Customer & User Experience

One of my previous post was about a experience I had with Zappos and how satisfied I felt with the company. Today I came across a article ( link), I was very glad to read the article for the following reasons:

1. I have always been a advocate of the marriage between user experience and marketing. As author mentioned designers should try to not just solely concentrate on designs but also focus on how the designs have to be worked in order to meet marketing needs.
2. Although I enjoyed my grad school classes due it's interdisciplinary nature, I felt our exposure with marketing teams was non- existent. IUB having one of the best business schools of this nation ( kelley business school), can think of a course requiring business school students and HCI students working together.
3. Author indicates that UX could loose it's steam if UX designers and corporations don't educate the marketing and UX teams about the importance of working with each other. Some workshops in companies where both teams spend time on some dummy projects could be useful. This indication by author is also a reflection of one of the areas User Experience professionals should try to improve upon to get more visibility with upper management.

Sometimes I read the comments and I found a model being used by a company based out of UK to fill the gap between designers and marketing teams. The model proposed by the company is named " Brand Touch Point Matrix" ( link).

Dhanyavad ( Thank You).