-along and for the analysis of the customer’s requirements. If so I will definitely write a post about my experience, as it’s been ages since I did any field research of my own, and I’ve never...
Read More