Total Design

Adam Greenfield recently penned an insightful writeup on thoughts around experience design, customer service, and the notion of control.  If any of these topics are of interest—I would recommend reading the whole thing.

Note: this post was edited on 9/9/07 to respect the wishes of the author it links to.  Click on the above link to read the associated post originally written on the Speedbird blog.
 

Comments

[eruntale]

awesome diagrams!

[Roger von Oech]

The return of "Ed, the Experience Diamond" — back by popular demand!

(Is he related to "AR, the Activity Rhombus?)

[Lewis Green]

David,

I thought it couldn't get any better than the visuals until I scrolled down to "Four Simple Steps to Becoming a Compassionate Designer." You can change Designer to any professional title and the advice remains relevant and important.

Good post David.

[Becky Carroll]

Thanks for the mash-up, David, and putting these particular pieces together. It makes for an inspiring, and thought-provoking read. Can we truly control the customer's experience with our product or service? Of course not; we are human, and as humans we daily make unpredictable choices. But we can walk with our customer, understand their concerns as they arise, and work to right the perceived wrongs.

Thanks again. You rock!

[Alex Nisbett]

I saw this article too - interesting in as much as it's on the Adobe site so, one might argue reaching a potentially very large audience.

What I took away and have tried to build upon on my own blog... http://tinyurl.com/2vr2jp is the aspect Adam touched on that I interpretted as 'Locked Down or Thumb Tight?

This is where services and experiences can't be totally controlled by the provider / client / designer (successfully) and indeed need to be a little bit 'lose' to allow for the interesting stuff created by and ownership from, the user.

And to be able to design for this, for sure one needs to look at customer (people) journeys over time and to really understand the 'users' in a truely empathic way, their moods, modes, drivers and hurdles and importantly how they (we) participate.

[DA]

Alex,

I honed it on that part as well. Empathy is critical. It's why I ended with my "compassionate designers" visual.

I also related to points about control. Made me recall this post:

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2007/03/a_tale_of_two_a.html

[AG]

David, the Creative Commons license under which I provide material on Speedbird clearly states that "no derivative works" may be made from my writing. I wish to maintain this small degree of control specifically to minimize the chance that someone will selectively quote my work in a way that mischaracterizes it or otherwise situate it in an irrelevant discourse.

Unfortunately, that's just what you've gone ahead and done here. Given that, had you had the courtesy to approach me ahead of time and ask me for permission to do so, I would have said no, I'd prefer it if you'd remove this post. Your understanding is very much appreciated.

[karl long]

Hey AG, if you want to protect your work you shouldn't hide your CC license on your "about page", no wonder David wasn't aware of it. I suggest putting it in your blog footer, that way people reading individual blog posts will be aware of your preferences.

[AG]

karl, your attempt to shift the burden of responsibility onto the original creator is distasteful. Whether or not the version of WordPress I use allows me to modify my blog footer (in fact, it does not) is beside the point in the present instance.

I'm sure you'd agree that it's the responsibility of the person who wants to make a secondary use of someone else's text to exercise due diligence and to make a good-faith effort to ascertain the provisions under which that text is offered.

Since I would hardly call the Creative Commons license on Speedbird "hidden" - you certainly seemed to have no trouble finding it - the reasonable inference is that David made no such good-faith effort.

[DA]

Adam,

I'm sorry that you feel this way about how I quoted your article. I'm not sure why you are taking issue with the post now, several months after I wrote this post. I even left you this comment on your blog stating my intentions before I wrote the post:

"# David Armano Says:
June 26th, 2007 at 10.07 UTC

This is just what I needed! It’s one of the more insightful, practical and applicable articles I’ve read on Experience Design in a while. I’m sharing this with the folks at Critical Mass and I’ll also be doing a write up. I think I may even use some visuals that seem to go well with your written thoughts."

Nicely done—I especially like the thinking about “control” in Experience Design and how this fares in the real world."

http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/on-the-ground-running-lessons-from-experience-design/#comment-5860

It's ironic that the last part of my comment discusses control which is the issue here. You want to control how you were quoted. This is a first for me. I've never had someone here complain about being quoted and linked to. Even if I "mashed up" your quotes along side my visuals it was never my intent to misrepresent your blog post.

But, clearly you are uncomfortable with what I've done and I respect that so I will remove all quotes and visuals from this post. But I'm keeping the post live as well as the link back to your original post because what you wrote is worth sharing.

[AG]

Thanks, David. I appreciate it.