Here is an interesting new technology I saw in a CVS in Hilton Head South Carolina — a coupon printing kiosk.
I of course tried it out.
2 observations.
1-A shopper can only really see it when they are standing in the checkout line or leaving the store.
2-it looks much better than the coupons that print out from the cash register.
My dad asked what I taught the students at SCAD yesterday. And so I had to explain bodystorming to him.
I said, you know that show you like “Whose line it is anyways?” with Drew Carey and they have actors/comedians who stand around in teams and Drew throws roles, situations, and ideas at them and they have to roll with it and come up with a convincing story.
Well, we do the same thing except I throw system, business, and other kinds of problems at them. Its a fun game.
Then, instead of having to read through a 100 page requirements document, someone can watch the 1-2 minute skit (or video of the skit) and get the idea.
Here is a nice bus stop ad, outside the Sears store on Madison, between State and Dearborn in Chicago. Look at how the bag is suspended and allows you to see through to the other side of the display. Also notice the lighting and the use of front and back “posterboard” as a mat. It presents the bag as sculpture, as artwork and has the viewer read this experienced object as museum worthy.
Pete Wendel shared with me a great article, its old, but a goodie. Here are what I think are the absolute highlights from “Will Meaningful Brand Experiences Disrupt Your Market” by David Norton.
(p18)
1980s – Consumers satisfied w/products & services that combined a compelling brand image with unique design features (things from The Sharper Image store)
1990s – Consumers demand experiences (cruises and theme restaurants)
2000s – Consumers demand meaningful brand experiences (American Girl Place)
(p19)
This Disruptive Innovation Shift is “people . . . getting goods, services, and experiences that are more meaningful, that produce cultural capital.”
(P21)
.”… think like a social entrepreneur. How can you realize the most value for consumers in a way that improves their ability to share, learn, be transformed, and care? How can you be the channel by which things that matter happen?”
(p24)
We have progressed from design being about making things simple and easy to design being about making people care.”
Reference
Will Meaningful Brand Experiences Disrupt Your Market? By David W. Norton in Design Management Review Fall 2005
Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, June 8-11, 2010, McCormick Place West, Chicago, IL, America’s Largest E-Commerce Event
6,000 Attendees, 175 Expert Speakers, and 407Exhibiting Companies
IRCE 2010 Time to Reboot – Get Ready for E-Retailing’s Return to Double-Digit Growth
The conference started off with the keynote given by our own president -Imran Jooma who spoke about mobile commerce and social media. He showed some great videos that showed how our products and services play out in the everyday life of our customers.
Kurt Peters, the editor in Chief, Internet Retailer gave a stat that in 2009 online experienced a 10%. Then he said that channel neutrality is dead and that equal investing in both offline and online is not the way to go.
Two of the more interesting examples talked about were
Dennis McEniry of Estee Lauder talked about how “A worldwide brand goes world wide on the web” and how they has a great global website that was localized through country specific skin care videos. “Don’t be on social if you’re not on brand.” He also talked about twitter use and how they use it to reinforce their authority to talk about certain topics. It is also interesting that they use their service counter reps to do online service part time in the store, or when they go home. And how in Germany how they adopted using “open invoice” which isn’t in use anywhere else in the world, but accounts for 60% of their orders. He also cautioned about mobile commerce being very different country to country.
Moosejaw talked about engagement. That more engaged users are ones who have more purchased products. They have a very funky brand.
Paul Bovisant, the lead product manager from yahoo talked about spotting incompatible buyer groups/messaging and seeing those as opportunity to split off this product line to a new buyer persona. Such as dog collars for house pet owners versus hunting dog owners.
Eric Peterson, CEO & Chief Consultant, Web Analytics Demystified. figuring out spending your money. He said that in terms of staffing you would take your budget and put 50% toward people and 50% on technology.
Geoffrey Robertson, GM & VP, ecommerce, Whitney Automotive Group talk about how his company has become internet centric. In the last 9 years, the company has shifted from 5% Internet sales to 80%. He asked, “Have you challenged your culuture?” “Do you view technology as a cost center or a revenue generating engine.”
Tony Ellison of Shoplet presented on “Competing Against Industry Giants.” Showed a case study of the “Green Your Cart” Tool. Which added a button labeled “See the Green Alternative” to the product’s sell story.
Stephanie Tilenius, Vice President of ecommerce at Google. She talked about the four big trends: Mobile, Social, Personalized, and Local. And went in depth into each. Then she differentiated between “the PC-web versus the Mobile-web.” She gave examples of seeing spikes in the mobile-web during commute time and weekends. Though her presentation was titled on ecommerce, it seemed that mobile was the most important; so much that she said they are “betting on mobile first.”
Andrew Daniel, Jim McNally, and Dennis Schleicher went to the IRCE 2010 Conference
What’s old is new again.
Companies are focusing on the trends of Mobile, Social, and User Generated Content. If you look at humans as a species, we are bipeds with opposable thumbs that live in groups.
Bipeds – Locomotion (walking, running, or hopping) around from place to place.
Opposable Thumbs – This is what led to the development of tools and the accurate fine motor skills made possible writing.
Live in Groups – People do not spread out and disperse across open space, we live close to others, work close to others, and have fun close to others. It is extremely rare to find a person who chooses to live completely alone.
New………………… Old
Mobile Bipedal
Social. Live in groups
Content creator Opposable thumbs.
I last dinner last night with Greg Prang, an old buddy back from when we were in business anthropology grad school together. He was in town for work. He is at the Hartman Group working as a business anthropologist. Nice!
He was telling me about the great work he is doing there on “occasions” and investigating the world of occasions. Previously I blogged about “need states” and I think occasions are the next step along the path from need states. I see need states as having grown out of the work on shopping ecologies and how e-commerce spaces can fully take advantage of different shopping ecologies. With the megatrend growth in mobile shopping, these ecologies have blended and become co-located with occasions giving us even more blue-ocean opportunities for innovation.
