Chief Technology Officer, Forrester Research
Search every verified Michael Facemire interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Michael Facemire, Chief Technology Officer at Forrester Research, has spoken at industry events in 2015 and 2016 about the shift toward customer-centric digital experiences. In a 2016 keynote, he argued that businesses must build great customer experiences rather than simply digitizing existing data, citing USAA's mobile check deposit as an example of focusing on customer needs. He noted that users spend most of their mobile time on a few major apps and generally do not want to open additional apps, and he emphasized that connecting traditional back-end systems to new front-end experiences is the primary challenge in building digital solutions. Facemire also highlighted JavaScript and Node.js as key technologies for coordinating modern systems, and he pointed to web components and service workers as important standards for enabling offline capabilities and cross-platform development. In a 2015 presentation, Facemire discussed the need to move from a data-driven to a customer-obsessed mindset, advocating for a feedback-driven development lifecycle that delivers minimum viable products quickly and iterates based on analytics. He described composition as the future of development, arguing that teams must assemble reusable components rather than writing new code from scratch. Facemire also pointed to embedded experiences like Google Now and Siri as the next step in composability, where devices proactively stitch together information for users. He noted that delivery timelines have compressed from 12–18 months to 2–4 months, and he encouraged organizations to adopt open-source tools from leading companies rather than viewing themselves as behind.
“Welcome to year five of the age of the customer. We need to build great customer experiences to succeed in our businesses, not just create a representation of our data.”
“USAA figured out that instead of shrinking their web experience to mobile, they focused on what customers really want, like depositing checks through mobile by taking a picture, which advanced their business by creating a great customer experience.”
“Folks spend about 50 hours per month on their phones, looking at about six unique apps per day, with the majority of time spent on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft apps. Generally, customers don't want to open your app.”
“The biggest challenge in building digital experiences is connecting traditional back-end systems, which power our business, to the new front-end experiences on mobile devices and web.”
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