How companies should deal with the empowered user
Clay Shirky gave an amazing presentation at TED@State last month about how users are becoming empowered by the ability not only to talk back but to self organize to communication with each other.
Almost as a follow-up to Clay’s presentation, McKinsey Quarterly has an article on how companies should deal with this changed environment, which may be a little scary for companies that are more used to traditional one-way communications: Managing beyond Web 2.0
Executives can use a model we at the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing have developed called LEAD (listen, experiment, apply, develop) to create a road map that will help companies thrive in the online world’s environment of constant change.
Listen is usually the hardest thing to do.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:43 am
Just yesterday I wias thinking about the whole future of Ux in light of the TED Talk by Clay Shirky.
As a Ux practitioner I am so struck by the high awareness that users have now compared to many years ago when I run focus groups and user sessions. About 10 years ago companies could spoon feed the average consumer a lot of nonesense about their product and in sessions I have run – users would first blame themselves if the product fell short with comments like: “maybe I don’t understand”.
The tide has changed:
Companies have a massive problem on their hand if they continue to market to users as if they wer not informed. While I cannot post specifics about my own work experience I continue to encounter users (primarily y-gens) who are very vocal about specifics of their product usage and the whole sense of loyalty has been redefined.
I want to understand how as Ux practioners we can “parlay” this into improving product design given the fact that the key decision makers are all not quite synced up with the whole concept of the empowered user as well as their collective voacal ability. By Jove – look at the whole Obama campaign.
The other issue they have on their hand is the growing eco-ethical awareness. The fact the many companies think they can pull the wool over consumers eyes by polluting on one hand and donating to Green Peace on the other is not going to work.
I am fascinated by the impact for design and ux.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I agree on all fronts about your comment. There is a shift in power in terms of how the “user” interacts with products, companies, brands and issues. The difference is that users talk to each other and they can rapidly (more rapidly that companies can respond) communicate with each other around issues that concern them.
Herein lies the opportunity and the danger. Has the user/consumer/customer fundamentally changed, or are they just the same with new tools? A bit of both obviously. There will still be many who will just talk about the issues, but a few that will take it to the next level. The optimism I have is that technology and to a certain extent UX will allow more of those “few” to engage and activate more of the “many”.
To that end we as UX practitioners have a greater responsibility than we had before to explore the opportunities for user empowerment.