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MEX: Enhancing mobile user experience in a multi-platform world

The next MEX is on 1st - 2nd December 2010, WallaceSpace, London, UK | Register | Manifesto (PDF)

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May 2009, Manifesto #3: Customer research methodology must be enhanced to close the reality gap

Videos



Presentations

Rachel Hinman on Manifesto 3, Day 1 - Customer research methodology must be enhanced to close the reality gap

Speakers
  • Rachel Hinman, Experience Design Director, Adaptive Path (Profile)
Manifesto statement
We believe...the industry must enhance its methodology for understanding customer experience and translating that knowledge into better mobile products. The continuing disconnect between the lifestyle of real customers and the experiences they're offered points to an urgent need for new research methods and new ways of using that research within the product management structure.

Tags
Research; Ethnography; Organisational structure; Lab testing; Observation; Methodology; Reality

The story
Focus groups, lab testing, surveys, research reports, real world observation, public betas... The mobile industry employs a wide range of methods to better understand its users, yet time and again products reach the market with major customer experience issues.
There can be multiple reasons for this: choosing an inappropriate research method, targeting the wrong group of users or organisational failings, where the valuable insights gleaned from user experience studies are lost to poorly aligned management priorities.
There is an argument most customer research is tainted before it is even commissioned, influenced more by a desire to support existing company strategy than trying to understand the reality of customer experience.
The most valuable customer research reveals new behaviours for the first time or provides fresh insight into existing usage patterns. Smart companies gain competitive advantage from this intelligence by identifying trends ahead of the market and gaining insight to capitalise on the opportunity in a way which matches customer expectations first time.

To get you thinking...
  • Is the way in which customer research is typically commissioned and budgeted for fundamentally incompatible with producing genuinely unexpected insights into user behaviour?
  • How can customer research practitioners better illustrate the value of new methodology and ensure the insights are used to greatest effect by the client?
  • What's happening at the cutting edge of customer research in other industries? What can the mobile business learn?
Further reading from the MEX archives
Stat Spots
  • 90.00%: The overwhelming majority of users interviewed by mobile social network itsmy.com visited the site first whenever they've used the mobile web. 75% of these users also wanted to see a link to their operator's homepage from itsmy.com, allowing them to easily top-up their credit. | (Source: itsmy.com)
  • 0.33%: The official number of subscribers reported by Pakistan's mobile operators declined by 0.33% in Q4 2008, despite perceptions of it being one of the fastest growing markets in the world. The decline was driven by a change in reporting standards, which now require operators to remove inactive subscribers from their customer totals after 90 days. | (Source: Wireless Intelligence)
  • 50x: Customers of Verizon Wireless sent 50x as many text messages as multimedia messages in Q4 2008. | (Source: Verizon)
  • 108.00%: Complaints to PhonePayPlus (PPP), the UK premium services watchdog, more than doubled from 2007 to 2008. 8000 complaints were registered in a 12 month period, prompting PPP to introduce tougher measures to improve the quality of premium services. | (Source: Mobile Entertainment)
  • 45.00%: Almost half of UK and US consumers are hesitating to purchase a new mobile handset because they are concerned about the complexity of setting up a new device, according to a Coleman Parkes study of 4000 users on behalf of Mformation. | (Source: Coleman Parkes / Mformation)
  • 61.00%: 61% of UK and US users have stopped using services such as email, internet browsing, instant messaging and MMS because they couldn't solve the usability problems they encountered, according to a Coleman Parkes study of 4000 users on behalf of Mformation. | (Source: Coleman Parkes / Mformation)
  • 103.00%: Viewer numbers on Qualcomm's MediaFlo mobile TV service spiked 103% during the 2008 US Open golf play-off between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate. In contrast, viewer numbers during live coverage of the US Presidential election increased by only 22%. | (Source: Qualcomm)

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e: mp@pmn.co.uk
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tw#: #mex10

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