The Challenge
Avery, the leading manufacturer of mailing labels, faced an unusual business
problem. Most of its customers used Microsoft Word, but Word offers only
limited format options for printing labels. Also, Word's mail-merge function
was extremely hard to use for creating labels. Avery decided that it needed
to provide a better solution.
The Approach
HFI's experts began by interviewing a large number of Avery users. Most
said they wanted a simple way to format labels, but didn't want to buy
another program to do that. HFI decided that the best solution would be
a wizard within Word. It designed the wizard to reduce the most commonly performed tasks to a few simple steps.
The Outcome
User testing of the product showed dramatic results. While most people
found it hard to perform tasks with the native MS Word features, every
user succeeded easily with the new wizard.
The wizard now ships with every copy of Microsoft Office in the Value
Pack. Before Microsoft released it on CD, the wizard was available on
the Avery Web site, and when it was first posted 30- to 40,000 users downloaded
it every month. It also made PC Computing's list of the 100 best utilities. |
