The Power of Paying Attention: Looking at the Value of User-Centered Design- 2 years later

I’ve been thinking about the last two years and our journey into the work of usability and into the practice of user-centered design.

Two years. It’s a good time to step back and say, what have we gleaned?  Has it been worth it?  What is the purpose behind all of it?  Does it still hold value for us?

Our goal as an organization is to be customer-centric in our product development: to understand our customers, understand their needs and to partner with them in the development of solution providing product.

Is user-centered design simply an exercise in practicing certain methods or is it an exercise in presence and the power of paying attention?

Practicing these methods just for the sake of practicing these methods misses the point.

However, if these methods allow us to move forward in understanding our customers and their needs more effectively, if they assist us in bringing customers into the product development process in a way that is strategic and intentional, then they have continued value for us as an organization.

It’s critical that we ask these questions and that we take an honest look at what the answers mean. 

Two years later, ask yourself:

• Do you know more about the lives of our customers than you did two years ago?
• Do you know more about who our customers are? Where they work?
• Do you know more about what products they use & how those products work for them?
• Do you know more about how they go about planning a lesson and where they go to find resources?
• Has spending time with the customer informed or confirmed your understanding of the customers’ pain points? Or what a product needed to be to provide a solution?
• Has spending time with the customer informed or confirmed what is working or not working in a product, be it the words, the design, the title, the marketing or the selling?
• Has usability testing of a product led you to make changes to the words, the design, the title, the marketing or the selling of a particular product?
• Has user feedback identified or unearthed any confusion in their use of a product?
• Has spending time with the customer informed or confirmed how the material needed to be organized?
• Has spending time with the customer informed or confirmed what navigational clues the customer is expecting to see?

I went through each of these questions myself and would be willing to venture that anyone who has gone on site visits or done usability testing probably has more insight than they realize about the above questions. 

Why do I say that?  Because what we’ve been doing over the last two years is, very simply, paying attention.

User-centered Design offers us a rich set of tools for effectively paying attention to our customers which leads us on a path of continuous improvement and innovation.

It teaches us how to effectively be present and observe our customers, listen to them, interview them, and how to effectively partner with them in the creation of product.

Paying Attention.

It seems like a simple thing.

But to pay attention well, effectively and continuously takes time. It takes work. In some ways it’s like a parent who is continuously paying attention to their children throughout their child’s life. That attention sometimes takes different forms, but it’s always there.  So too, our attention to our customers takes different forms.

Sometimes we pay attention through surveys, sometimes through spending time with them at their place of work. Sometimes we spend time with them and attend to their needs when they contact US via customer care. Sometimes we attend to their needs in person as the sales team does during their visits. Sometimes we pay attention through e-mail and sometimes we ask them to sit beside us and help us look at a product in new ways through usability testing.

But we are always paying attention. That is what it means to be user-centered.

That’s what it means to be Saint Mary’s Press.