Quotes from Adaptive Path’s “Subject to Change”

 

This weekend I finished reading Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World by Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, and David Verba (all affiliated with Adaptive Path).

While I disagree with their comments about the discipline of human factors and ergonomics only focusing on “tasks and goals” (see pp. 44-45), overall, I found they made several insightful comments on design, user experience (including strategy), and research.  Some of the more interesting quotes include:

Design

• To cut through the complexity of a world that is both shrinking (in terms of the global village) and expanding (with respect to technological capability), businesses must take advantage of the power of design to realize true competitive advantages. (p. 7)
• At heart, we believe that design is an activity.  As an activity, it incorporates these elements: empathy; problem solving; ideation and prototyping; and finding alternatives. (pp. 9-10)
• The true success of experience design isn’t how well it works when everything is operating as planned, but how well it works when things start going wrong. (p. 93)
• Design can and will fail when it’s practices outside of the context of systems and strategy. (p. 110)
• Giving your customers tools to be designers lets you explore options that you may never think of or invest in on your own. (p. 139)

Experience – User/Customer & Strategy

• An experience strategy is a clearly articulated touchstone that influences all of the decisions made about technology, features, and interfaces. (p. 24)
• An experience strategy can take many forms.  At its heart is a vision, an expression of the experience you hope customers will have. (p. 25)
• …experience strategy begins with the customer.  It’s about contributing to a desirable experience, helping people accomplish what they want to get done. (p. 27)
• A strong experience strategy makes clear not just what to do, but what not to do. (p. 82)
• …“great user experience” always appears as a bullet in the PowerPoint presentation for every new product and service that gets pitched to upper management.  Few organizations move beyond the bullet point because a great experience is difficult to plan for, and almost impossible to spec. (p. 100)
• Notably great experiences are punctuated by a moment of “Wow!,” when the product or service delights, anticipates the needs of, or pleasantly surprises a customer. (p. 131)

Research

• Design research needs to inspire and indicate a clear direction. (p. 65)
• Truly effective customer research takes both a traditional marketing approach and a design approach. (p. 66)
• We’ve found that solid research deliverable exhibit three key characteristics: they are clear and straightforward; they engage readers; and they tell stories. (p. 71)

Some additional noteworthy quotes include:

• The key to creating successful products and services in a rapidly changing world is not resistance to unexpected change, but the flexibility to adapt to it. (p. viii)
• Differentiation isn’t just about being new, it’s also about being relevant. (p. 21)
• As important as customers are to every business, it’s amazing how seldom organizations explicitly consider how they think about the people who keep them in business. (p. 40)
• Creating something new is easy when compared with creating something desirable. (p. 102)
• Good ideas need to fail early and often so you can arrive sooner at a great one. (p. 125)

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