The Vision of HFI

HUMAN CENTRIC DESIGN

At HFI we are dedicated to the application of user-centric design methods to make technology work effectively for your customers and staff. Today it is not a differentiator to be able to have effective hardware and software that runs and calculates correctly. The differentiator between companies has become the user experience. And the engineering of user-experience has been our sole focus since 1981.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION

In the past most user-experience work has been done on an ad hoc basis. Even HFI’s clients usually called on us to address problem designs, or at best optimize the user-experience on specific high-value applications and sites. Occasionally a client would invest in usability engineering infrastructure like developing custom interface design standards (we have done over 350 of these) or methods. But today we see a shift. Companies now understand that user experience design is a key differentiator and that it has a great ROI. They are also seeing that organized, systematic, process driven operations are both more effective and less costly. So the vision set forward in our book The Institutionalization of Usability (2004) is becoming realized in companies world wide. We are now helping companies to efficiently complete the journey of installing a culture of user centricity; with the governance, organizational structures, staffing, and infrastructure to make it real.

CLASSIC USABILITY

Today we are seeing an amazing growth in professional user-experience work. You can imagine how exciting for those of us who have spent a lifetime as user advocates! But in fact, classic usability engineering is becoming a hygiene factor, just like software and hardware. The well understood technology of creating software that is fast, accurate, and self evident is becoming nearly ubiquitous. If you want to be ‘in the game’, your software has to be usable.

PERSUASION

With classic usability becoming a requirement, what will be your differentiator? Clearly, once you finish learning to make applications and sites that people CAN use; you need to create sites that people will WANT to use. The next frontier in the user experience field is persuasion engineering (or as HFI says “Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust” – PET Design). There is a whole additional technology that takes us beyond making software that people can use effectively. We still have to do that classic usability design work. But usability is no longer enough. We need to create software that people love. That is fun. That motivates conversion. And the PET Design methods that HFI has focused on since 2004 are clearly effective at triggering the emotional reactions that get people to act.

INNOVATION

As we have seen the role of user centered work expand and move up the value chain, the application of our methods to discovery of new business models and new product ideation has been an amazing leap forward. Often innovation work has been done based on demographic marketing studies or technical innovation. We find that the user centered perspective adds a whole new dimension. When you really understand your customer you can radically reduce your risk in new product innovation. We understand the whole user ecosystem using methods inspired by ethnographic methods. We model the emotional schema of the customer’s decisions using PET interview techniques. And this foundation allows us to look at advanced models of innovation in order to create breakthrough ideas. From our work on devices selling more then 1 million units, to breakthroughs in online applications, it is clear that user centricity reduces the risk in the innovation process.

LIGHT AND CONNECTED

At HFI we see a major change happening in the world. Ecological, geopolitical, and technological forces will absolutely make a change in the way your customer will live and a change in the way your staff will work. By modeling these changes we have been able to peer into a future where lifestyles are sustainable and we believe happiness can be increased. Since 2007 we have worked to model the lifestyle changes and research the underlying psychological motivations that can make the lifestyle changes aspirational. Once you understand this reliable vision of the future you will see that your company's products and services will need to change. By being in the vanguard of this change you can have first mover advantages and ensure that your companies profitability continues and improves during the inevitable changes that are appearing.

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