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Quiz: are you good at customer experience work?
Here's a two-question quiz to find out if you're suited to do customer experience work. During a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York, I came across an unusual installation: as shown in the photo below, a park bench, painted black, sits mostly empty except for three white plaster figures.
 As we entered the room with this installation, our tour guide reminded all of us not to sit down on the bench. "You'd be surprised," she said, "at how often people sit down there and an alarm goes off. Happens all the time."
Walking closer to the bench, I noticed the sign shown in the photo below. It reads: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.
I immediately told the tour guide why museum visitors continually sat down on the bench.
Now you're ready for the quiz!
Question 1: Why do so many people sit down on the bench? (Are they careless, malicious, or just too tired to stand? Or is something else at work?)
Question 2: What would be one way to address the problem?
When you have your answers, check my answers (what I said to the tour guide). Feel free to post your answer in the comments below - perhaps you have an even better solution.
This is the sort of quiz I would give anyone applying for a job in customer experience. Consider what it requires to create a solution:
• empathy: being able to see the scene from the visitor's perspective is the most important skill in the process. And it's hard to do - even for the staff of a world-class museum!
• analysis: noting the many different things at work in the scene: context (museum), object (figures and bench), instructions (sign), and subtle cues of position (sign's placement almost directly in front of the first figure people see).
• synthesis: putting it all together to figure out why the problem is occurring, and what the solution might be, is a rare skill.
Note that the quiz doesn't ask you to "list the popular methods you know how to use," or to "define how 'interaction design' is different from 'user experience.'" The skills of empathy, analysis, and synthesis are essential in solving customer experience problems. That's what I look for when hiring someone new.
It's also what you should look for when asking someone to work on your customer experience. (Contact us at Creative Good if we can help.)
For more reading
My post on 3 truths of info visualization (and some whiskey, too) - best practices of infoviz taught by one very good example.
If you missed it last week, Uncle Mark 2012 is now available. (Here's the PDF download link.) And maybe the first major press review of Uncle Mark, Forbes.com - Uncle Mark's annual gift guide is up, and it's good.
Nice mention of the Councils in an article in Inc. - getting the most out of your advisors - by Council member Jules Pieri, founder of Daily Grommet.
Maybe the best essay I've read in 2011: I don't understand what anyone is saying any more, about the tiring verbal tics used by the digerati to obscure their message (or the lack thereof). The use of "sort of" and "kind of" as meaningless filler, in particular, is a pet peeve - I wrote about it in 2009.
On the subject of vocal tics, by the way, Science magazine ran a piece called 'Vocal Fry' Creeping Into U.S. Speech, describing the increasingly popular speech pattern of dropping one's voice and scraping the bottom register. (Found via this Metafilter post.)
And from my Twitter
feed...
• Here's a note of caution about storing all of one's data in "the cloud."
• Trying to compete against the chains, indie coffee shops in Singapore band together to offer a "disloyalty card."
• Woke up thinking about auto-tune and cartoons, and how neither one is automotive. #deepthoughts
• Know anyone who might be a good moderator for our presidents of international ecommerce council?
...more of this sort of stuff here.
Job Opening: Consumer Reports (Mobile Applications Developer)
Company: Consumer Reports
Title: Mobile Applications Developer
Location: Yonkers, NY
Come work for the largest consumer products rating company of it's kind and help us develop mobile applications based on our amazing content! This position will analyze business requirements, provide development estimates and feedback, and determine implementation/execution approaches.
See details and apply.
Job Opening: Consumer Reports (SEO Marketing Manager)
Company: Consumer Reports
Title: SEO Marketing Manager
Location: Yonkers, NY
Come market Consumer Reports, the largest testing organization of its kind! This role will work across the company to identify, lead, develop and implement initiatives that meet the marketing goals of increased SEO rankings, traffic and subscriptions. Excellent benefits, work environment and company!
See details and apply.
Job Opening: Consumer Reports (Lead Software Engineer)
Company: Consumer Reports
Title: Lead Software Engineer
Location: Yonkers, NY
Consumer Reports is hiring! We need a Lead Software Engineer to lead the design, implementation and evolution of all components of the digital publishing platform supporting our online web products. Amazing company and benefits.
See all details and apply.
Job Opening: Consumer Reports (Senior eCommerce Engineer)
Company: Consumer Reports
Title: Senior eCommerce Engineer
Location: Yonkers, NY
Consumer Reports is hiring! Develop, implement and test Java modules and components of our eCommerce platform and analyze and develop complex logical database designs, logical data models and relational data definitions! Great company, great benefits.
See details and apply.
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Fun Stuff
Great visual illusion. Look at the dot.
Gotta name this comic strip of the week.
24 hours of the (Star Trek) Enterprise engine noise: for when nothing else is on.
For yet more Fun Stuff, don't miss my list of good Web games...
...and my list of good iPhone games...
...and my list of good iPad games.
Until next time,
- Mark Hurst
mark@goodexperience.com
Follow me on Twitter here.
Author, Good Experience
Host, Gel conference
Founder and president, Creative Good
Creator, Good Todo (and the Good Todo iPhone and iPad apps and Android app)
Author, Uncle Mark Gift Guide & Almanac
Instigator, Sittingo.com
Author, Bit Literacy
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