Sebastian Milec — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:44 GMT

Jonathan, thank you for your tactful comment. Were you unable to understand the concept or do you just oppose utilizing it in the field of user experience design? Using market segments to drive the design of products and services is not a novel idea, but one that is sometimes missed in web site design. This practice has been a fundemental conept in the field of marketing since its inception. Few would argue that addressing various market segments in product and service design is a flawed notion. In fact, by designing with personas in mind, we often do design for market segments. Of course, there are a number of ways to segment market segments and the article covers one that we have found to effectively increase our clients revenue. Perhaps a more intelligent and constructive comment would have critiqued the specific points made in the article rather than offer embarassingly juvenile jabs at a service mark that you misread.

Madonnalise, thank you for sharing your points. I completely agree with your comments. Sometimes, it is impossible to address a broad range of market segments and the designer has to focus on one or a few. Nonetheless, I believe that by addressing user segments of varying interest and motivation levels, we can design user experiences that appeal to a greater number of users. I have seen this to be especially true for commerce web sites.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Sebastian Milec