Usability at the Heart of Corporate Strategy
Janne Sorsa1
1
Helsinki University of Technology
Janne.Sorsa@tkk.fi
Abstract. Usability engineering and user centered design are typically seen
only as a product development activities. What if part of the strategy reads:
"Everything we do is user centered." Then all products and services the
company offers, either internally or externally, will be designed with the user
centered design methods and be subject to usability testing. The easiest part
in implementing usability strategy is to integrate usability in products and
information systems, which is the traditional field for usability engineering.
Services provided to external or internal customers are more challenging. In
this paper, a service is understood as a transfer of knowledge and skills and
the customer participates in the value creation. A usable service needs to be
provided at the right moment, in correct format and contain all relevant
items. In other words, the service provider needs to know the process of the
customer in some detail. The methodology of user centered design provides
useful methods to reveal the underlying processes and needs. In this paper,
the user centered design will be presented as a central tool in service concept
development, staging service users, the customers, in the spotlight.
Keywords: Strategic Usability, Usability Engineering, User Centered
Design, Service Science, Marketing Management
1 Introduction
Usability engineering is typically seen as a product development activity and in
the most limited viewpoint understood only as usability testing function. Even
though product development is the key area where usability brings profits,
usability engineering and user centered design are not well adopted in the industry
(Venturi & Troost, 2004). They also conclude that management support is needed
to fully exploit the promises of user centered design.
Rosenbaum et al (2000) define strategic usability as an approach to incorporate
usability engineering in organizational culture and processes. According to their
survey, lack of resources, organizational resistance and knowledge about usability
are the most common reasons, why usability has not gained widespread
acceptance in organizations. One conclusion of the survey was that usability
professionals need to be involved early in the product planning and design
process, co-operating with marketing, engineering and management. Even though
the aim of strategic usability is to influence corporate level decisions, the
viewpoint still relies heavily on product development.
Rather than restricting strategic usability only to product development process,
a more general viewpoint needs to be adopted. Even if usability engineering in its
current form is already a multidisciplinary science, strategic usability should
include viewpoints from management and marketing. Instead of learning
management or marketing language, the objective should be how usability
engineering can improve marketing and management.
This paper addresses the question how usability engineering can be integrated
into management and marketing and what benefits it brings. Several other
disciplines need to be integrated to usability engineering in order to reach strategic
impact. Siegel & Dray (2001) link marketing and user centered design in product
development process. However, the trends in network economy (Achrol & Kotler,
1999) and shift from goods to services marketing (Vargo & Lusch, 2004)
necessitate the change in traditional marketing. Spohrer et al (2007) propose a
new interdisciplinary approach, called Service Science, Management and
Engineering (SSME), which aims to provide theoretical and practical framework
for service innovation. Services being integral part of marketing, the following
discussion links user centered design also to science of services.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides background on
the development of economies and marketing. These developments show how
services, whether tangible or intangible, has become a key to successful business.
The importance of services in the developed economies leads to science of
service, which is introduced in Section 3 with a framework for defining a service
concept. Section 4 discusses the possibilities how usability engineering can be
helpful for service concept development. In Section 5, two examples of services
are described, which show the usefulness of service concept framework and
usability engineering as a tool. The organizational aspects will be explored in
Section 6 by contrasting usability engineering in marketing and product
development. Finally, Section 7 concludes the paper with discussion about the
usefulness of usability strategy.
2 Trends in Global Economy and Marketing
2.1 Network Economy
The hierarchical organizations of 20th century are currently reshaping into
networks where the basic economic resource is knowledge rather than materials,
labor or capital (Achrol & Kotler, 1999). The form of the network has
implications to both product development and marketing of a company. Achrol
and Kotler (1999) define four types of emerging networks: internal, vertical,
intermarket and opportunity networks. Vertical network will be presented in detail
in the following as an example. The structure of a vertical network is shown in
Fig. 1 below.
Product
Technology
1
Component
Component
Manufacturers
Component
Manufacturers
Component
Manufacturers
Manufacturers
Product
Technology
2
Manufacturer
(Assembly)
MARKETING
STAFF FUNCTIONS
Research and
Development
Finance
Product
Management
MARKETING
Distributor
Customer
Customer
Fig. 1. Transactions in the vertical network (adapted from Achrol & Kotler, 1999).
In a vertical network so called focal organization is providing products and
services to customers. The focal organization is typically an old manufacturing
company, which has transformed into a network of alliances. The focal
organization also holds well-known brands and is responsible for product
portfolio management. The focal organization is an integrator between companies
focusing on product technologies, component manufacturing and component
assembly.
