product design

I originally wrote today’s post for GetFeedback. It appeared on their site on July 19, 2020.

Designing and delivering a cohesive end-to-end customer experience is important for brands to do. To make this happen, your entire organization must be integrated and aligned to work toward that goal. In this article, I’ll address the gap between two important parts of your organization that must be bridged in order to achieve this goal.

Way back in 2003 I wrote my first blog post about OXO - a company that was all about universal design and that built products that could be used by as many people as possible. In the company's own words that means designing products for young and old, male and female, lefties and righties and many with special needs. 

Back in 2011 I asked this question: Customer Experience: What About The ‘Product’? And I ended that conversation with the following assertion:

Product roadmaps suck.

There, I said it. <exhales>

In doing some reading this morning, came across a couple examples of practitioners with a customer-centric orientation emphasizing the job-to-be-done. They come at it from different angles, but share the essence *first* understanding what the customer is trying to get done first, *then* getting down to design and development.