I just had a conversation this morning with my friend, Laurie Bell of Element Design Group. We were talking about how some designers think of their designs as a representation of their knowledge and experience, rather than concentrating on the other participants: the stakeholders and the audience. Our conversation reminded me of something Jeff Veen wrote in the foreword to my book, that in the past design teams he worked on thought about their audience only as "users ... there to bear witness to how cool our designs were." (Well, it is true that most users say, "Oh cool!" when they use a product Jeff designed, but that's not the point.) Jeff generously posted the entire foreword today if you'd like to read it.

Getting the customer into a state of flow is the primary focus of our work. We spend a lot of energy up front to understand what will get the dialog to run smoothly between a customer and the service an organization provides. If we all do this, it will mean happier people with more time to do the thing they were really thinking about.