Customer Obsessed

10How Good Design Creates Seamless Experiences

A chapter on design! Eric, what were you thinking?

Wait, wait, let me explain. No, I won't ask you to take out crayons and paper and start redesigning the world or even those parts that are particularly important to you. Rather, after going through the practical steps involved in understanding and creating a customer-obsessed culture, this chapter will explain the benefits of integrating that culture with your technical processes, while maintaining flexibility and a great user experience. This entails design thinking at some level and, to be effective, good design. So no, I don't expect readers of this book to stop and pull out their tools and start creating the next-level tablet. But you should cultivate a familiarity with the language of design and build awareness of its basic principles—enough that you can recognize them in action—to appreciate effective and good design. I will provide examples of how tech and great design have enhanced successful companies' focus on people, underscoring the winning message of putting employees and customers first to elevate the customer experience.

Let's start with Nir Eyal's book Hooked, which I described in some detail earlier. Eyal was trying to explain why some products capture widespread attention while others flop, a question anyone in business would want to answer. More important, he wants to know what makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit. He asks whether there is ...