Community: Interviews

Thanks to the leadership of Scott Cook—formerly Intuit’s CEO and now Chairman of the Board—Intuit has always been a customer-centric company that really listens to its customers. In the company’s early startup days, Cook instituted Intuit’s Follow Me Home program, in which Intuit employees hung out at stores that sold packaged software until a customer bought Quicken, Intuit’s personal-finance software and, then, the company’s flagship product. An Intuit employee asked the customer if he could follow him home to see whether he had any difficulty installing the application. He would then observe the customer as he unpacked and installed the software and note any causes of frustration or confusion.

Through this program, Intuit learned what aspects of their software needed improvement. Cook’s goal was to make it easier for people to balance their checking account using Quicken than with a paper checkbook. By observing their customers, Intuit learned that people were using Quicken to handle bookkeeping for their small businesses, so they created QuickBooks for that market. From the very beginning, Intuit has done user research both to understand how customers are using their current products and to identify customers’ unmet needs, allowing them to introduce new products to the market to satisfy them. Read More

Atom Bank is a new, online-only bank that is remarkable for its clear emphasis on user experience. Nick Wiles, Head of User Experience at Atom Bank, who is shown in Figure 1, has brought some truly innovative design thinking to the typically very staid banking sector and is also notable for having some of the most amazing facial hair in User Experience! Read More

As a result of the rapid evolution of technological products and services, a growing population of older adults is now facing the challenges of learning new, advanced technologies. How should product organizations tackle this challenge? How can designers and developers reduce or eliminate age-related design issues?

To get answers to these questions and more, I turned to Jeff Johnson and Kate Finn, coauthors of the book Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population: Towards Universal Design. We discussed inclusivity and guidelines for designing for older adults. In this interview, Jeff and Kate offer their knowledge and expertise on how we can successfully design digital products and services that provide congenial user interactions for everyone, including the aging population. Read More