Designing better user experience

Have you ever had a poor user experience and thought to yourself, that you can improve this?   I usually keep a log of bad user experiences and make notes on how to improve design.  Here is a very interesting blog post by design firm, Adaptive Path. This sort of design thinking can be done by anyone.

The posting discussed five user experiences from visiting nursing homes; buying a car; making parking garages more people friendly; receiving medical care and improving personal energy consumption.

If I were to think of an example, it would be to redesign human interactions between sales staff and service staff at an automotive dealership.  Much too often, there is a strong emphasis on customer service for new or pre-owned vehicle sales.  The sales person has a vested interest to ensure that the customer receives the best service as possible in order to make a sale and make some commission off the transaction.  What happens to the after sales experience?

Automotive dealerships make more profit margin off the servicing of a vehicle than the selling of one.  It would make sense that the after-sales experience for the customer be enhanced, right?

Does the service advisor and technician know you as the customer?  I feel there is a huge contrast between the customer service from the sales staff versus the service staff.  Ensuring that loyal customers are willing to stay with the brand is easier than trying to conquest new ones.  Personal relationships drive customer loyalty.

If a customer were to purchase a new or pre-owned vehicle, I would let the customer choose their Service Advisor and Service Technician.  Websites and communities such as Yelp.com, where users rate and provide user-generated feedback on various facets of Dealership service would be essential.  Those two people along with the Sales Consultant are accountable for all service related issues for the duration of the ownership of the vehicle.  Follow-ups and reminders would be done by the three, as well as contributing to any discussions in an owner support forum provided by the Dealership.  A relationship would be forged between the owner and the three people.

Do you have any experiences to share?  Please share them and discuss how to make them better.  Let’s get a discussion started.

How can Twitter be a viable marketing tool?

Is Twitter a viable marketing tool? Some argue in favor of it, and some argue against it.  I think it boils down to whether an interesting conversation can occur as a result of this. Are there interesting anecdotes that can be utilized to explain the brand story? Are businesses simply using social media for the sake of it? Upon further examination, the pluses and minuses of this approach will be discussed.

Some of the advantages of Twitter would be the design of the platform.  It is simple, scalable, and easy to develop APIs for Twitter.  These APIs are modular and can exist cross-platform.  This is also a “cloud” application, where storage of the information is not placed in the users’ computer, but on Twitter’s servers.  Mostly, the advantage is that people are able to organize around topics, events, companies and causes offline and online with real-time conversations surrounding these.  It is human nature to be curious to know what others are doing and thinking.  Twitter is also a viral platform for everyone’s content, and it provides context to people’s conversations.

On the other hand, some challenges for Twitter can include finding content that would be of interest to potential customers.  For example, if one’s client sold table salt, what content can be tweeted?  The target demographic, busy moms, probably do not have the time or the interest to follow a table salt company’s tweets.  It takes much time and energy for twitter campaigns, and in the end is it really worth it?  What meaningful conversations can come from 140 or less characters messages? With so many people tweeting, isn’t burdensome to read all of those tweets?

I think despite some of the challenges, twitter can be useful if the brand has a compelling story to tell.  Reaping rewards of Twitter for more mundane products/services (e.g. table salt or housecleaning) becomes a greater challenge for marketers.  If there is an exciting narrative that surrounds the brand, Twitter becomes an easier tool to utilize.

Using Twitter search , Tinker and other search tools are very important to ascertain what people are saying about one’s brand; one’s industry; competitor products/services; brand’s product/services and the topics of conversations of one’s target market.  These could be complaints, compliments, uses of the product or service.  Also joining in the conversation between one’s company and the customer is very important.  A success story from this was when a customer was complaining about their Comcast Internet service.  This customer tweeted their complaint, and instantly, a Comcast customer care representative responded.   This built up relational capital between Comcast, that particular customer, current customers and any potential customers.  This example of quick customer service became viral across the internet.

More examples of Transformation Design

In an earlier posting, I had written about Transformation Design from a business to consumer perspective.  Today, I will discuss business to business examples.  Again, these companies are engaging in designing a system of activity that drives the positive change that the consumer desires to see in his/herself and his/hers community.

Intuit a software company that is well-known for their accounting and tax software, has developed an online forum that is dedicated to help small business owners.  This forum has become a community of users with a common purpose to share, collaborate and discuss ideas.

