Boy have I been busy! My customer visits in the North East went swimmingly, but it was extremely hectic. I travelled to 4 states in 4 days and interviewed 6 customers. We started with Morgan Stanley, and then Bloomberg in New York. Then drove to New Jersey, and met with US News (Dow Jones) and Susquhanna Investment Group in PA. Then drove to Jersey City for Lord Abbott and up to Purdue Pharma in Connecticut.

My tools for the interview was a Sansa recorder, a notepad and pen. Our clients all had different work styles, environments and processes. There was one thing I was very happy about, and that was how nice and patient everyone was during the interview process. Everyone was more than amicable to take the time to answer our questions, it was almost like we were providing them with psychiatric treatment where they could unleash all of their IT problems.

I’m glad that I got the experience of going to customer interviews on this trip, I learned so much about our products, how they are being used, and about our customers. I took the customer data that I collected and assembled it into a call report. I also think that my relationship with product development has grown from this experience.

Now that I have collected user data first-hand. I am interested in viewing some of the previously collected user data and generating a mental model of this material. Unfortunately I don’t know if I will have the time to work on it.

Also, tonight, I will be giving a speech at RefreshMiami on Human Factors. This is at Yahoo Latin America in Coral Gables. It will just be a 10-15 minute speech on what a Human Factors Engineer does.