A 25-year veteran of the design and technology industries, Terry Swack hopped on the Internet bus a little earlier that most of us. As founder, in 1994, of web strategy firm TSDesign, and later Green Building Blocks and BlueEgg, she has witnessed firsthand consumers' enthusiasm for (and resistance to) adopting new green products and technologies. She now heads up Clean Culture, a customer experience research and strategy consultancy focused on making clean tech and sustainable products more understandable and desirable. We asked Terry how the concept of user experience has helped shape her approach to product design.

SLM: What's "user experience strategy" and how can companies harness it to drive product sales in the environmental arena?

Terry: Also referred to as "customer experience strategy" or "customer-centered strategy," "user experience strategy" involves creating products and services based on a deep understanding of who your target users will be. You've got to begin with an understanding of the people for whom you're creating the product to know what would be most relevent, useful or appealing. Typically this process results in some redefinition of the product, or the discovery of a new user group, or "segment," within the market that might become the focus for the product. By better understanding the needs and challenges of your target user you can create a product that best meets the market need.

Green Building Blocks.com is a great example of this process. I first became interesting in green building in 2005, when increasing homeowner demand for green building began to outstrip the industry's ability to deliver qualified services, and building professionals could see building green as a profitable new trend. At events and conferences I met plenty of architects, designers, builders and contractors who wanted to build green, but to do so had to acquire a lot of new knowledge about process, collaboration and products. I created Green Building Blocks based on my understanding of these professionals, who needed the ability to source, evaluate and contact other qualified professionals to collaborate with on projects. The site enables them to build an online profile that includes a description of their company, all their credentials (education, certifications, specializations) and relevant experience around building green, plus a portfolio of their projects with case studies and images. Today it's by far the largest directory of residential green building professionals anywhere."

SLM: Your first company, TSDesign, was an Internet strategy and product design firm founded in 1994 the infancy of the Web. Do you see any parallels between our initial adoption of Internet technology and any barriers to adopting greener product technologies?

Terry: Yes, as a matter of fact it's these similarities that prompted me to start Clean Culture. New technology trends are generally started by the technologists, but they can only take it so far. Technologists started building web sites, but by around 1994-5, people began to realize that more folks than just programmers were needed to build a successful online business. You needed business and design people to make something that people would want, use and pay for. The challenge to adopting any new technology is, first, creating something useful, and then explaining to people what it is and why they'd want it. How do you demystify the benefits of technology? People don't really care how stuff works they care about what they can get done or how their life will be made better by using your product. It's the same challenge with green tech. A whole range of people and skills are required to make new clean and greentech products useful, understandable and desirable.

SLM: How does a consumer-oriented website like BlueEgg.com help "power the demand for clean and green products and services"?

Terry: When I founded The Beam [now BlueEgg] in 2005, the initial focus was on teaching people about clean energy and energy efficiency through a very mainstream consumer brand experience. The site's collection of Web 2.0 technologies and tools provided something for everyone consumers, manufacturers, and green building service providers. The idea came from watching the tremendous investment growth in the cleantech space, but realizing consumers had no idea of what existed today, what was coming, or what could even be possible in the future. Because of this lack of awareness, demand for clean and green products hadn't been there. The goal was to show consumers the realities and possibilities to enable them to make better purchase decisions. The other side is that the makers of clean and green products want to sell their products in places where there are qualified leads, i.e. educated and motivated consumers. In essence, we designed an online space that both creates more demand and helps fulfill that demand. We've since broadened the content portion of the site to reach a larger, mainstream audience. There's a lot of educating and motivating to do to move people from apathy to action. That's the impetus for me to work on Clean Culture to better understand what needs to happen in both the consumer space and the manufacturing space so there will be more great green products that people will want to buy.

SLM: Research has shown that most consumers don't really understand the term "sustainability." How can companies hone their marketing message to both educate the consumer and sell their product without losing audience attention?

Terry: What it comes down to is a user-centered approach. If you really know who your target customers are, you'll know if they want to be educated or if they just want to know how a particular product is going to make a difference. People don't buy products, they buy solutions to problems. The most recent Yankelovich green report shows that most consumers still don't see the environment as a problem. Marketers have to help them not only to understand the problem, but to actually care about it. It's a matter of making it personally relevant and that their actions matter. But even the greenest consumers don't use sustainability as their primary decision criteria. The green product has to work as well or better than as the other, and be priced relatively the same. Then they'll look at the green attributes. To sell a product you've got to understand what your consumer knows and values, and therefore what they'll need to understand before making that purchase decision.

SLM: What will you be speaking about at the conference?

Terry: My talk is about sustainable product design and greening the marketplace. Why aren't there more green products out there that people understand and want to buy? How do product design teams within companies learn to design better, more sustainable products? Unlike green building, there is no U.S. Green Building Council equivalent in this space yet that can train and accredit sustainable product designers. There are literally hundreds of databases, software, methods, and approaches available, making it daunting for design teams to determine what they need to know and how to execute. We're just at the beginning of significant change.