The specialized companies can focus their efforts on product and production
oriented activities, such as R&D and production technology. Thus, these
companies do not need to be as market-oriented as the focal company. The
marketing of the focal organization becomes essentially a network coordinator,
which organizes material and information flow, coordinate activities and
decisions, and creates a social culture in the network. The research and
development function in the focal organization focuses on key technologies
related to the end product.
The structure of vertical networks may be seen in traditional manufacturing
companies internally. Even though the organization is not necessarily arranged as
a network, it follows similar structure. For example, R&D can be arranged in
several departments, each responsible for certain product technology. The
production of core technologies could still be done by the company itself but most
of ordinary components are sourced from other companies.
2.2 Changing Logic in Marketing
On the other hand, the basic logic in marketing is changing from exchange of
goods to exchange of service provision. The fundamental unit of economic
exchange is skills and knowledge, while goods and products are only a
distribution mechanism for services. In goods-centered logic, customer is only the
recipient of goods and marketing actions are directed upon customers. On the
contrary, in service-centered logic the customer is coproducer of the service and
marketing is an interaction process with customer. (Vargo & Lusch, 2004)
Service-centered view fits well in the network economy. In the vertical network
shown above, each company in the network offers services, rather than goods. The
focal company provides services to end customers who coproduce the value when
using the service. Thus, the marketing of the focal organization need deep
understanding of customers processes. The focal company consumes the services
of its suppliers in a similar manner.
3 Science of Service
Service is nowadays the biggest economic sector in developed economies. For
example, 80% of the U.S. gross domestic product was accounted to service sector
(U.S. National Academy of Engineering, 2003). Even though pure service
industry is dominant in generating economic activity and the marketing paradigm
is shifting towards service-centered view, there has not been scientific approach
for studying or educating services. U.S. National Academy of Engineering (2003)
recommends that universities should begin interdisciplinary scientific program to
support service functions and businesses.
Vargo & Lusch (2004) define service as the application of specialized
competences for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself. Service system
includes service provider and service consumer, working together and cocreating
the value of service in use (Tien & Berg, 2003). These definitions are a starting
point for Spohrer et al (2007) who define framework for service systems. They
propose three areas to be included in the general theory of service systems:
understanding the origins of new service systems and services, how a service
system can be improved, and how service systems can be spread to other service
systems.
Instead of “service system”, Grönroos (1990) uses term “Service Production
System”. Both concepts include customer as integral actor in service
consumption, thus they can be used interchangeably quite freely. It is worth to
spend some time to study the model of Grönroos (1990) as he develops a
framework for analyzing the service consumption process in quite detail. First he
adapts the service consumption process of Lehtinen (1986), which divides the
process into three phases:
Technology and
systems
Managers and
supervisors
Support functions
and persons
Line of Visibility
Totally invisible part
Support
Interaction
Systems and
operational
resources
Contact persons
Customer
1. Joining Phase
2. Intensive Consumption Phase
3. Detachment Phase
During the Joining Phase the customer contacts the service provider. The core
services for satisfying customer’s needs are consumed in Intensive Consumption
Phase. In Detachment Phase the customer leaves the Service Production System.
In all phases, facilitating and supporting services are consumed to keep the
process advancing. Facilitating services are a necessity to let customer reach the
core service. Supporting services just make the life of the customer easier. For
example, in a restaurant the dinner is the core service, performance of waiters a
facilitating service and live music a supporting service during Intensive
Consumption Phase.
The service-producing organization of the Service Production System of
Grönroos (1990) is shown in Fig. 2 below. The idea is to divide the organization
into interactive and support part. The former is in direct contact with the customer.
The latter is invisible to the customer but visible to the service provider
organization in interaction. The figure is missing some concepts that belong to the
whole system but are not necessary for the ongoing discussion. These concepts are
business mission and service concepts on the service provider side and
expectations on the customer side.
Physical
resources and
equipment
Fig. 2. The service-producing organization of the Service Production System (adapted
from Grönroos, 1990).
Grönroos (1990) defines a two-step method for analyzing the service
consumption process, which results in a Service Production/Consumption
Scheme. In the first step, all customer contacts to service provider are identified as
well as core, facilitating and supporting services during the process. The identified
services and contacts are naturally classified by the phase of the process they
belong to. In the second step, the resources required by each service are defined.
The resources are identified according to the model in Fig. 2. The model divides
resources first by the Line of Visibility into supportive and interactive resources,
which are further divided into system, personnel and physical resources. Finally,
customer is taken explicitly into resource identification by recognizing the
expected actions into account. After the service scheme has been created as
described above, it relatively straightforward to plan how the service will be
provided to the customer.
