Product Description

The first practical guide to linking business strategy with the art and science of user experience and online design

It has becoming increasingly clear that the big winners in the E-business arena are those that practice customer-centric design. While there are a multitude of good books on the art and science of user interface and website design, until Built For Use, there were none that focused on user experience from the corporate strategist's and marketing manager's perspectives. Drawing upon her work as a user-experience strategist for numerous Fortune 1,000 firms, Karen Donoghue explores the dynamics of business strategy and user experience in a concise, jargon-free manner for nontechnical managers. With the help of fascinating and instructive before-and-after case studies, she helps managers become fluent in the language of user-experience; identifies user-experience and designstrategy best practices; explains how to determine what customers want; and much more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1172263 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From the Back Cover
The big winners in the Ebusiness arena are those who practice customer-centric design. More than simply a matter of jazzy graphics, customer-centric design is about earning the trust and loyalty of a dedicated customer base by making the quality of the user experience the centerpiece of the total online strategy. As illustrated by the examples of the many big winners covered in this book, for those who practice customer-centric design, the online user experience is a major part of a company's value. And, as shown by the experiences of the many dot-com also-rans cited, anything less than a total commitment to the user experience is, at best, an expensive, humbling exercise in futility.

While there are a multitude of books on the art and science of user interface and Web site design, until now none has focused on the online user experience from the corporate strategist's and marketing manager's perspectives. The first guide to linking business strategy with the art and science of online user experience, Built for Use offers a total approach to the planning and development of ebusiness experiences that build long-term customer loyalty and drive long-term profits.

Drawing upon her experiences as a user-experience strategist for numerous Fortune 1000 firms, Karen Donoghue explores key business strategy and user-experience issues in a concise, jargon-free style for nontechnical managers. With the help of fascinating and instructive before-and-after case studies from State Street Corporation, Fidelity Investments, Trellix Corporation, and other major players in the ecommerce arena, Donoghue makes a strong business case for customer-centric design practices. She describes user experience and design-strategy best practices for everything from putting together and managing an interdisciplinary team dedicated to delivering superior user experience to measuring the design strategy success and ensuring continued customer satisfaction.

Built for Use is required reading for marketing professionals at companies actively pursuing an online presence, as well as for the development teams with which they collaborate.

Praise for Built for Use:

"The best interface is the absence of one. I am not a user; I am me. It is about time that designers of digital experiences thought hard about why a dog has so much more interface intelligence than any computer. It is about time that senior executives realized that quality of an experience is their business. Said differently, the icing is the cake."­­Nicholas Negroponte, Founding Director, MIT Media Laboratory, Author of Being Digital

"Read this book if you want to learn why your company may be electronically rude to its customers today and how to avoid it in the future. Karen Donoghue is a thought leader and expert who helps companies evaluate and design user experiences that welcome and engage their customers. Her deep experience, knowledge, and insights are captured in this insightful book. It should be a must-read for every executive, manager, and designer who cares about the relationships their company is developing with its online customers."­­Hans Peter Brondmo, Digital Impact Fellow, Author of The Engaged Customer

"Design sense, and sensibility, are all-too-rare rare qualities. Karen Donoghue has them innately and in abundance. Her user interface designs have a hallmark simplicity and elegance that belie a lifetime of insight and observation of the real ways that real people relate to complex information technologies. In Built for Use she shifts her incisive design eye from the intimate area of person/machine interfaces to the vast field of business interactions. The result is a lucid look at business interfaces with real products, real services, and real customers."­­Michael Hawley, Director of Special Projects, MIT

About the Author

Karen Donoghue is founder and principal of HumanLogic, a strategic user-experience firm servicing Fortune 1000 clients, including Fidelity Investments, State Street Global Advisors, Reuters, Ltd., FleetBoston Financial, EMC Corporation, and Trellix Corporation. HumanLogic also serves many dot-com start-ups such as Raging Bull and MidnightTrader. She has been involved in the planning and development of innovative user experiences since 1987. Ms. Donoghue is a graduate of the prestigious MIT Media Lab and sits on the board of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge. She holds six U.S. patents on user interface technologies.

For the latest information, resources, and insights about user-experience strategy for managers, visit the Built for Use Web site at http://www.builtforuse.com

Customer Reviews

Four Plus or 5 Minus
Fabulous message and important concepts. My main complaint is that the message was 'restricted' in how it is applied. The issues raised and the corresponding solutions are applicable to all aspects of designing human interactions with business...and not just considering customers (who are often engaged in roles for which the term 'user' is inappropriate... a term I abhor because of its lack of 'universality').

To follow the model given in the introduction, by considering the strategic implications of the customer and the business anyone could easily come up with solutions that fly in the face of the abilities and values of the employees as human beings. All stakeholder factors have to be put in balance with those of the business.

In addition, the concepts apply outside the typical business model and/or products. A good example is home design (not decor) which typically doesn't consider many 'functions' that occur within its walls other than sleeping, washing, bathing, and eating. Many of the concepts presented here can/should be applied in other problem/solution settings. I contend that every business project that involves some human interaction is subject to these principles.

The models/recommendations within this book, with a few tweaks, can and should be applied to designing human interaction in many yet-untapped areas/markets (leaving tremendous business potential lying all around). The recommendations given specifically as to better 'online' design can and should be applied to all points of interaction a business has with all stakeholders.

I highly recommend this book with the caveat that you take its potential application beyond the dimensions within which it is presented. The word 'customer' can often be replaced with 'stakeholder'. When encountering the term 'user experience' drop the term 'user' and focus on the 'experience' (since most individuals measure the value of their experience with a business based on all points of interaction, not just online).

Buy this book and give it to management
This is the book to read and pass along to Marketing, R&D, Sales, etc. It will help you know the words to say to justify spending time and money on user experience research and design. I read it before starting a new job in Human Factors and passed it up the management chain to widen the perception of what it's all about. It gives you and "them" a common language.

Impractical at Best
I bought this book because my job requires that I understand web usability and the business of usability, which are topics that I am generally interested in and passionate about. However, the moment I began reading it I realized this was not the book for me. I did not like it. It was impractical at best and totally useless at worst. I can't believe the author has any real-world experience. The book is filled with so much common sense that's trying to being passed as arcane and is splashed with boring corporate mumbo jumbo. I'm sure you would not be hard-pressed to find words like "Synergy" and "Paradigm Shift" in half the book.

With that aside, I'm very appreciative of the fact that it was written in 2002 (as of this writing, that's 5 years ago) and it's my fault for not noticing that before I bought it. Further, perhaps I was not its intended audience, and instead it was geared more toward MBA and marketing types who have absolutely zero online experience. If that is the case, then grouping this book with Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition) was totally inappropriate - a book which is very practical and accessible. Perhaps.