User experience
User experience is the sum total of your customer's interactions with you. It's more than 'user interface', the design of a page of information. Interface is how your user gets things
done; experience is how he feels while doing it. It's the structuring of information into a coherent and unified customer journey.
While graphics, colour, text and typeface are its tools, user experience design in a web-based marketing campaign or CRM programme goes beyond smart art - it's goal-driven. And to understand user goals, you need to observe what users do in the real world. That's why user experience is a review-and-revise process, not something you dream up in the meeting room.
Four-fifths of it is deciding what the user's goals are. (Note: not the user's tasks. A simple form-based HTML page will answer the task of getting 3,000 names into a database; an application that extracts and inserts those names from emailed responses answers the user's goals far better.) That's where most user experience designs fail: not understanding that user goals are different to business purposes. Getting 3,000 names into a database isn't a goal; getting home on time is. So are not looking stupid, demonstrating how great you are to your boss, and having fun. A UI that answers tasks alone will fail; a UI that answers goals will succeed - and answer tasks at the same time.
Many user interface experts aren't famous for their web work; they're famous because they understand user goals. Bruce Tognazzini created the wonderful first Mac UI, while Alan Cooper's Visual Basic rewrote the book on software development. Richard Seymour of Seymour Powell designs products as far apart as underwear and vacuum cleaners, simply by thinking of them as goal-driven interfaces first and foremost.
That's why Chris can do user interface and user experience design without being expert in graphics or art direction: it's all about defining user goals. By looking at user experience, you can increase reach and frequency of customer visits (by giving them an easier time, and persuading them to stay longer) which lifts conversion rates (because more people are completing the customer journey ending in a sale.)
A customer experience project takes time and money. But Redpump's methods for executing one are the same as for IA, CS, or AD: talking to people and detailing their hopes and dreams. Next: one-to-one communications.