Customer-Focused Community Source: Concepts and Processes

Mark Notess, Development ManagerUITS/Digital Library Program, Indiana University

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Customer Focus

What is it?Why do it?How can we do it?

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WHAT IS CUSTOMER FOCUS?The answer would seem obvious, but…

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What is Customer Focus?

1. We have met the customers and they are not us.

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Next Bench

Imagine a copyrighted image of Pogo sitting here, saying, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

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Who are our customers?

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CIO

IT Staff Support

Instructional Design/Consulting

Faculty CFaculty BFaculty AStudent CStudent BStudent A

Etc…

LibrariansOther Staff

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How Do We Differ?Technologists & Early Adopters Normal People• Identity derived in part from

skill with technology• Enjoy technology for its own

sake• Enjoy getting technology to

perform•Willing to scale steep learning

curves• Often promote technology and

help others learn to use it

• Identity sometimes derived in part from lack of skill with technology•Willing to adopt innovations

with demonstrated, compelling advantages if initial & ongoing time investments are low enough• Focus is on results rather than

tools

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What is Customer Focus?1. We have met the customers and they are not us.

2. We are committed to customer success.

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Role Success (possible scenario) ImplicationsCIO Cost, security, innovation,

enabling, fame & no misfortuneLow TCO, security, provost/dean/head satisfaction, innovation

IT Staff Few complaints, interesting work Manageability, customizability, innovationInstructional Consulting

Ability to improve instruction across a range of scenarios, happy faculty clients

Flexibility, customizability, ease of use

Faculty Tenure, good teaching evaluations, few student complaints, good time management

Ease of use, low learning curve, pedagogic fit, student satisfaction, reliability, efficiency

Students Course completion, good grades, good time management

Ease of use, low learning curve, broad adoption, efficiency, reliability

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What is Customer Focus?

1. We have met the customers and they are not us.2. We are committed to customer success.

3. We plan, design, and deliver activity enablers rather than just technology.

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Two Worlds

Systems have a way to “think” about themselves—data structures, algorithms, application programming interfaces

Users and organizations have ways of accomplishing work, whether tacit or explicit, whether documented or informal—tasks, roles, attitudes, knowledge, habits, etc.

outcomeobject

community

subject

division of labor

rules

tool Structure of human activity

Structure of computer activity

Enabling Activity

The way computers need to think about themselves is very different from how people need to think about their work.

JSR 168OKIIMS

How do I …?What just happened?≠

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About Sakai, c. 2004The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the uPortal consortium are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools. This will yield three big wins for sustainable economics and innovation in higher education:

* A framework that builds on the recently ratified JSR 168 portlet standard and the OKI open service interface definitions to create a services-based, enterprise portal for tool delivery * A re-factored set of educational software tools that blends the best of features from the participants’ disparate software (e.g., course management systems, assessment tools, workflow, etc.) * A synchronization of the institutional clocks of these schools in developing, adopting and using a common set of open source software.

(thanks to the Internet Archive Web Wayback Machine)

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About Sakai TodayThe Sakai CLE is a free and open source Courseware Management System. It features a set of software tools designed to help instructors, researchers and students collaborate online in support of their work--whether it be course instruction, research or general project collaboration.For coursework, Sakai provides features to supplement and enhance teaching and learning. For collaboration, Sakai has tools to help organize communication and collaborative work on campus and around the world. Using a web browser, users choose from Sakai's tools to create a site that meets their needs. To use Sakai, no knowledge of HTML is necessary.But the product vision reaches beyond teaching and learning applications. Many Sakai deployments include as many or more project and research collaboration sites. In addition, the Open Source Portfolio e-Portfolio system is a core part of the Sakai software. Finally, the Sakaibrary project links library resources to Sakai. You can try Sakai for yourself by downloading and installing the demonstration or by visiting one the sites of our Commercial Affiliates, several of which have test drives of Sakai where you can simply create your own account. No installation necessary.

(from sakaiproject.org, 3 July 2009)

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What is Customer Focus?

1. We have met the customers and they are not us.2. We are committed to customer success.3. We plan, design, and deliver activity enablers rather than just technology.

