Experience and Empathic Design | july '15

Some companies are just better at making sure customers feel good. 

And there is a whole industry based around maximizing customer experience at "all points of contact" with a company, according to customer experience consulting company Beyond Philosophy. Interestingly, after the company interviewed 53 customer experience executives as part of its 2011 Global Customer Experience Management Survey it found that investing more resources in a better customer experience doesn't necessarily result in happier customers. 

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All businesses, no matter what they make or sell, should recognize the power and financial value of good design.

Obviously, there are many different types of design: graphic, brand, packaging, product, process, interior, interaction/user experience, Web and service design, to name but a few.

We are referring to design as a broad and deliberately applied discipline, with the aim of creating simpler, more meaningful, rewarding experiences for customers.

You see, expecting great design is no longer the preserve of a picky design-obsessed urban elite—that aesthetically sensitive clique who‘d never dare leave the house without their Philippe Starck eyewear and turtleneck sweaters and buy only the right kind of Scandinavian furniture. Instead, there’s a new, mass expectation of good design: that products and services will be better thought through, simplified, made more intuitive, elegant and more enjoyable to use.

Almost every company competes to some degree on the basis of continual innovation. And to be commercially successful, new product and service ideas must, of course, meet a real—or perceived—customer need. Hence the current managerial mantras: “Get close to the customer” and “Listen to the voice of the customer.” The problem is, customers’ ability to guide the development of new products and services is limited by their experience and their ability to imagine and describe possible innovations. How can companies identify needs that customers themselves may not recognize? How can designers develop ways to meet those needs, if even in the course of extensive market research, customers never mention their desires because they assume those desires can’t be fulfilled?

A set of techniques we call empathic design can help resolve those dilemmas.