4 Usability Engineering and Services
According to the changes in the economic environment described above, the
customer has become an important part of the value creation chain. However, the
theoretical approaches do not propose any concrete means for defining services.
Methodology of usability engineering provides tools to study and design services
the customers really need.
In a vertical network, marketing of the focal organization is typically the
organizational entity, which is closest to the customer. Thus, it is natural that
marketing gathers knowledge about users. As Siegel & Dray (2001) point out,
marketing has a long history in conducting consumer research with similar
methods as in usability engineering. The difference in market research and user
research has been the scope. Market research targets to strategic product
management while user research targets to tactical product development.
Service design poses challenges to the marketing, which cannot necessarily be
answered by the traditional market research methods. This challenge is exactly
where usability engineering can help to find customer needs for services and
processes for cocreation. Even though the Service Production/Consumption
Scheme digs into the details of the service consumption process, it does not bring
up the process how a core service is recognized from customer behavior.
Usability engineering provides methods to reveal underlying processes of the
customer. However, a case-by-case consideration is needed to decide on correct
methodology. Sometimes common sense thinking from customer’s point of view
is enough, sometimes heavy research on customer’s behavior needs to be
conducted.
5 Service Examples
In the following, few service types are presented as en example how the usability
engineering can be utilized jointly with the Service Production/Consumption
Scheme. Vertical company network structure or traditional manufacturing
company is used as the service provider. Service consumer is not necessarily the
end user of the product. Such a company could provide a concrete product to end
users, maintenance of the product and expert services for customers influencing or
making the buying decision.
5.1 Product as a Service to End Users
Core service for a concrete product is naturally the use of product by the end user.
Depending on the complexity of the product, several core services as well as
facilitating and supporting services can be identified. This kind of service falls
naturally into product development process. By using Service Production/
Consumption Scheme to describe the intended use of the product in terms of
services, the development efforts can be prioritized according to the service types:
core services are most important, facilitating services are needed by the core
services in any case and support services are more or less nice-to-be features.
Customer satisfaction comes basically from the technical capability of the
product to fulfill its core service. However, the joining and detachment phases are
also important for customer satisfaction and can give competitive advantage. Easy
access to the core service saves the customer from frustration. In normal use the
product does not have a contact person but the customer has to adapt to the user
interface of the product.
In providing ease of use, the usability engineering has well established
methods, see for example Nielsen (1993). If the product, or service, concept is
completely new, user centered design methodology helps to develop the concept
according to users wishes and needs. Usability testing ensures that possible
usability problems are recognized early in the development cycle.
5.2 Expert Service
The expert service includes transfer of product specific knowledge to customers
who are non-experts in the field. The service could consist of training, technical
consultation on solving customer’s design issues or providing information. Thus,
the range of possible core services is wide. In addition to customer satisfaction,
the expert service is one way to promote company image and brand.
The difficulty in defining core services is the intangibility of the service. The
service is typically personal and need to be customized according to customer’s
request. On the other hand, the process where customer would need the expert
service is not known precisely by the service provider in practice. From service
provider’s viewpoint, the service requests come chaotically without any clear
signals beforehand.
Methodologies of user centered design come now into picture. Contextual
inquiry and ethnographic interview (Hackos & Redish, 1998) are effective
methods to gather information about the tasks of the users. With these methods,
the service provider is able to deduce the process of the customer in some detail.
The knowledge about customer’s process enables the service provider to
recognize the needed core services and the frequency of the need. In addition, the
core services can possibly be divided according to the level of expertise so that all
service requests do not need support from the top class experts. Some of the
customer needs could even be satisfied with a self-service system.
After the customer’s needs have been identified, the application of Service
Production/Consumption Scheme is relatively straightforward process. Attention
should be paid to an easy and fast startup of the service consumption process, i.e.
the joining phase. This requires efficient communication between customer’s
contact person and the support person beyond the Line of Visibility.
In some cases the customer is needed to cocreate the value with the service
provider. For example, the service provider needs all relevant data with respect to
the expert service, which may not be readily available. The contact person has to
have knowledge about the information that the supporting expert needs to
accomplish the service request. Then the contact person can ask the customer the
information in the first place when the service request is received.
6 Usability Engineering in Service-Oriented Organizations
Usability engineering and user centered design can be utilized when designing
services, whether they are tangible products or intangible knowledge transfer.
