[IxDA Discuss] Is user research a band-aid for "the listening deficit"?

[Pankaj Chawla]

I beg to differ. Engineering departments depend on the customer facing
departments (marketing, product engineering etc) for the customer
perspective but its the customer facing groups that generally cut
corners and instead of going out and doing a full user research they
mostly give back their own perceptions partially validated by limited
customer interaction. Of course engineering departments add their own
perspective to the already ill baked data and so what comes out
finally is miles away from what customer would have asked for if
somebody had cared enough to ask in detail.

Cheers
Pankaj



On 1/7/08, Robert Hoekman, Jr. <robert at rhjr.net> wrote:
> > I can say that often parts of most company are listening - namely
> > those that deal directly with customers, employees as you mention..
>
>
> I'd agree with this, but I also see that often, the parts of a company that
> are listening have no direct line of communication to the ones that need the
> info. For example, a call center staff will have tons of useful insights,
> but there's no link between the call center and the design team.
>
> Engineering departments are not often set up to listen. They're set up to
> build, build, build. This disconnect is where the problem starts, I think.
>
> -r-
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