I read an interesting article today that made me think again about user experience. At Digerati Studio we pride ourselves on user centred design. That means when we design anything before picking up a pencil or clicking a mouse button, we think about the user journeys and the requirements that the user will have.
In contrast alot of shops and companies put a huge emphasis on customer service to maintain a good rappor with customers and a reputable company profile in their industry. However, in my experience I often find one or the other, or neither! Either companies focus on customer service by having a massive call centre available to all their customers 24 hours a day, for example. But neglect the user experience of having to wait half an hour before being able to speak to anyone!
In www.macobserver.com there is a great article that talks of a windows developer coding for the new Apple OS Leopard. This is still in Beta release and the developer experiences some errors. His past experience working with Microsoft Betas has educated him that if you submit your errors found to Microsoft – they disappear into the abyss never to be heard of again!
However, the developer sent his errors to Apple and received a call back explaining where he had gone wrong, what this had highlighted to them about their OS and also sent back his script with some amendments.
This article is a testimony of a company that employ user experience as a whole ethos in their company rather than just simply in their products.