“ ‘Who’s in charge of our user experience?’ Umm… maybe ask that guy?”

It was a question we posed to every company, and no one had a definitive answer — a scary thought considering these IT providers were promoting their wares to retailers, the very creators of “consumer experience.”

Who should be in charge of your software company’s user experience? Is it the product manager of your top-selling application? Your CTO, who oversees your technology decisions? Your sales director, who is in charge of all marketing activities for your full product line? Your brand manager…if you have one?

It doesn’t really matter who the particular person is, so long as she or he is identifiable and has the knowledge and power to authorize and direct a global UI effort across your entire product family. The commonly held belief is “good design requires a dictator, not a committee.” Our recommendation is to place this responsibility in the trusty hands of someone as close to the top of your company’s pyramid as you can.

A closing note

Although we might summarize our NRF experience by saying that we saw a lot of room for improvement, we would be amiss if we didn’t congratulate the retail-IT sector for doing a bang up job of developing smart technology solutions that help retailers of all sizes bring efficiencies to their supply chains, improve productivity in back-end and front-end operations, and generally stay alive in a cutthroat business.

While it may be disappointing that none of the companies we met with knew who was in charge of their user experience, it was encouraging to hear that around 85% agreed that user experience is important. That’s a 50% increase from last year’s show.

We’re getting through.