research archives
“Walmart didn’t pursue the question of what customers wanted. Instead, Walmart came up with the answer first, then asked customers to agree to it. [They] ignored customers while attempting to fool stakeholders into thinking that the strategy [was] customer-centered.”
From an interesting critique by Mark Hurst of a survey gone awry to the tune of a billion dollar cost of research misapplied.

posted by ted 2 hours ago

Great interview from Mark Hurst with Brian King on the re-design of Courtyard by Marriott. A great case study on segmentation, observation, user-centered design, branding, and prototyping. Fun to see these familiar concepts applied in a domain that’s less familiar (to me anyway). I loved the description of business travelers being invited to a life-size prototype of the new lobby, built out of foam core to see how they would react to Marriott’s innovations.

posted by ted on Wednesday, Sep 09, 2009

Check out the Pew Internet & American Life Project for boatloads of data about who uses the internet and how. Example reports: Home Broadband 2008, Polling in the Age of Cell Phones, and The Internet and Consumer Choice. I will be returning soon…

posted by ted on Thursday, Jul 03, 2008

Ironically, I hit the Delete key almost before the title of Jakob Nielsen’s latest alert box registered on my consciousness: How Little Do Users Read?

posted by ted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008