I had written in earlier posts about the commonality of crowdsourcing and the development of user contribution systems in many businesses.  On Intuit’s website,  there are online guides that facilitate small businesses with the learning and the implementing these tools to their business needs.

A success story for the implementation of a user contribution system is Starbucks as it has been active with crowdsourcing from users for new ideas and innovation to improve their customer experience.  They have an online forum where users can voice their concerns and suggestions.  Some innovations today such as the Starbucks Card, which is a loyalty incentive that enables customers to have a free refill and free two hours of daily Wi-Fi use were ideas from this online forum.

American Express has opened up an online resource for small businesses complete with articles and videos from experts to help and improve small business practices.  For examples, there are articles about the benefits of blogging, methods to improve presentation skills and a number of other self-help and business improvement tips.

American Express and Intuit are engaged in Transformation Design in the context of business to business marketing.  Both approaches (design) are different, but the intent (system) is similar in bringing about positive change in small businesses and its personnel.  For reasons similar to Transformation Design from a business to consumer context, the business to business context also provides goodwill, positive branding, and the positive change to the user and their community as benefits for companies that use and embrace Transformation Design.

Designing Innovation

There is an alarming number of preventable deaths in US hospitals each year according to this article from McKinsey Quarterly, and thus, there was an initiative by a non-profit organization called the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) that set a mandate to reduce the number of preventable deaths by 100,000 in one year.  It succeeded after one year, and it was able to enroll 75% of all US hospitals.   

As a non-profit, it neither wielded authority nor influence on hospital board of governors, it also faced the unyielding attitudes towards change, differing stakeholder goals, shortness of resources and time  and as such it already faced an uphill battle for this initiative to be implemented.  

How was IHI able to reach its target despite these enormous setbacks? It had to make its initiatives easy to understand and to remember for all stakeholders (nurses, doctors, etc.).   In peer-reviewed medical journals, there is a plethora of information that aids in the amelioration of hospital operations.  IHI took the time consuming part of disseminating this information and presenting and selecting six key criteria that can help with its mission.  

This program was flexible in that not all six criteria needed to be followed and adhered to.  Still, it was crucial some of it required stakeholders to be aware of and adhere to.  Goals were clearly defined with a set timeline and set metrics.  The long term goals (lofty) and short term goals (concrete) were in sync.  Accountability was taken into account by having weekly conference calls and mass emails.

Hospitals that were pioneers of this program, could support and help other hospitals that are starting to implement this initiative.  To encourage additional hospitals to participate, a national network of IHI participants was formed.   Actually, an additional benefit of this alliance, included the motivating the current network of hospitals towards excellence.

I think that both individuals and businesses can learn from this IHI case study.  By defining a clear problem, and defining a clear long-term and smaller and reachable short term goals, using a network of like-minded participants, and thinking in the shoes of the party that one wants to influence.  Anticipating the client’s needs and making their lives/jobs easier by completing the tasks that maybe resource and time intensive and be flexible and understand that not all implementation steps maybe followed.  By combining all of the above should yield solid and sustainable results.

Design is in the details

Yesterday, I had posted about a video from Charles Leadbetter about how users through crowdsourcing and open-innovation are contributing innovation of products/services through collaborative and interactive channels.  Today’s discussion is about design, and how the users are able to design products/services that do not necessarily need to solve big issues but may solve smaller ones, which are very important.

This talk was from Paul Bennett, creative director of IDEO.  He has given multiple examples throughout this talk about solving tiny solutions that delivered impact from hospitals to Ikea’s children storage unit to water pumps in Kenya. 

In the case of the hospital in Minnesota, solving tiny solutions was able to deliver a big impact.  The hospital was interested in the ameliorating the patients’ experience.  When IDEO investigated the users’ experiences, the changes that needed to be made were not big systemic ones, but smaller ones. Some ideas included attaching mirrors to the gurneys, to enable the patients’ to see the nurse or doctor when they were being transported around.  They involved hospital staff in their input to make the patient’s experience more enriching. A nurse suggested installing a whiteboard in the patient’s room so that notes, drawings, messages from the doctor/nurses/family/friends can be showcased and brighten an otherwise mundane room.  

Other examples of design innovations that incorporated thinking small and delivered a big impact came from the inventor of velcro.  He was walking through a field and was covered with burrs and that became his inspiration for velcro.

