DOWNLOAD THE 360 MAGAZINE-STYLE PDF


Chris Conley walked up to the woman who had just left the Office Max store and asked, "'Without turning around, can you tell me what store you just shopped at?"

She couldn't. Nor could most of the other customers he asked that day. In fact, very few of the customers that Conley and his team interviewed at five different Office Max locations could say what office supply store they'd walked out of just moments before.

Conley is founding director of Gravity Tank, Inc., a Chicago-based consulting and design firm and practitioner of user observation, a disciplined approach to closely watching and listening to customers to find out what they really think about products and services and how they use them.

Unlike traditional market research that relies on surveys and focus groups, user observation employs face-to-face conversation, shadowing, and other scientific methods. It's being used across industries – from improving ball point pens to creating better college classrooms to designing more efficient restaurants – and helping to drive changes in practically every business. Whether the user is at home, at work, or out shopping, the research approach for user observation, and the benefits that result, are the same.