I've been reading Allison Fine's wonderful book, Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age<http://www.amazon.com/Momentum-Igniting-Social-Change-Connected/dp/0787984442/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199227694&sr=8-1> .
In one section, Fine talks about "the listening deficit" that cripples most organizations, positing that corporations and NPOs alike tend to continually push their own agendas and hope their customers will simply remain quiet and keep giving them money. When they later realize this isn't working, for whatever reason, they hire outsiders to figure out who their customers really are and what they need. Instead of listening to their customers, donors, volunteers, employees, fans, and so on in the first place, they pay *someone else* to do something they could and should have done themselves. After pondering this rant for a moment, I thought about the User Experience profession. Does the user research aspect of your work exist only because companies are incapable of listening to and holding conversations with their own customers in the first place, or does your reseach provide value beyond what internal staff could have learned on their own had they been listening? Is user research simply a band-aid for the listening deficit, or does it bring something more powerful to the table? -r- ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
