User centricity is not just a concept for implementation in computerized protocols, federated identity management or CRM processes. Nor is it a corporate cliché, a marketing lip service for “we serve you best.
On the one hand it is a manifestation of corporate based top down business and process orientation of customer centric approaches that corporates, providers and organizations claim, in unilateral relationship schemes, based on their mediation, because they define all the factors, claiming that they know best what users need.
In that spirit, even in social networks users are deprived from direct access to many services or information strings and depend on mediation. Commercial offerings are wrapped in schemes of captivity, profile base stickiness and a golden cage of web services that menace users’ privacy and freedom. The centralization of provider-side service platforms makes sure that the data accumulated remain hosted on company’s servers, even when the architectures are cloud based.
Evolutions in customer centricity call for organizational change are able to create change by placing the user at the center of the design of the organizational systems, adapted to what they have learnt.
However, user centricity is more. It’s a culture, a paradigm, a lens.
At the other side of the spectrum is a holistic approach to user centricity that starts with taking the point of view of the individual and not that of the corporate or organization. A human point of view, of people flesh and blood that converse, engage, adapt and influence is different than that of corporates, even if those providers claim that they care about users.
The human side, really looking at the users and adapting a culture that puts them in the center, requires a paradigm shift. Looking at the digital world through a prismatic view of each individual creates a new vantage point for web based relations. Once we look at it as a people’s web, it’s an “I in the center” paradigm, where each user becomes a distinct anchor. In that paradigm the self sovereignty of users rules. They are independent, free, at the center of systems that serve them, equal partners to the processes and food chains created around them, with total control of their data, privacy and sharing – pulling services at their choices.
Even though technologically or commercially the paradigm is not applicable, the culture is already fermenting. User side services are beginning to bud, the road is still long. Yet the free spirit, independent state of mind and natural sense of entitlement that real user centricity required, should become adapted by organizations who want to adapt to the emerging digital landscape where users are the real center.
Author frequently writes about user centricity and social marketing. To know further about icentric, internet, web marketing, new business models, digital advertising, and user centered initiatives from author see – http://usercentricity.weebly.com
