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

Jeff White jwhite31 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 7 17:16:55 PST 2008


That's a good point Pankaj. However, if marketing was conducting poor
user research (imagine that!) that's just yet another reason why
experienced practitioners of UCD could provide value to the
organization.

Jeff

On Jan 7, 2008 1:12 PM, Pankaj Chawla <pankaj013 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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