If there’s anything that Social Media has proven, it’s that people want to participate. Maybe not in everything, and maybe not all the time. But if we care about something enough, we typically want to get involved… particularly if you make it easy for us to do so.
In this brilliant TED Talk by IDEO founder, Tim Brown urges designers to give the end user a chance to participate in the creation of something new.
In Dan Pink’s highly anticipated upcoming book To Sell Is Human, he revisits the legendary story of how Jeff Bezos (Amazon) keeps an empty chair at all board meetings; a chair to remind his team of the consumers voice.
Scott Cook (Intuit) used to have his designers literally follow people home after they bought copies of Intuit or Turbo Tax so they could watch the whole unpacking and installation process.
These guys get it. How are you engaging your customer in the iterative growth and design of your business/project. Do you even know who your customer is?
