TEI 042: Applying User Experience Creates Products with High Value

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode
042 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad
McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved
in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow
their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About Our
Guest: Larry Marine is a User Experience expert that has
helped many companies improve their products as well as design new
products. I met Larry Marine at a coffee shop - a great
place for innovation. I heard him discussing product design and
started talking with him about the innovation research I was doing
at the time. We later co-authored chapter 5 in the PDMA
Toolbook 3 titled “Integrating User Observations with Business
Objectives to Drive Product Design.” Larry redesigned the user
experience of ProFlowers– the website for selecting and ordering
flowers. The design was different than all the other online
florists at the time. The web developers actually didn’t implement
the design because it didn’t “look” like the competitors. The
ProFlowers leadership team had the developers implement the new
design. Their sales surged and ProFlowers.com has been one of the
top performing websites for conversions. The other example is a
medical device that performed blood screenings. Users were
complaining about its use and Larry was asked to redesign the user
interface. After investigating how the machine was used in a
laboratory, the actual problem was with the lack of integration
between five machines. It was a manual process to move from one
machine to the next, data had to be reentered, and blood samples
could be mixed up. The solution was a new screening control system
for the entire laboratory.