Cross pollination of knowledge and methods between fields

I’m a big fan of extracting lessons learnt from one field of expertise and applying them to another. I’ve written about this before, be it Gordon Ramsay, Trinny & Susannah, parent craft centres, shopping for furniture or super nanny. I’ve also talked about cross pollination before.

Why is this? I’m not sure. I find it frustrating when people run around in tiny circles trying to conjur a solution to something whilst wearing blinkers to other sectors, industries or fields or expertise that have already found a solution. A great case in point is the borrowing of psychology, anthropology and other scientific methods by those practising user experience and web design. It’s not new, but I find this stimulating, and I actively look for good sources of knowledge to cross-pollinate from one field to another.

So I’ve decided to collect references to this cross-pollination.

One I found today is Lessons for User Experience Consultants from Barack Obama:

That said, there are a few lessons from Barack Obama’s campaign that apply to our world of user experience consulting … Lesson 1: Use Clear Calls-to-Action … Lesson 2: Put a Priority on Creative … Lesson 3: Make Personal Connections (Or At Least Fake It) … Lesson 4: Don’t Let The Man Throw You Off Your Game … Lesson 5: Set Up Shop in Chicago … Lesson 6: Be Young, Charming, and Good Looking

(Can’t argue with lesson 2, by the way, the Obama brand was very well executed.)

Feel free to suggest more, leave a comment below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Consulting. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

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About the author

Patrick Kennedy is a user experience strategist and design researcher based in Sydney Australia. He leads research activities that improve the user experience of cross-channel products and services; helping both designers and business decision makers in bringing those products and services to fruition. Read more.

Comments

Patrick Kennedy | January 5th, 2009 | 9:10 am

An excellent example of what I’m talking about is the Good Experience Live (GEL) conference which brings together good thinking from a variety of fields. It could be said that this is a UX or web design conference, but the most interesting speakers are from very different backgrounds. For example:

MARIE LORENZ, Sculptor, boat builder, Tide and Current Taxi

Watch video: http://gelconference.com/videos/2007/marie_lorenz/

Marie runs the Tide and Current Taxi, which takes passengers on a boat (that she hand-built) on voyages on New York City’s East River … with no planned destination. Her work touches on design, art, and community, which helped make it one of the most popular presentations at Gel ’07.

PHOEBE DAMROSCH, Author, “Service Included”

Watch video: http://gelconference.com/videos/2008/phoebe_damrosch/

Phoebe was the first female head captain at Thomas Keller’s prestigious New York restaurant Per Se. Here she describes the experience of entering the dining-and-hospitality field, then learning to deliver world-class service to some of the world’s most discerning customers.

Patrick Kennedy | June 3rd, 2009 | 9:53 am

Zef Fugaz has written about yet another TV show that gives some useful and admirable examples of “service design” consultanting: Tabatha’s Salon Takeover.

Zef points out the reason why Tabatha, and the other consultants I’ve mentioned above, can have such a shocking effect on her clients…

The fact is that when you’re working inside a business the flaws are not always obvious. Personally, I experience poor customer service all the time from car parks, coffee houses, banks, government agencies, clothing retailers and so on.

[...]

It usually takes someone with fresh eyes to sort out where and why a business is falling short on the customer experience. In the IT industry these people are often known as ‘user experience’ experts. But unfortunately they are often restricted to a narrow view of the business – its online interactions with customers.

Excellent post Zef.

Prioritising User Experience | Pat's Point of View | September 30th, 2009 | 2:40 pm

[...] a community approach can be much more effective than a dedicated UX team going it alone. And the cross-pollination effect can be a real bonus, not only in terms of gaining knowledge and skills from other teams but also [...]

Patrick Kennedy | January 5th, 2009 | 9:10 am
An excellent example of what I’m talking about is the Good Experience Live (GEL) conference which brings together good thinking from a variety of fields. It could be said that this is a UX or web design conference, but the most interesting speakers are from very different backgrounds. For example:

MARIE LORENZ, Sculptor, boat builder, Tide and Current Taxi

Watch video: http://gelconference.com/videos/2007/marie_lorenz/

Marie runs the Tide and Current Taxi, which takes passengers on a boat (that she hand-built) on voyages on New York City’s East River … with no planned destination. Her work touches on design, art, and community, which helped make it one of the most popular presentations at Gel ’07.

PHOEBE DAMROSCH, Author, “Service Included”

Watch video: http://gelconference.com/videos/2008/phoebe_damrosch/

Phoebe was the first female head captain at Thomas Keller’s prestigious New York restaurant Per Se. Here she describes the experience of entering the dining-and-hospitality field, then learning to deliver world-class service to some of the world’s most discerning customers.
Patrick Kennedy | June 3rd, 2009 | 9:53 am
Zef Fugaz has written about yet another TV show that gives some useful and admirable examples of “service design” consultanting: Tabatha’s Salon Takeover.

Zef points out the reason why Tabatha, and the other consultants I’ve mentioned above, can have such a shocking effect on her clients…

The fact is that when you’re working inside a business the flaws are not always obvious. Personally, I experience poor customer service all the time from car parks, coffee houses, banks, government agencies, clothing retailers and so on.

[...]

It usually takes someone with fresh eyes to sort out where and why a business is falling short on the customer experience. In the IT industry these people are often known as ‘user experience’ experts. But unfortunately they are often restricted to a narrow view of the business – its online interactions with customers.

Excellent post Zef.
Prioritising User Experience | Pat's Point of View | September 30th, 2009 | 2:40 pm
[...] a community approach can be much more effective than a dedicated UX team going it alone. And the cross-pollination effect can be a real bonus, not only in terms of gaining knowledge and skills from other teams but also [...]

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