Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers

I once proposed to a financial services client that I present the results of a recent user experience evaluation to the broader marketing team and the Web teams of other divisions whose sites were tackling similar UI challenges. “No one is going to show up to that meeting,” he replied. “I can send them the report, but they won’t read it.” Not only did the product marketing team not care what was going on in usability, the sister site’s Web division didn’t care about issues that were directly relevant to the overall design and presentation of similar content on their site!

One problem companies have in getting these two competencies together may be the assumption that usability testing and marketing research are just too different. Take a look at Table 1, and you’ll see what I mean. They aren’t even close!

* To decode the marketing-researcher speak, see this helpful glossary. For an equally compelling list of UX terms, check out this glossary.

What I’ve actually done in outlining these differences is to encourage you to think about where you stand. Didn’t the UX professionals out there read some of the items in that right-hand column and say to yourselves: “I can be right-brained, dammit. I care about those other things, too!” (Well, maybe excepting all the marketing research geek-speak.)

Although their journeys may be different, UX professionals and marketing researchers both want the same thing in the end: to create a world in which the people your company cares about—whether you call them users, prospects, customers, shareholders, or whatever—have satisfying experiences that result in their really, really liking you—the you being your brand.

Besides your shared goals, you and your marketing research counterparts are actually using some similar tools and techniques. So, in the spirit of kinship, let’s look at the common ground in Table 2.

This quotation from someone who knows and cares deeply about improving user experiences shows you just how close we really are in our thinking about user experiences:

“Usability is about human behavior. It recognizes that humans are lazy, get emotional, are not interested in putting a lot of effort into, say, getting a credit card, and generally prefer things that are easy to do versus those that are hard to do.”—David McQuillen, in “Taking Usability Offline,” Darwin Magazine, June 2003

Any marketing researcher worth his or her salt would have told you the same thing, replacing the word usability with purchase behavior.

As these two specialties evolve, I have a suggestion for getting started on the process of breaking down the silos: If you aren’t yet acquainted with your marketing research staff—and visa versa—please extend a hand—or at least write a brief IM or email. Find out what those other guys are up to. Propose working on something together.

And, you have to let your senior managers know you’re both really in the same game and offer some shared experiences. Here are some additional suggestions for moving the process forward:

• It’s the competition, stupid! In making the case to senior managers for a cross-disciplinary approach to customer experience, mentioning that competitors may have an advantage in this area can be a real motivator. Hey boss, don’t you want to be in that disciplined-approach minority?
• Sharing is caring. Make all research available between departments via the company intranet, and publish monthly or quarterly updates on completed projects for both departments.
• Provide training. Training marketing researchers and UX professionals on the basic techniques and nomenclature of each other’s disciplines can foster further learning and understanding.
• Make customer experience a core competency. If your organization feels it is ready, create a Chief Experience Officer position with responsibility for staff and information relating to all touch points of the customer experience—both online and offline. This could include everything from the look and feel of your wireless interfaces, to packaging design, to the training of the truck drivers who deliver your products.

If senior managers are slow to take a more disciplined approach to using information that can help enhance customer experiences, it will be up to the combined efforts of those with the greatest insight—marketing researchers and UX practitioners—to make the first move. The continued success of your business may depend on it.