Only the concept of user varies. Also marketing needs usability experts in
addition to traditional field of usability engineering, product development. The
growing influence of marketing as a network coordinator forces it to take active
role when designing features of the end product, including usability. Another
opportunity is the design of traditional marketing services with user centered
design methodology.
Clearly there is the danger of creating overlapping functions if both marketing
and product development have their own usability specialists. Responsibilities of
both organizations have to be clear and distinct from each other. Users can be
classified to end users of the products and users of customer service. The latter
belong clearly to marketing but the former should be divided partly to product
development and marketing.
Marketing should collect knowledge about the end users. The traditional palette
of market research methods could be augmented by some methods from usability
engineering like contextual enquiry. However, the emphasis should be on the
behavior and social phenomenon in the targeted user group. This kind of
knowledge increases the understanding of users in their own environment, thus
increasing the possibility for new product or service innovations. As Siegel &
Dray (2001) state, marketing has traditionally been interested in strategic planning
of products. A thorough understanding of the user behavior helps in that effort.
Product development should also collect knowledge about the end users. All
methods of usability engineering are available to study users. Best product
concepts arise if marketing and product development together apply the
behavioral knowledge about the users to new concepts. After the product concepts
have been innovated, product development could continue by prototyping and
conducting usability tests. During the process, marketing has to stay active and
update its own knowledge about the users.
Users of marketing are typically paying customers, or at least those influencing
the buying decision. As discussed previously, the core services targeted to these
users can be identified with usability methods. After designing, planning and
organizing a service, the question arises whether the service is usable or not.
The situation is challenging especially in knowledge transfer services. The
usability of knowledge transfer service should be measured by assessing the
amount of knowledge transferred during the service consumption process. Some
of the usability testing methods can be applied such as observation and thinking
aloud (Nielsen, 1993). With repeated usability tests, the form of the service
develops usable and easy to understand. Thus, fast and efficient service process
itself does not guarantee customer satisfaction but in conjunction with usability
the service satisfies the customer. In the context of knowledge transferring service
usability means understanding.
7 Conclusion
Trend towards network economy and service-centered marketing logic confront
traditional assumptions how usability engineering is organized in companies. In
vertical networks, the role of marketing becomes essentially the network
coordinator. The new role increases responsibility in product management and
development. As marketing has been traditionally conducting market research,
including potential end users for products, the inclusion of usability engineering
approach in marketing is natural. Behavior of the end users is the key area where
marketing should concentrate on.
Service-centered view on marketing emphasizes the importance of well
designed services. Basic methods for user centered design can also be applied on
service concept development. By analyzing tasks and processes of the customer,
the core services needed by the customer are identified. After core services are
found, the service consumption process is planned using the approach of Grönroos
(1990). With usability tests, the usability of the service and customer satisfaction
can be guaranteed.
Usability engineering is still an integral part of product development even
though similar skills were recruited to marketing. The focus is on developing
product concepts with the user centered design techniques in cooperation with
marketing, simultaneously utilizing the knowledge about users’ behavioral
characteristics. The user studies conducted by product development can be used as
a feedback to marketing, and deepen their understanding of the user.
The aim of the discussion has been to lift the central focus of usability
engineering, the user, as a central focus of whole company. The fundamental
change of viewpoint is to include user centered design and usability engineering
in service concept development. As the companies are all the time forming
evermore complex networks offering services to each other, the service concept
development becomes dominant.
The approach described here would immediately increase demand for usability
specialists. Also, the number of user research projects would increase. The output
of the research is more detailed and thorough understanding of user behavior. If
the results are properly stored and disseminated throughout the company, it
evidently gives competitive advantage in marketing. In industries, where the user
behavior is rather stable, even one thorough research may give the company valid
and useful knowledge for a long time. Naturally, this is not necessarily true in
rapidly changing consumer markets such as mobile phone, although some basic
behavior should remain quite stable.
Of course, owners and top management of the companies ask, whether it is
worth the investment. Ten or hundred dollar return on one dollar investment for
usability engineering has been reported in software development (Donahue et al,
1999). In service development the return on investment could also be high.
Firstly, as the whole service consumption process is modeled from the customer
to the last support person, process reengineering (Hammer & Champy, 1993) may
reduce process costs. Secondly, Grönroos (1990) reports that if a customer is lost,
the cost of finding a new customer is six times the cost of marketing to the loyal
customer, and turning dissatisfied customer back costs 25 times the cost of loyal
customer. Thus, it is worthwhile to keep the customer happy. If usability approach
accounts for keeping customers loyal, it is definitely worth it.
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