Making Companies Competitive by Expanding Design’s Role

It’s miserable to be sitting at an airport gate, hearing that the airline has cancelled the very flight you were hoping to board. You now get to enter a special type of air travel hell, where the airline works (without seeming to care) to get you on another flight to your destination. Most of the flights are full and those that aren’t only have a few empty seats. You’re stuck and the airline can’t quite deliver on its simple promise of delivering you to your destination.

That’s frustration. Frustration is the stock and trade of the airline industry.

Frustration is also one end of the ways we can measure a user experience, with delight being its polar opposite. Decisions—design decisions, in fact—are what determine if a customer is delighted or frustrated. The decision to cancel the flight created the frustration.

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