User Experience might find this framework the most interesting/useful:
Instrumental >> Savoring >> Inspirational
Don’t think about products that you are launching. Think about experience design as designing for “occasions.” This framework is a strategic way to think about your customers’ occasions” and developing new products. Look at using this framework as a way to drive innovation especially on service design and mobile devices in which context can change rapidly.
References
Yesterday I organized a uxSEARS extracurricular-activity, after work for some of our user experience architects, we played “Social Mania: Designing Social Interfaces.” It is basically a pattern library of social rules for building great social experiences.
Players form teams & compete with to develop the best experiences before time runs out. The team that ship products delivering the best experience win.
The Objectives are to:
• Build a social digital product around an object for a specific audience delivered in a specific way.
• Deliver a well rounded product (with features across Identity, Activities, and Relationships) in a defined time frame.
• Work as a team to collaborate and build the best products
We had Pete Wendel, Pete Simon, Mark Geotz, Ariel Rudolph, Victor Pinto, Emil Gentolizo and myself.
We produced 4 products in 1 hour and had a lot of fun. People afterwards told me:
•It breeds innovating thinking & gets your creative juices flowing
• It helps one realize how many different components there can really be and could be considered for any social system
• It was fun and collaborative
Based on the results I think it would an excellent thing to do with any designers working in this space and even with your product management teams.
If you are here in Chicago and are interesting in trying it out, drop me a line. I am always up for teaching others about this very cool game. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Ph.D. or anything in social media or user interface engineering, it is easy to get the hang of it, you just have to be interested in and open to stretching your mind into the social media and social business space.
It’s about what I will like next.
It seems the latest UI pattern is to allow people to “like” something online. When something becomes the fashion I start wondering what’s next. “Interesting” is the next “like.”
“Like” is a “lie” in sheep’s clothing
My reasons are beyond Robert Schoble’s observations that “like” is more of “lie.” Schoble writes about why he doesn’t truthfully “like” the things online that he really “likes,” that he would “rather be seen as someone who eats salad at Pasta Moon than someone who eats a Big Mac at McDonalds.” Over 50 years ago Mason Haire found the same thing with housewifes reluctant to admit they “liked” instant coffee. If he asked them why they didn’t say they bought it, they said ‘I don’t like the flavor.” But he discovered that people’s real reason for not admitting they purchased instant coffee was more truthfully “People will think I am lazy and not a good wife.” Here is the crux of the “lie” in “like.” Though this is insightful, I want to go beyond Schoble and Haire. We are in the midst of a deep cultural trend in our society that is driven by curiosity, toward future “likes”, and that is best summed up as things that are “interesting.”
Nobody has hobbies anymore
People no longer talk about hobbies or do we hear people say “You’ve got to get yourself a hobby.” The 2 most popular hobbies – #1 is reading, #2 is watching TV really don’t give insight into people. But if you know what they are INTERESTED in reading, well that is a different story. A story with tension and drama.
Interesting isn’t a metadata attribute, It’s an alley-oop
Something by itself isn’t interesting. It can’t be measured like a length, width, or color. Interestingness is more than the number of people that “like” something. I like water and I like food. I am interested in cheap Mexican food that is good and doesn’t upset my stomach. More than knowing what my friend likes, if I know what he is interested in, we have something to talk about and to share. Relationships based on affinity, such as liking dogs, are ok, but don’t give much entry point in which I can share something with the other person. If I know that someone is interested in something it tells me that they are curious about it, that they want to know more. That gives me an entry point, that gives me something to possibly share with them. Like doesn’t open the door, it isn’t an “alley-oop” for me to slam dunk a conversation starter with someone. Interesting is the game winning slam dunk.
Interesting is all about the juxtaposition
Things have a tendency to become interesting when you put them next to something else. Michael Leis wrote about juxtaposition and how just putting things next to each other can build interest. He argues that the positioning is that which create curiosity, it is the positioning that we want to make sense out of. We are sense-making animals. It isn’t just about how many people like something. A better way to take “like” to the level of interesting is to bring in more juxtapositions. Show a person and the different things they like. Or put the things in order of what they liked. But the truth of the matter is that we gotta take like up a notch, take it to 11, take it to interesting.
References
Mason Haire, “Projective Techniques in Marketing Research,” Journal of Marketing, Vol 14 (April, 1950), pp 649-656
Juxtaposition by Michael Leis which is in his presentation Designing Narrative: Contrast, Timing, and Context
This coming Wednesday night we are going to play Social Mania: Designing Social Interfaces. The Game. We are looking forward to using this to help us imagine and build the best social experience we possibly can. Who says User Experience Architects aren’t a fun loving group.
I am a huge proponent of using games to help people come up with ideas. Work, Games, and Fun are not mutually exclusive.
In Social Mania, players form teams that compete with each other to develop and deliver the best experiences before time runs out. The team that ships products delivering the best experiences over a period of four quarters (20 minutes) will score the most points and win the game! But watch out—the other teams may sabotage your best efforts by playing anti-patterns.
I got a deck of the Social Mania: Designing Social Interfaces, the game right from Erin Malone’s hands. I first learned of the game at the Overlap where Erin and Christian we prototyping the deck and we were real guinea-pigs for what has become an awesome way to get up to speed on design patterns in the social experience space. I’d argue that Erin and Christian in the updated versions have really taken it’s focus beyond social media to be able social business.
She and Christian Crumlish do have a new 3.1 version of the game, but I have the 2nd Edition.
References
Here is the link to the website (and the book)
http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/
Here is the link to the game, $30
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/social-mania-designing-social-interfaces—beta-3