Subject to Change.

As a qualitative researcher interested in User Experience I found Adaptive Path's book, Subject to Change accessible and full of useful examples for future reference. While the book seemed to gloss over the 'how to' when it came to methods it did provide some powerful ways to challenge your thinking.

The chapter 'new ways of understanding people' is not particularly new for a research practitioner. For many years researchers have understood the importance of investigating people in context, finding ways to uncover deeper motivations or drivers (to assist with communications development as well as NPD) and the role of culture - when it comes to understanding meaning and how people interact, behave and adopt new things. Nonetheless it's helpful to be reminded that models where we tend to see people as rational beings performing tasks and goals lacks richness. I like the way the authors mention the need to accept "our inherent messiness" p47 and find ways to incorporate emotion, culture and context when writing an experience strategy: so it's less about tasks, goals and preferences and more about behaviours, motivations and meaning.

Finding ways for research to live in an organisation is where this book really starts to get interesting. Moving away from door stopping reports towards more inspiring ways of enabling research insights to "inspire and indicate a clear direction" p65 is serious food for thought for any researcher who has 'grown up' on PowerPoint. They talk about research outcomes being both actionable and durable. To do so requires getting research insights out of the one department and throughout the whole organisation. It's ultimately a far more iterative process where the organisation adopts a holistic and empathetic view of its customers (or users) - continually learning and adapting as a whole.

To assist this process they talk about translating research insights into Personas using actual quotes from participants to help bring to life their motivations and behaviours. p72. Making prototypes is also suggested as a means of getting people engaged. This is where I'd really like further guidance - how exactly might we do this?

In chapter 4 'stop designing products' the authors introduced some helpful questions and disciplines when it comes to defining and delivering a customer experience. The key questions on p78 will go a long way to helping an organisation deliver an ideal customer experience:
- "What do people want to accomplish? How does this activity fit into their lives? How can I deliver on those desires? ... and in doing so shifts ones focus from standalone products and allows you to start thinking of products simply as elements of a much larger system".

The iPod is used as an example to illustrate an experience strategy in action "all your music, any time, anywhere" (overtime 'music' evolved to 'media'). p79. The authors then go on to explain how the iPod system can be broken down into three segments: Acquire (iTunes Music Store), Manage (iTunes) and Play (iPod) and how they "allow functionality to concentrate where it's most appropriate" p81 e.g. Manage on your PC, where you have a keyboard, mouse and large screen.

Given I have never actually written a book review before, and was planning to simply jot down a few key thoughts for personal reference - I will leave it here.

Another wonderful review of Subject to Change can be found here: Lots of great links and quotes
http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/book-review-subject-to-change/