Today’s guest is Kerry McAleer-Forte, the Director of User Experience Research for Sears Holdings. We discuss how researchers need to think like storytellers, getting at the underlying need behind a research request, and the risk of using research to make recommendations.

Tools are important. It’s important to choose the right one, but at the end of the day, they also won’t replace that thing inside your skull, which is your most important tool, which is being able to observe and listen and pull the important story out for your user. – Kerry McAleer-Forte

Show Links

* Kerry McAleer-Forte

* Don Norman

* Michael Kronthal

* Images from Michael’s talk

* Sears

* Kmart

* Sears Home Services

* Sears Parts Direct

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Transcript

Steve Portigal: Well, thanks for joining us today Kerry.

Kerry McAleer-Forte: Absolutely. Glad to be here.

Steve: So, let’s start, as we do, with a bit of an introduction. Maybe you could describe the organization that you’re at and the role that you have there.

Kerry: Sure. I am the Director of User Experience Research for Sears Holdings, and I have a team of seven full-time researchers and we specifically focus on experience research. By many accounts, it’s a pretty straightforward organization where UCD and UX people are concerned. We sit directly within a customer experience organization that has user experience architects, and designers, and copywriters, and product managers, and product and UX work hand in hand also with analytics, and we do a really wide range of methodologies to support answering the questions that they have around design and around the experience in general.

Steve: You mentioned Sears Holdings–how do we know Sears? What do we know Sears Holdings as, as consumers, or as consumers in North America at least?

Kerry: The two main brands that everyone would be familiar with would be Sears and Kmart since we are under one company. So, the websites, the mobile applications and devices, and then obviously the physical stores are all things that we spend time researching.

Steve: So, the websites for both brands, the stores for both brands, and then the mobile apps or other kinds of tools for both brands as well?

Kerry: Mobile and tablet. Right, because of where our team sits, the UX and the product management does have a particular digital focus. So, most of our time is spent focusing on the website, mobile phones, and tablets. However, Sears has been in the integrated retail arena for a long time now, so we definitely take an approach wherever we can.

We’re looking at the holistic end-to-end experience, so somebody might be at home on their tablet, they’re on the iPad watching television, they see something that’s interesting, and then the next day they’re at work and they pull it up and they’re like “Mm, that’s pretty interesting.” Then, on the weekend, they visit a store to go check out the refrigerator, open the door, and then pulling it up on their phone to check out reviews.