Great point jet. Essentially what you've described is the difference between UI/interaction design and the design of a cross-channel, cross-modality, over-time customer experience.
It ain't just about the pixels. Our field would be well advised to remember this. -Paul On Dec 6, 2009, at 10:38 AM, j. eric townsend wrote: Jared Spool wrote: > How does one show value for quality? > How does one show value for technology? > How does one show value for service? > Answer those questions and you'll know how one shows value for design. Here's an example that's probably terribly uninteresting to most designers: post-sales customer support. Customer support is a huge cash suck for consumer electronics and software companies. A call to customer support answered by a human can easily cost $10, much more if that human has to be technically sophisticated and do more than follow a script. Let's say you're selling a video game or a monthly service for $50. A single call to CS just zero'd any profit. Multiple calls put you in the negative. If you end up having to "roll a truck" to the customer, you're probably in a world of hurt. If you can figure out a way to lower the cost of customer support using better design, you will get attention from execs. Find out what customer support is costing them across the board -- returned products, customer retention, phone bank and web site costs -- and show how you can lower those costs with better design. Maybe it's a better help forum, maybe it's a better phone tree, maybe it's better scripts for the CS reps. Sure, making the product better might lower costs in the next release, but that's speculation and not easily measured. Show that good design can cut costs in a well-understood and closely watched area of the business and maybe it will be easier to convince them of how good design can increase profits on the intake side of the business. -- J. E. 'jet' Townsend, IDSA Designer, Fabricator, Hacker design: www.allartburns.org; hacking: www.flatline.net; HF: KG6ZVQ PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8 ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
