Got some feedback today on my talk at the International Association for Product Development (IAPD) conference, on using Virtual Worlds in product development:


"Right were IAPD wants to be. Greeted with some confusion, laughter, and derision. This is beyond the next step -- and where the very forward thinking live."


Which I think is a fair description of the response I typically get when talking about Virtual Worlds. I assume the same is true for anyone else speaking about them as well. Many people, especially boomers, struggle to understand why anyone would participate in a Virtual World. If social networking is a stretch, VW’s are way out in left field. I like the derision comment and I think it accurately describes some people’s reaction. At some point in the presentation, typically when the audience has loosened up enough to ask questions and offer thoughts, someone begins making fun of those who participate. I’m not offended by it, but I do get this sense of the scene fading to black and white, ties getting skinnier, skirts getting longer, and I’m in 1956 addressing the rotary club. “No, no,” I tell my audience, “You don’t understand. This rock and roll thing is going to change our culture. Elvis Presley is not a one hit wonder. You really need to understand the impact this is going to have!” That’s what it’s like explaining Virtual Worlds to people today in 2008.

But really, that was a minor point. The more important and very interesting aspect of the conference was this: marketers, designers, usability experts, etc, are now all using the same language to describe what they do. While a general theme in product development is Voice of the Customer, some people were actually using the words “User Centered Design” when describing what they do to create products. And they mean products and services, not just software.

Professor Marc Meyer of Northeastern presented a number of case studies from his book “The Fast Path to Corporate Growth: Leveraging Knowledge and Technologies to New Market Applications.” (OK, the title’s a little long winded, but the book’s a good enough read.) I was so pleased to hear a business school professor promote the idea of user centered design in product development. Of course, it makes total sense. The only way to get a competitive advantage is to create products and services that people want to use. To do that, you need to do ethnography; you need understand your audience by talking with them and observing them. His advice was that you really need to talk to only seven or so people in a segment to understand that segment’s needs. Ten or more, and you start getting redundant stories.

In a conversation afterwards, I asked him how he confirmed the hypothesis he developed as a result of the qualitative research. He said he confirmed his hypothesis with quant, specifically, conjoint analysis using Sawtooth Software.

Another interesting theme repeated in the conference was not to hire ethnographers to talk to your customers for you. Go out and do it yourself. Hiring consultants to do the ethnography means the deep understanding of the customer walks out the door at the end of the project. It also means that ethnography is a teachable, learnable skill. I know my anthropologist friends will cringe when they read this, but the advice came from people who did it themselves and came up with valuable products as a result.

Still, people struggle with this idea of User Centered Design and ethnography. I remember when I began working at a large ad agency, I asked to meet with the head of market research. I had been hired a number of years ago to help the agency understand digital media. I felt developing a good working relationship with the head of research was important in affecting culture change. But, I couldn’t get on his calendar. If I was a betting man, I’d bet he thought I was a programmer, which to him, meant sitting in front of computer drinking Mountain Dew and talking to myself.

Finally, he couldn’t hide any longer. When I sat down with him I told him I look forward to working with him and the people in his department because I thought there was an intersection between market research and user centered design and usability. He looked at me like I had a second head. He just could not understand what I was saying. Having grown up in a world of traditional marketing and 30 second spots, I was a strange voice from the future, one that was best dealt with by ignoring. To him, the Internet was a fad, populated by strange creatures who advertisers don’t want to speak to anyway.

But a few years later, the head of market research had moved on to another position and I was indeed working in his former department. Then, I was educating the agency & clients on internet trends as a prelude to the whole company being able to execute digital strategy. After one presentation he attended, he came up to me to argue that Web 2.0, a huge number of video on demand options, and what I called “extreme connectivity” was the beginning of the end for our culture and society. His argument, “If people aren’t meeting around the water cooler to talk about Friends the night before, then there’s nothing that binds our country together.”

Clearly, we were living in two different worlds, but I asked him to clarify. He said he was concerned for our democracy because with the on demand, multiple choice, multi-tasking world brought on by technology, there was no longer any one thing we all watched. And if we weren’t watching the same thing, how could we possibly all have that one thing to bring us together.

“Well,” I said, “What about the founding of our nation. There wasn’t mass electronic media then and we did pretty good at generating ideals that have lasted over 200 years.”

His argument was the times have changed. They sure have and they’re not going back to a time when there were only three networks. The way to survive this new world? Understand your customer/audience.