Ways to engage customers

Some content of this blog post originally appeared as part of the Quality during Design email newsletter.

I traveled by car, bus, and train to make it to the ASME technical conferences in Washinton, D.C. earlier in the week. I chose many talks in the design theory and methodology track because of my interest in what was the latest techniques. What was discussed most was ways to engage customers.

Design Justice moves the designer out from the center of the design process

Design Justice was a big topic. These design processes are moving the designer away from the center of the design. Design Justice aims to incorporate the user into the design process and design decisions. It’s a paid position. It’s different from Design for Usability. Design Justice is most easily applied to civic and community-based designs. I say easy, although it’s not.

Engage customers as Makers

I spoke with a student that studies Makers and their design process. Have you ever seen the show Making It? It’s those types of Makers that she studied. My take-away from our conversation (during a breakout of the Design Justice track) was that we may be able to engage our customers better if we encourage them to participate in the design by using the mediums they are familiar with, including textiles and other crafts.

Status quo: customers as approvers

What I’ve seen most often in manufactured product design is using customer panels, customer outreach, and surveys at certain points of the design process. These are used as a sort-of go/no-go check: are we still designing something you want that will work for you? We can also gauge what features they like and don’t like. This might include evolutions of prototypes, or prototype options. In this case, we’re the Makers.

This extends to the ideas in Sprint, too. We’re mocking up a user interface within a week, then testing our customers’ reaction to it. We make a go/no-go decision after that. If we continue with development, we have additional data from our test. For my review of Sprint, see this blog post.

My key takeaway

My key takeaway is that today’s designers are looking for ways to incorporate the users into the design process, to be part of the design process itself. This is different from the processes I’ve seen most, where the user is invited to give some feedback at certain points of the design process.

Think about what kind of techniques you use to incorporate the user into your design process. What is their level of participation? Are they advisors or are they designers? Is there a way you can increase their participation as a designer?