Here’s something that may surprise you - user testing doesn’t help you innovate. For example, it’s unlikely that in the middle of a user test a participant is going to leap out their seat and shout “I’ve got it! This iPhone app is answering the wrong question! What you need to design is this!” Nope, participants are more likely to tell you about what they don’t understand or what they don’t like. Read more »
Regular readers of our newsletter and attendees at our breakfast briefings will have noticed that we’re passionate about Service Design here at Optimal Usability and want to be the go-to guys for Service Design in New Zealand.
UX Australia’s Service Design 2011 one day conference offered us a chance to take the temperature of Service Design in Australia and see if we Kiwis measure up. In short I think we more than measure up, but nevertheless there were some interesting learnings to take home from some great presentations which I’d like to share with you. Read more »
We’ve been getting pretty excited about the emerging field of Service Design here at Optimal Usability. For those of you who missed Trent’s presentation, cunningly titled ‘An Introduction to Service Design‘, Service Design is about building services that customers love, that wrap around them and fulfil their needs equally well regardless of the way the customer chooses to interact. Well-designed services don’t often happen by accident, they are crafted to meet or exceed the needs of customers. Many businesses are waking up to the reality that the services they offer are fragmented and confusing and often more a reflection of their internal structure than something that has been purposefully created. Read more »