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Kim Goodwin, VP Design and General Manager at interaction design consultancy Cooper, will speak at MX East (October 22-23, Philadelphia) on Integrating Design In Your Organization. (Use promotional code BLOG for 10% off the registration price.)
Our good friends at UIE have interviewed Kim, and you can either listen to the MP3, or read an excerpt.
Lou Carbone has been one of the business world’s foremost advocates for the value of managing experiences. He was coauthor of the seminal 1994 article that introduced the marketing world to the idea of customer experience management. Through his consulting firm, Experience Engineering, he advises companies on how to deliver value to customers through experience.
His book on customer experience management is entitled Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again. Lou Carbone will be delivering the keynote address on day one of MX East, Adaptive Path’s conference on management experience through creative leadership, being held October 21-23, 2007 in Philadelphia.
Jesse James Garrett: How did you get into this area of customer experience management?
Lou Carbone: It’s really very fascinating. I began to observe companies. I’d come out of an advertising background originally, and observing companies as they managed value and the experiences that they created, and I was amazed at the lack of rigor, discipline and methodologies around the lining of clues in the experiences that people have, and ended up believing that managers in companies basically left experiences very, very haphazard and that they weren’t very well managed or purposefully designed and executed. I became fascinated by the opportunity to really manage the clues and align the clues in an experience that an individual has.
JJG: Explain what you mean by clues. This is a core concept in your book, I know.
LC: Yes, it is. In all of the experiences that we have, we are doing what we refer to as “clue math.” Unconsciously and consciously, we are processing all of those things that we perceive in physical experiences. Those include humanics, which are the human elements in an experience that are emitted by humans in the experience, and then there are clues that we refer to as “mechanics,” which are all of those physical signals that we take in through our senses.
The other area is what we refer to as “functional” clues. Those are the goods or services that actually function and do what they are supposed to do. And so in any experience, we are simultaneously — consciously and unconsciously — processing all of these clues, which creates a feeling that we have that emotional connection, which is built on how the experience makes us feel. Therefore, all of those clues become very powerful when they’re aligned and working toward creating this emotional connection with customers.
In the discussions around experience design, there tend to be two points of focus — either around the methods and practices of experience design (research! prototyping! tons and tons of Post-It Notes!), or around the importance of Design Thinking to inform business strategy. While both are valuable, neither are sufficient for accomplishing what is probably the single hardest part of experience design: getting great experiences out into the world.
The unsung heroes are those folks who shepherd projects through an organization, demonstrating the value of an experience design approach, ensuring that their product maintains quality in the face of competing priorities. Such shepherding is hard, but is necessary for design to succeed.
This is why we created the MX Conference. MX stands for Managing Experience. It exists to fill the void between the practical discussions craft, and the hand-wavey discussions of The Power Of Design. The event is focused on helping people understand what it takes to get great experiences out into the world, in the process building a community of folks addressing similar challenges.
MX-San Francisco, which took place last February, was a remarkable success for us. It sold out, received some of our best evaluation scores, and established a community of peers. The podcasts from that event are some of the most listened-to and highest-rated on IT Conversations, demonstrating the power of these ideas.
We’ve recently launched the page for MX East, taking place October 22-23 just outside Philadelphia. We’ve brought back the top speakers from the first MX, and added a slew of new presenters, including Joshua Wesson, CEO of innovative wine merchant Best Cellars, Khoi Vinh, design manager at The New York Times, Kim Goodwin, VP of Design at Cooper, and many more.
We’re changing things up a bit by locating the event in a retreat atmosphere, at Normandy Farm. Only 35 minutes from Philadelphia International Airport, it’s a world away from the hassle and distractions of your working life, and will allow you to really connect with your peers facing similar challenges. To encourage sticking around, we’re offering a complete turnkey package — pay one price, and your hotel, meals, and event are all included.
The conference is produced by Procreation Design Works, who put on a little event you may have heard of called TED. We’re excited to have them join our team to deliver a conference experience that goes above and beyond the norm.
Registration is open. Use the promotional code BLOG for an additional 10% off. The first event sold out, and seating is limited this time as well.
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