View objects peripherally to find opportunity. For example, notice on the street when there is a yellow line, people inadvertently follow it without any instructions.  Another example is if people put their empty cups (garbage) in one place, everyone else puts there cups there too.  Companies should pay attention to how people come up with their own design experiences and adapt their designs to improve this experience.

Start from scratch, the mind should be fresh. Throw out any pre-conceived notions.  When Ikea had to design a children’s bookcase, the designer understood that the idea of storage to children was quite different than grown-ups, children play on top and below big objects.  The designer was able to design a storage unit underneath tables, where children can place their toys. 

Pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win. For example, in Kenya, IDEO was sought to design a water pump that can be used by villagers.  It had to be compact enough to fit on a bicycle.  This pump had to be cost effective.  It incorporated both effective form and function mechanisms to enhance the lives of the villagers.

I believe that being able to think and feel from the user’s perspective is paramount to designing user-friendly products/services.  This certainly extends to so many different facets in life including communicating with people.  Much too often, the message and body language can be disparaging and derisive to the intended audience, and by empathizing with the intended audience, communication becomes much easier.

What creates great mobile phone user experiences?

As I had mentioned in earlier posts about mobile phone technologies here and here, this is a discussion about designing user experience to become consumer friendly.

Highlights include:

Products/Services were created from human needs.  For example, with Twitter, there is the need for continuous status updates.

Mobile phone manufacturers need to be able to control all processes in the value chain in order to create effective user experiences.  For example, with the iPhone, the user interface, core applications, industrial design are all completely seamless.  This creates consistency in all facets of the user experience.

Creating user loyalty seems to be more difficult for the carriers versus the mobile phone manufacturers.  This is maybe resultant from the pervasive short-term outlook, as carriers are capital intensive, and cash flows can vary monthly.  Whereas, in order to create effective user experience, it typically takes a longer time and requires a long-term outlook.

Carriers are somewhat at fault for not emphasizing user experience when purchasing handsets from the manufacturers.  They have a tremendous influence because of their purchasing power as well as their proximity to the consumer’s purchasing cycle.  Mobile phone manufacturers (e.g. Apple, RIM) that have strong competencies in software design and development have an edge versus ones that do not because of the challenges fraught from the design and development of user friendly software.  Mobile phones have changed its function from consumption-based to now creation-based (e.g. Flickr, Twitter, camera phones, etc.).

Other ideas to create a good user experience would be to capitalize on current technology that the user already understands.  For example, Twitter already uses technology that is SMS-based.  Many start-ups fall into the mistake of creating a handset or an application that have a gorgeous user interface however, because of the novelty of this interface, users do not know how to use this.

Examples of good user experience include:  single-devices that perform one task well, in other words, with simplicity; having some software that is multi-platform compatible (able to use on mobile phones, PC, etc.); being able to pay and receive alerts through SMS, finding existing technologies that function well in other parts of the world and importing this to other areas of the world that this technology is a novelty (e.g. public transportation payment systems through SMS).

I think to create a good user experience for the mobile phone requires ameliorating the daily lives of people.  Being able to pay for parking, public transportation, at convenience stores, fast food places with a mobile phone would be ideal.  When more people use an application or platform, the margin of utility increases.  As someone in the video mentioned, taking an application or platform that is widely used, and spawning new technology that makes people’s daily life better would be ideal. Mobile phone manufacturers not only need to have influence and control over the value chain, but it would be best if it can work in sync with the mobile phone carrier to oversee and control the user experience.  This partnership may change the short term view from the carrier, and the same time bring awareness and consumer insights delivered from the short term view to the manufacturer and making the user interface better.

Mobile phone advertising, design and consumer insights

On Friday, I had posted about how mobile phones will become the next breakthrough as a new media. Due to the convergence of media technologies combined with the popularity of the mobile phone, it will and can displace the internet as the new media.  Today, I will examine the emergence of mobile phone advertising, design and consumer insights.  

How has mobile phone advertising rose to prominence?  This was from a workshop conducted by Space 150 to discuss the future of mobile phone advertising.   As discussed on Friday, the iPhone or any Android-powered devices due to their user-friendly design enable the phone to become a tool of multitude of devices (e.g. internet, mp3 and video player, email, calculators, alarm clock, etc.) at ones disposal.  As a result, there is a higher percentage of iPhone users that have engaged with internet tools (streaming music/video, social networking sites, etc.) versus other mobile phone users on the currently slow mobile network.  

