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Case Studies
Ethnography and Participatory Design:
Bridging the Gap Between Customer Voice and Impact with Product
Development
 Anne
Cohen Kiel
Senior Design Anthropologist
Customer Design Center
Microsoft Corporation
Historically, there are repeated examples of how
technologies are created for the sake of technology but not with
‘real” people in mind. One of the main goals
of ethnographers is to understand the people using products from
their own perspective (emic)
instead of from a company’s perspective
(etic). Ethnographers
observe and experience the world of technology in people’s own
environments, where the activities they are tasked with have meaning
and a direct impact on their daily lives. By translating what is
observed back to product teams – features are only added if they are
meaningful (and will actually be used) in the “real world” with
“real people”. This process can also often impact overall company
and marketing strategies.
In essence, ethnographers
are able to bring the voice of real
people into the entire product
development cycle.
Ms. Cohen will provide key strategies and methods to
incorporate ethnographic research into each phase of product
development. In addition, she will highlight several case
examples of Microsoft’s use of field research to bridge the gap
between the customer voice and impact during the product development
cycle.
Creating
Innovative Automotive Product Concepts with the Voice of the
Customer
Rachel Nguyen
Senior Manager
Advanced Planning & Strategy
Nissan North
America
A recent product
revival has significantly contributed to the dramatic turnaround of
the Nissan Motor Corporation. In the US, several new products
have received many accolades from both the media and new customers.
These products include the Nissan Altima, the Nissan Murano, the
Nissan 350Z, the Nissan Titan, the Infiniti G35 coupe and sedan, and
the Infiniti FX45. With the goal of creating breakthrough
products, Nissan has focused its efforts on customer-driven new
product development processes.
This presentation
will discuss the role of the “Voice of the Customer” in the initial
concept phases of Nissan’s new product development in the United
States, namely the exploratory and advanced planning phases.
Key Learnings:
Converging
VOC Methodologies to Create an Optimal
Enterprise Customer Web-Site Experience
Tom
Graefe
Lead Human Factors
Principal
Hewlett-Packard
&
Craig
Neely
Human Factors Engineer
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
(HP) employs a range of methods to
evaluate customer experience in general, and specifically
for their internet presence. For example, surveys play a
prominent role in the measurement of corporate performance,
and are seen as critical for ‘voice of the customer’
or ‘balanced scorecard’ assessment. At the same
time, HP internet development programs use a variety of
formative and summative user-centered design
techniques for specific projects.
While the results of these different
activities may be shared within an organization,
there is little formal basis for comparison or integration
of the findings or for understanding their strengths and
weaknesses in shaping program decisions. This presentation
will review the methods used in designing and evaluating
HP’s enterprise e-support website, provide an
analysis of the relationships among these methods, and
describe the lessons learned in integrating them in a
common process.
Hearing Voices in
Florida:
A Service Company Focuses on Customers
Melissa Rehfus
Vice President, Strategy
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSF), the
largest health care company in the state, recently increased the
intensity of its customer focus. Recognizing the complex
nature of the health care industry, the company completed Voice of
the Customer work among four distinct constituencies:
individual plan members, group/business decision makers,
agents/brokers, and physicians. This work has become the
foundation for understanding different (and sometimes competing)
needs and priorities, translating needs into business process
metrics, and setting product development and improvement priorities.
This presentation will highlight some of the unique challenges faced
by service companies in the long journey called “Voice of the
Customer” by describing BCBSF’s processes, results, and learnings
along the way.
Deploying the
Voice of the Customer Throughout the Product Development Process – A
Medical Device Success Story
Bob
West
Project Director
Baxter Healthcare
After commissioning and completing a rigorous, global
"Voice of the Customer" study on an advanced medical product, the
product development team continually referred back to those results
over the entire 30-month development cycle to decide the initial
project scope, to make design decisions, to consider tradeoffs, and
even to determine the type and scope of final testing. This
presentation will provide a brief look at those VOC results,
followed by a series of concrete examples of various activities and
choices that were based on those results and the successful outcomes
of those decisions.
Using
VOC to Link Technology to Market
Opportunity
Kurt W. Swogger
Vice President, R&D
Plastics
The Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical has developed a Speed-based
philosophy to dramatically decrease
product cycle time and increase product
success. One of the key premises for this philosophy
is to link very early customer input and advice to the
market and technology validity of a
project. Over the years, Dow has used
Performance Requirements, Voice of the
Customer and QFD from Six Sigma, and the Summit
Process™ by Isis to successfully gather information and
commitment from its customers. Dow has reduced its
cycle times by a factor of three to five and doubled success
rates by using the Speed philosophy which focuses
on customer and market knowledge and input.
The Role of
Leadership in the Voice of the Customer: The CNH Story
John Fowler
Marketing Process Director
CNH
(Case New Holland)
In 2002, CNH, a group of agricultural and
construction equipment brands that includes Case, International
Harvester and New Holland, began a process reengineering effort in
product development to ensure that two brands resulting from a
merger would operate in parallel from a common platform, with a
structured process that would help avoid conflict and drive
improvement. The company realized it needed a process to work the
fuzzy front end immediately.
As the leader of the change effort, John Fowler, will
provide valuable insights on how he and his team worked a process of
translating customer needs into requirements. Within the space of
weeks they carried out all the strategy and preparation,
including customer profiling, competitive selection, product
application and utilization. Yet in the end, even though the methods
aligned everyone on the project, regardless of function, the senior
management team wasn’t ready to take the leadership leap. John will
describe his strategy to obtain this support along with his
successes and failures.
Key "take aways”:
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How
to turn a pilot project into a burning platform; getting the
attention you need to succeed
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How to get from customer needs to
product requirements unanimously across functions; getting the
results you need to get buy in for further change
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How to overcome people’s natural
resistance to what they perceive may be the flavor-of-the-month;
driving change and improvement in the fuzzy front end
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How to steer the change efforts; when
you know you need to make changes, but don’t know where to begin
Achieving Team
and Organizational
Ownership of the VOC Process
 Lucia
Buehler
Group Product Director
Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc.
How do you
implement a critical change in your VOC process once you identify
the need for improvement? How do you prove to the teams and the
organization that this is a cutting edge process improvement, before
hundreds of "How-to" books are published? Ms.
Buehler will discuss how they were able to shift the culture by
addressing:
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How
involvement of the cross-functional product development team
early in the VOC process provided ownership of the Voice of the
Customer
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How
the implementation team drove the organizational changes and
added credibility to the VOC Process Improvements
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How “training"
was sidelined for facilitated real-time working sessions for
each new product development team
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How the
current process was built by internalizing the new methods
project team-by-project team
Ms. Buehler
walk you through the use of their current VOC process on a breast
cancer medical device project and the will highlight benefits
gained.
Voices to Solutions
Piyush Sanghani
Sr. Product Research Manager
Product Development & Management
TransUnion
TransUnion is a leading global
information solutions company that
customers trust as a business intelligence partner and commerce
facilitator. This session will center on a case study of a
recent "Voice of the Customer" cross-functional initiative that has
allowed TransUnion to gain a greater
understanding of customer needs and unearth new product ideas.
This session will help you learn
how to:
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Approach a Voice of the Customer study, build executive support
and align cross-functional resources
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Get
started with a VOC study - what works and what doesn't based on
a real-life case study
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Integrate VOC into the product development process and generate
winning product ideas
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