HUMAN-CENTERED PRODUCT PLANNING AND DESIGN:SALES AND SERVICE PHASE

1. SALES AND SERVICE PHASE

Initiation of the sales and service phase signals the accomplishment of several important objectives. The product or system will have been successfully tested, verified, demonstrated, and evaluated. In addition, the issues of viability, acceptability, and validity will have been framed, measurements planned, and initial measurements executed. These initial measurements, beyond the framing and planning, will have exerted a strong influence on the nature of the product or system.

Sales and Service Issues

In this phase, one is in a position to gain closure on viability, acceptability, and validity. One can make the measurements necessary to determining whether the product or system really solves the problem that motivated the design effort, solves it in an acceptable way, and provides benefits that are greater than the costs of acquisition and use. This is accomplished using the measurement plan that was framed in the naturalist phase, developed in the marketing phase, and refined in the engi- neering phase.

These measurements should be performed even if the product or system is presold—for example, when a design effort is the consequence of a winning proposal. In this case, even though the purchase is assured, one should pursue closure on viability, acceptability, and validity in order to gain future projects.

There are several other activities in this phase beyond measurement. One should ensure that the implementation conditions for the product or system are consistent with the assumed conditions upon which the design is based. This is also the point at which the later steps of stakeholder acceptance plans are executed, typically with a broader set of people than those who participated in the early steps of the plan. This phase also often involves technology-transition considerations in general.

The sales and service phase is also where problems are identified and remedied. To the greatest extent possible, designers should work with stakeholders to understand the nature of problems and alternative solutions. Some problems may provide new opportunities rather than indicating shortcom- ings of the current product or system. It is important to recognize when problems go beyond the scope of the original design effort. The emphasis then becomes one of identifying mechanisms for defining and initiating new design efforts to address these problems.

The sales and service phase also provides an excellent means for maintaining relationships. One can identify changes among stakeholders that occur because of promotions, retirements, resignations, and reorganizations. Further, one can lay the groundwork for, and make initial progress on, the naturalist phase, and perhaps the marketing phase, for the next project, product, or system.

Methods and Tools for Measurement

How does one make the final assessments of viability, acceptability, and validity? Further, how does one recognize new opportunities? Unstructured direct observation can provide important information. However, more formal methods are likely to yield more definitive results and insights. Table 4 lists the methods and tools appropriate for answering these types of questions.

Sales Reports

Sales are an excellent measure of success and a good indicator of high viability, acceptability, and validity. However, sales reports are a poor way of discovering a major design inadequacy. Further, when a major problem is detected in this manner, it is quite likely that one may not know what the problem is or why it occurred.

Service Reports

Service reports can be designed, and service personnel trained, to provide much more than simply a record of service activities. Additional information of interest concerns the specific nature of prob- lems, their likely causes, and how stakeholders perceive and react to the problems. Stakeholders’ suggestions for how to avoid or solve the problems can also be invaluable. Individuals’ names, addresses, and telephone numbers can also be recorded so that they can be contacted subsequently.

Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be quite useful for discovering problems that are not sufficient to prompt service calls. They also can be useful for uncovering problems with the service itself. If a record is maintained of all stakeholders, this population can regularly be sampled and queried regarding problems, as well as ideas for solutions, product upgrades, and so on. As noted before, however, a primary disadvantage of questionnaires is the typical low return rate.

Interviews

Interviews can be a rich source of information. Stakeholders can be queried in depth regarding their experiences with the product or system, what they would like to see changed, and new products and systems they would like. This can also be an opportunity to learn how their organizations make purchasing decisions, in terms of both decision criteria and budget cycles.

While sales representatives and service personnel can potentially perform interviews, there is great value in having designers venture out to the sites where their products and systems are used. Such sorties should have clear measurement goals, questions to be answered, an interview protocol, and so on, much in the way that is described in earlier sections. If necessary, interviews can be conducted via telephone or e-mail, with only selected face-to-face interviews to probe more deeply.

8.3. Summary

The sales and service phase brings the measurement process full circle. An important aspect of this phase is using the above tools and methods to initiate the next iteration of naturalist and marketing phases. To this end, as was emphasized earlier, a primary prerequisite at this point is the ability to listen.