4. Our understanding is open to constant revision.• We recognize and seek out requirements variability across time as well

as across types of users and uses• We recognize the difference between user needs and their many

proxies, and work towards high-quality proxying• We recognize the richness of contextual details and their impact

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Proxying Phenomenon

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What the customer asked for

How we understood what the customer asked for

What the customer really needed

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Institutional requirements

committee

Proxying Phenomenon

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?DeveloperCustomer needs

Jira ticket Institutional Sakai rep

PersonaUse Case Focus group

rankings

Competing or similar product

My memoriesSurvey results

PRO

XIES

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A Fictional Proxying ExamplePerson Issue Expression

Student Frustrated over how much clicking around is required to do work (find/read article and then post in appropriate forum topic).

In course evaluation: Sakai was cumbersome and took too much time.

Prof Annoyed at student complaint. Tells instructional consulting Sakai needs to be easier to use and that they should train the students.

Instr. Consulting

Don’t have time to train everyone. Sakai needs better help system.

Tries stirring up interest in an agent-based, natural language user assistance system at conference and via email.

Sakai Developers

People want us to build this big, complicated thing, but they don’t have the resources to write code.

Hook up people with common interest in help systems to see what emerges.

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Tacitness of Work Knowledge

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What people know about what they know and do

What people don’t know about what they know and do

How well does our requirements process work under water?

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Self-Report Reliability

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Elliot, R., & Jankel-Elliot, N. (2003). Using ethnography in strategic consumer research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal , 6 (4) 215-223.

Designer

ask those who know users

ask users what they like or want

ask users what they do

ask users what they did

watch users work & discuss

make it up—we’re smart!

read pubs

Discovering User Needs

study real artifacts & data

I am the

user!

ask early adopters

competitiveanalysis

BbMoodle users

Designer

ask users what they did

watch users work & discuss

Contextual Inquiry

study real artifacts & data

users

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What is Customer Focus?

1. We have met the customers and they are not us.2. We are committed to customer success.3. We plan, design, and deliver activity enablers rather than just technology.4. Our understanding is open to constant revision.

5. We own the full customer experience and constantly improve it.• “Dive for the ball” mentality – potentially harder in a non-hierarchical,

somewhat volunteer organization like Sakai community• Full experience: tryout, evaluation, adoption, planning, implementation,

support, maintenance, …• Product vision: a designer’s job. Don’t ask customers to be designers.

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WHY BE CUSTOMER FOCUSED?Is it really necessary?

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Customer Focus is Hard• Customer focus requires bridging technology and human activity• As technologists, our expertise, focus, and often our interest is in the

technology itself• “Work practice”—where real requirements live—is a hard place to visit• Technology organizations always risk becoming technology focused• Our training as technologists seldom addresses how to uncover hidden

customer needs

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But It Beats the Alternatives

• Technology focused• Internally focused• Unfocused• Customer driven

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Risks to Sakai

• We could lose the critical mass needed for sustainability

• We could waste resources doing things that don’t matter, that people don’t use

And, most important to me,• When usage is required, we force people

to experience unpleasantness

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HOW CAN WE BE/STAY CUSTOMER FOCUSED?

A few suggestions …

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Five Suggestions1. Ground requirements in real data via contextual

inquiry and high-fidelity proxying2. Privilege data from those less like us: dissenting

voices, students and faculty from non-technical disciplines, laggards

3. Invite ethnographic, qualitative, or design research classes at your institutions to do projects that enrich our customer understanding

4. Supplement personas with “coursonas” or other activity-based representations

5. Figure out how new members become enculturated in Sakai and make sure a shared understanding of customer work practice is part of the experience

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Coursona Example2a. The Technology Semi-Distance Groupshop

• Focus on learning and applying a technology-related process in group projects

• Intensive technical, procedural work with a parallel focus on how to work in (possibly distributed) teams

• Course content is technical, and some students are remote making it convenient and necessary to use technology for course management (slide sharing; podcasting; online group sessions, discussions, and filespaces)

• Examples: Instructional technology design course

(For more examples from last year’s talk, google “notess coursona sakai”)

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Process Alone Won’t Do It

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Process

Predispositions People

Communication

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Discussion

• Other elements of customer focus?• Is customer focus important for Sakai?• How are we doing? How could we

improve?

July 2009