What are the current forms of advertising that exists?  SMS text messages, videos, pictures and now games.  Why isn’t mobile advertising widely embraced?  It is because it is subjected to potential privacy and political issues. If this form of advertising faces these barriers, why should an advertiser/marketer invest in this form?  First mover advantage benefits can be reaped.  Mistakes that are made today may not be as detrimental versus if they are made tomorrow due to today’s lesser amount of competition.  In addition, an ROI model can be developed to measure future successes.  

How can mobile phones be designed to become more user friendly?  With the increasing number of choices for mobile phones available for sale at the carriers, is there much differentiation among the varying phones? In this case, less is more.  Keep the phone simple: larger screens; larger buttons; streamlined features, easy scroll-ability and navigation.

Due to the popularity of the portability of the mobile phone, as well as the inherent personal nature of this device, consumer insights have never been much easier to obtain.  The user groups for mobile phones are broken down into the following groups:  busy moms (heavy callers), baby boomers (heavy callers), connected teens (heavy callers, text messaging and mobile phone applications), business users (heavy email and mobile web users) and early adopters (heavy text messaging, apps, email and mobile web users).  The Space 150 presentation delves into a further breakdown of the various groups with respect to their lifestyle, needs, drivers, primary use of the phone, the technology of the phone, and other communication tools that they engage in.

The methods that these varying groups engage their phones with the outside world can be as diverse as from coupons to contests, from interacting with social networks to engaging in interactive media from the content providers. 

Main mobile connection principles include: 1) Function first; 2) Keep it simple; 3) Integrate; 4) Leverage the platform; and 5) Be a leader.

I agree with the importance in designing mobile phones that center around the consumer’s needs, wants, and habits.  It is imperative that both marketers and advertisers understand the market psychographics and demographics.  It is clear that undoubtedly different groups use the mobile phone differently.  

I do not agree with engaging in a one-size fit all type of solution towards mobile phone advertising. Different products/services have different needs and marketing strategies need to be adapted accordingly.  For example, to increase brand awareness, being able to give a product/service free in exchange for advertising might be effective.  The permissive nature of this advertising bodes well for the advertiser, the telecommunications carrier and the user.  A major problem that the presentation addressed was the inherent nature of high number of ad impressions that result in low action rates, which translates to purchases.  Also, if a product/service was free in exchange for ad views, how does this improve brand equity?  

I feel that luxury goods/services cannot follow the mold of offering free products/service in exchange for ad views.  As I had alluded to on Friday, consumers need to be engaged and become advocates of the brand for this type of ad campaign to succeed.  For common goods/services or discount items, then any type of ad campaign that maximizes brand awareness is key.

Emerging technological trends for businesses

 

 

 

  

 

What are some emerging technology trends that will change and reform businesses and the economy?

 

 

This article from McKinsey Quarterly discusses eight trends can be categorized into three subcategories: Managing Business Relationships; Managing Capital and Assets; and Leveraging information in new ways. 

 

 

The next four trends are categorized under the “Managing Business Relationships” heading.

  

 

The first is Distributing Cocreation – This is when suppliers, customers and contractors can aid in product/service development.  By shifting more power and ultimately more autonomy to outsiders that work together, costs and lead times can be reduced by getting different insights during the development process and forgoing some of the bottlenecks associated with having total control of the innovation process.  The notion of a open-source innovation was discussed in this earlier post. 

 

 

Companies will need to compete with each other in order to attract the best and most innovative contributors.

 

 

The second trend is “Using Consumers as Innovators,” and is facilitated by the growth of the web 2.0.  Customers are looking to be engaged with one another or with an organization.  Customers are increasingly being engaged by the their involvement in the development, testing and marketing (viral marketing) of products or services.  An example of is Wikipedia.  The accuracy of this online encyclopedia is almost as accurate as Britannica’s. 

 

 

With this trend, development cycles and costs can be reduced, while understanding the customer’s behavior and wants can be easier.  The cost to attract customers is lower, and retaining customer loyalty becomes easier. Companies also need to be aware that the customers that would be involved in the development of their product or service is a small segment of the overall market, therefore, the developers’ needs and wants maybe different than the overall market.  Often customers’ needs and wants are immediate and not long term. 

