In a post I made a few days back, I tried to articulate some of the issues I’ve been thinking about our web site design to enhance the member/user experience.

Gene at tinfoiling left a comment in which he said:

The online experience seems to revolve around the person, their personal networks and being able to keep things the way they want to. Our products need to capture these elements.

I was intrigued, but his short comment on my site obviously didn’t capture the depth of what he was getting at, so I asked him to expand on his own site. Much to my delight he has.

Here’s Gene’s response on tinfoiling.

His theory, and I hope I do it justice is that web design as we’ve been dealing with it is a bit of a boondoggle, avoiding the key element of what the customer wants. And it goes back to our product design as well. A huge idea really, and I gotta admit, I’m still fully wrapping my head around it.

Colin, as usual, had a great comment:

Product – my take: forget about it. It comes last. Banks have been product centric for ever, and that doesn’t work when you get into experiential design.

A great conversation. I had no idea the doors I was opening when I started…