Here’s another new blog worth following.
Make sure you read the article entitled Utilize Patterns to Catalyze Innovation. Good stuff.
One very good point in the article:
I thrive on customer feedback, but I often forget that you cannot rely upon the customer to innovate. Let me say that again – you cannot rely upon your customer to innovate for you. Countless studies have shown that customers simply do not make the leap required to be truly innovative.
One objectives of speaking to customers (and partners, and lost accounts and in fact any other outside source) is to not simply understand what they want, or what they need, but to really understand their objectives and goals, their alternatives, their constraints, their dependencies and their dependents.
It’s not just about defining and understanding personas, but about the connections between personas and the motivations that drive them. This is not easy stuff to collect and is certainly not something that can be “time-sliced” into one’s job.
But, a small investment in this insight up front, will pay HUGE dividends downstream, both in optimizing internal efforts, but also in being able to create products that map well to market needs.
Saeed