Building ease of use into the IBM user experience

This issue of the IBM Systems Journal explores the topic of building ease of use into the IBM user experience with hardware, software, Web sites, and services. This paper provides an overview of the process and organizational transformation that IBM has gone through in improving the user experience with our offerings. IBM's process for building ease of use into the user experience is described and two versions of the process are introduced and contrasted. The IBM User-Centered Design (UCD) approach, which has been used for the last several years, is contrasted with the traditional approach to the development of offerings. A recent major enhanced version of the process, called User Engineering (UE), which is optimized for the IBM e-business on demand TM strategy, is contrasted with the existing UCD process. The key elements of our enablement, leadership, and guidance strategy for these processes are outlined, including mission, process integration, education and training, communication, collaboration, and tools and technology. An overview of the papers in this issue is also provided. User experience is the day-today interaction that a customer has with all aspects of an offering. For many customers, the user experience is the offering. It is therefore critically important to ensure that customers have a positive experience. However, research from across the industry indicates that the user experience is too often less than positive due to a lack of ease of use. In one study, 1 participants searching for information at a Web site were only able to find the desired information 42 percent of the time. In another study, 2 39 percent of participants were unable to complete an on-line purchase. It has been found 3,4 that 40 to 50 percent of users who have a negative experience at a Web site do not return to it. A study of software 3 found that the average program has 40 design flaws that impair the ability to use it. Alan Ganek summarized it best when he stated in a previous issue of this Journal, " The computer industry has spent decades creating systems of marvelous and ever-increasing complexity. But today, complexity itself is the problem. " 4 According to a recent Forrester report, " Improving user experience can increase both revenue and customer satisfaction while lowering costs. " 5 A Gart-ner study 6 concluded that customer satisfaction can be increased by 40 percent by applying appropriate user experience methods. Of …