    

 

The third trend is “Tapping into a world of talent”, as the internet is becoming more interactive with new communication and collaborative tools, outsourcing some functions of a business to specialists, talent networks, and freelancers is increasingly more viable from a cost and functional aspect.  As I had alluded to in yesterday’s post, some advertising agencies have outsourced their creative, account management and media buying departments.  Many companies would focus on their core competencies and not have the burden of being tied down to those other functions. 

 

 

The main task is being able to harness the global talent pool, managing the existing workforce and being able to integrate the work in a cohesive manner. 

 

 

The fourth trend is “Extracting more value from interactions”, that is interactions between different types of work and enabling the workforce to function more effectively and efficiently. 

 

 

The first type of work is Transformational, usually work that is involved in the production of goods or in the extraction of raw materials; the second type of work is Transactional, usually work that is clerical or simple-rule based such as a call center operations or someone involved with data entry; finally, the last type of work is Tacit, which primarily deals with knowledge, judgment and collaboration with multiple interactions with multiple stakeholders.  For example, a sales person would engage in tacit work, by interacting with the marketing, product development, H/R, logistics and after sales departments to maximize sales, while engaging and interacting with multiple parties through collaboration. 

 

 

There are systems that can maximize the efficiency of both transformational and transactional work such as assembly line work.  However, with tacit work, there is no such a rule or process.  Maximizing the effectiveness of this work is accomplished by focusing them on interactions that create value.  Companies must enable these workers with greater decision making ability, bring down barriers, increase the availability of resources/information and facilitate collaboration.  New and current technology is facilitating this trend and enabling tacit workers to become more effective by having wikis, blogs, emails, text messages, and feeds to make communication and collaboration easier.

 

 

The next two trends are categorized under the “Managing Capital and Assets” heading.

 

 

The fifth trend is “Expanding the Frontiers of Automation,” companies will continue and expand their automation ability for tasks and processes that are repetitive.  For example, Fed-Ex and UPS have enabled users to track their packages online.  A major benefit would be to lower costs and help users get the information they need effortlessly in a timely manner.

 

 

The sixth trend is “Unbundling Production from Delivery,” uses existing business structures of large businesses (e.g. supply chain management, computing power, etc.) and rents this to other businesses.  From a supply side, this technology would attract asset-intensive businesses (e.g. factories, office buildings, etc.) to raise their utilization rates and therefore, their return on invested capital.  From a demand side, this technology would attract businesses that do not possess the economies of scale and scope to achieve competitive marginal costs. 

 

 

Unbundling also offers businesses quick and easy access to assets; that minimizes impact on their balance sheets; and makes their income statements more favorable.  For the businesses that offer unbundling, it decreases their marginal operational costs because of greater utilization of resources, and greater economies of scale and scope.  Companies need to manage possible supply and demand conflicts.  Examples have included the mobile phone networks and Amazon.com. 

 

 

Here is another example in this article that discusses the growth of APIs across many existing web platforms using existing computing power of large companies. (e.g. eBay, Amazon, etc.)

 

 

The last two trends are categorized under the “Leveraging information in new ways” heading. 

 

 

The seventh trend is “Putting more science into management,” companies are using statistics and other data to use internally and externally.  For an internal example, automotive companies will typically spend more on sales incentives and on advertising campaigns based on seasonality of sales and possible product lifecycle changes. For an external example, Listen.fm and Amazon.com both use customer segmentation systems that utilize recommendation engines that suggest certain items based on the user’s past history, and on other users’ preferences.

 

 

As mentioned in an earlier post, the costs for computing power and storage capacity will continue to fall; and the quality and quantity of information that will become available will rise. The increase in information will empower organizations, as it becomes becomes transparent to employees and suppliers, and the access to it becomes broadened. 

   

 

The eighth and final trend is “Making Business from information,” as now increasingly more data is captured by businesses and from varieties of sources; this could be beneficial for an information-based business opportunity.  Intermediary businesses that have access to greater quality and quantity of information can charge a premium for the aggregation and analysis of this data.  An example of this could be a security firm selling its video footage of a retail store to a market research firm studying retail consumer buying behavior. 

 

 

These aggregators need to be cautious, because they could be aggregated themselves. Their business model can continue to flourish in business to consumer shopping sites and business to business directories.

