User Experience is starting to be taken seriously by players outside of software development. Ford, the 150 year old manufacturing giant, has embarked on a mission to really make a difference in the products and services they provide to their customers.
Aiming to make cars simpler to use is no easy feat but can be started by having fewer features and gimmicks that mean nothing to the end consumer. For a long time cars have been measuring themselves against one another by the number of features, instead of most important elements such as comfort and ease of use.
The most generous estimates say that we use only 40% of the features inside the cars. And still we pay 100% of the price.
This is a really interesting article that talks about the work they are doing to prioritise changing a process and the challenges faced, in an organisation that employs 187,000 people around the globe.