“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.
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.
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…
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?