 

 

Companies need to be cognizant of these eight emerging trends.  Rather than reacting to it, companies can now use these trends to catalyze change and create opportunities as a result of this.

 

Just because a product/service is green, does everyone want it?

 

 

 

 

It seems that many products/services that are environmentally friendly would generate high consideration from consumers.  Is that the only factor for people’s decision to buy?

This article argues that without user friendly design, even if the product/service is green, it becomes difficult to market it.  The article continues to discusses how a milk processing company hired a design team to produce a jug that was able to reduce costs to the consumer while simultaneously increase the efficiency of its supply chain and create a green product.  It took a regular one gallon jug, transformed it, and made it into a boxy jug, which compared to a regular jug was easier to stack on top of each other.  Therefore efficiencies were realized during the bottling, transportation, and stocking process.  Since there were fewer trips involved in transportation, the savings in fuel and air pollution helped make this product green. 

 

 

 

 

The supplier was able to identify and understand the problem facing both the consumer and supply chain.  Sounds perfect, right?  Well, the problem is that the design of the jug made it difficult to pour milk without spilling due to the absence of a spout.  Instead of lifting the jug and pouring, this design required rocking the jug forward.  This is certainly not intuitive to the consumer.  From a supply-side sustainability perspective, this is a success.  But from a demand-side sustainability perspective, improvements are much

needed.

 

 

 

 

This article summarizes what factors are needed to ensure that both the supply and demand-side sustainability perspectives are met.  Here is a graphic from below.   

 

 

 

 

It also states that from the supply-side, results are easily quantifiable in the form of cost savings. From the demand-side, it is being able to identify with the needs of the customer, design a product around them, and making it desirable and green at the same time.  Market share and sales are the two identifiable metrics from the demand side.

 

 

 

 

By ensuring both the demand and supply side sustainability are met, the design of a product/service becomes a win/win proposition for both the suppliers and consumers.  Demand would increase as a result of user-friendly design, costs would be minimized as a result of the efficiencies gained from an optimal supply-side sustainability solution. 

Designing a business model that fosters innovation

 

 

 

 

Pixar has been successful in producing computer animated movies that melds technology with art, and has high quality animation and unpredictable storylines.  The CEO of the company discusses in this article how he was able to create and facilitate an organization culture that supports and fosters creativity.

 

 

There are constantly many new creative ideas that are incorporated into a movie.  The plot, camera shots, animation of the characters, lighting, animation of action shots and the sound all have specialists that have their own creative inputs.  It is the job of the director and producer to foster, incorporate and implement creative ideas. 

 

 

At Pixar, the business model is centered around incorporating everyone’s creative feedback.  Steve Jobs, the founder of Pixar wanted interaction between people, and he ensured the layout of the building was designed so people would have a better chance to encounter each other.  The location of many gathering places such as: meeting rooms, cafeteria, restrooms, etc. were all in a central location.  This certainly bucks the trend of many companies that have comparmentalized departments.

 

 

 

 

Usually most films are made by having the director form the main idea and theme, and then, the creative teams would build more ideas around this.  At Pixar, there are small functional teams that consist of the director, writer, animator and editor that would incubate new ideas.  Films would be produced from the best team’s idea.  The formation of the small groups enabled senior management to understand the group dynamics as well as enabled the creative participation of everyone.

 

 

 

Peer reviews and post mortems were methods to combat complacency and to improve focus. There was a board of advisors that consisted of eight directors.  They had an advisory role witthout decision making authority.  If the director of the film were to experience some problems, he/she could consult the board.  In the end, the director had the decision making authority.  This ensured the director maintained his/her creative integrity.  Therefore, this model encouraged peer review.  At the end of each day, different teams with different projects (all work in progress) showed their work to each other.  People from different functional areas were encouraged to have input.

  

 

 

The company believes strongly in learning.  As a result, Pixar University was formed.  This made employees well-rounded, and appreciated the tasks that other functional teams performed.  For example, the creative teams would take a business courses, and the business analysts would take some animation courses. 

 

 

By breaking down the traditional organizational hierarchy, and empowering and forming smaller functional teams, creativity in incubating and implementation of ideas is faciliated.  Having varying functional teams to conduct peer-review and post mortem sessions enables everyone in the organization to have a voice in the film making process.  Hiring people of different backgrounds, and having an organization that fosters and encourages learning ensures there are different viewpoints and minimizes groupthink.