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(Revisiting the idea of) Facilitating customer experience
Jul 20, 2007
Some current talk online about designers-as-facilitators reminds me of a column I wrote four years ago, Usability Professionals Must Disappear. Excerpt:
In short, a good user experience practitioner is a facilitator - someone who quietly (having disappeared) guides the process, allowing knowledge to emerge, from users and the company alike. Instead of coming in with the answers, or the framework, or (my personal favorite) "the 200 rules of user experience design," they should come in with their auditory organs turned up to eleven. Listening.
As facilitators, truly caring about the organization and how it can best serve its customers, practitioners will then be more valued.
A lot of user-experience folk disliked the column, I think in part because of the title, but today the ideas might not be considered so radical. We're finally beginning to see a more strategic outlook in the field - focused on organizations, not tactical rules; and on business performance, not academic usability tactics. This benefits everyone.
At Creative Good we've told our clients for a long time that while we bring past learnings to our work, we're not coming in as gurus. Rather, we're facilitating a process for companies to learn what their customer experience is, and how to improve it.
Mark, I don't believe these ideas are radical at all. There is no way anyone from the outside can or should "dictate" or constrain an organization when it comes to user experience. The current experience is really dictated by the company's processes and by the reactions of the users.
Listening is a lost art, so the more it is truly practiced, the better! Thanks for reminding us of that.