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Showing posts from December 13, 2011

Are you really being customer-centric?

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Yesterday I had to accompany my mother to the doctor. The roles reverse, as she did go with me while I was young and now it is the other way around. She had to perform a lung test. The outcome was that she has to use a certain medicine for six weeks. Why is this relevant in the context of innovation? Well, the medicine has to be inhaled via a complicated tool. So, we went to the pharmacist and ordered the product. Then he set up a meeting in a separate room with us to 'demonstrate' the product. In other words, how to use it. This is all very good, but........ he had problems showing it correctly. As a matter of fact he made some mistakes, as I did find out reading the manual. The product is not easy to use and because of that it will not be used properly. While the medicine and the tool might be very advanced, the results still depends on whether your customer CAN use it. The product was clearly not designed in a user-centric way. It still was designed form a pro