From the June 19 edition of Business Week…For Lucente, the ethnographer, consumer observation has been a big route
out of HP’s dilemma. Until recently, HP’s merger with Compaq Computer
had produced an unintegrated company with hundreds of isolated
businesses and thousands of products. To help build a unified, creative
culture and reconnect with HP’s customers, Lucente launched a major
research project. He involved members from all departments — design,
marketing, R&D, even outside consultants — to immerse themselves in the
lives and homes of 28 families around the world. The goal was to make
sure that HP was “living and breathing with the customer,” Lucente says.

What the trips showed was that families across the globe were deluged
with information from their phones, computer screens, cameras, and
social networking connections. They were lost, with no idea how to
navigate through the information. To Lucente, the obvious answer was a
steering wheel.

Lucente’s design team came up with Q control. This standardized
start-button-cum-steering-wheel, which looks like a backwards Q, is in
the process of being attached to all of HP’s products. Not unlike the
dial on an iPod, it’s intuitive and simple to use. It requires no
owner’s manual. It has a quick and dirty “savior” button so consumers
can go back.

Lucente is effective inside HP because he doesn’t “talk design.” Rather,
he speaks the language of business. Observing how people work,
socialize, eat, cook, even sleep shows Lucente where the gaps are: what
people need and what they don’t have. He then maps out these findings on
an algorithm-enhanced database that identifies which areas present the
biggest opportunities. He made the case for Q control by showing the
financial and marketing benefits of using a common design device that
could be replicated across all of HP’s products. Next up for Lucente:
helping people organize a personal library of digital photos. Lucente
plans to do for photos what Steve Jobs did for music.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_25/b3989435.htm