TibetanTailor

Here are 2 photos of the ceilings at Isaac’s Deli. These would be great ceilings in any design studio, yet we find them in a restaurant.

“I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” — Maya Angelou

Mark Schraad blogged “Should we treat our bosses like we treat our kids?” (06062011). He wrote “Teaching them to love themselves is key…then and only then can they find happiness.”

As an advocate of customer happiness, how does this relate? How can we teach our customers to love themselves?

And how do we keep it real? How to we not let it enable narcissistic disorders.  More than just people loving the image of themselves, but actually love themselves.

In Facebook you can like your own posts.  On twitter you can favorite and reply to your own tweets. But that just keeps yourself as an object and image. What  could these organizations be doing to help people grow?

How can social media help people who might be empty on the inside, grow a real Self to bring to their relationships with other people? “Interesting” offers a good direction. People developing and pursuing interests is an important part of growing a real Self.

What else?

References

Mark Schraad’s Blog

Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. (NYT May 28, 2011)

“Interesting” is the new like

Happy Customers

This “Intro to Digital Practice” by Mark Waldo is an article that melds digital planning with UX from the perspective of an ad agency. If Mark presents this in person I’d sure like to be in the audience.

Top Ideas

• Bringing “the skills and needs of business planning together with customer insights.”
• “…each team starting with client services adds more resolution to the product with each deliverable. Each discipline’s deliverable becomes a better and better prototype of the final product.”
• “Digital strategy is something that is lead out of a team not pushed at them.”
• “Great strategists know how to bring the right people together . . . think with others on the team.”
• “Methodology … reflects a studio’s soul.”

Reference

Intro to Digital Practice

Using Mobile Phones to Capture Customer Experiences

Their two main conclusions are 1 Track your customers brand experience in real time and 2 Capture all touchpoints.
A thought on how to execute . . .

Have it impact your designs in “real time,” so have the real time feeds (activity streams) be viewable on large monitor in working areas or hallways of your company. Or have them be appended in 2s or 3s onto the bottom of email messages (like signatures, but from these customers) so that they offer a customer voice on on going projects and conversations.

“One important reason for this (working longer hours and having greater demands on our time) is that a high standard of living presupposes an economy of innovation and change. But innovation and change make inordinate time demands on the executive.  All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done.” – Peter Drucker

What do we do in terms of UX processes and practices that help us innovate and think of things in ways that we don’t already know and to do things differently than we have always done them?

We were shopping at the Christmas Tree Store over the weekend. They have shopping carts in the BACK of the store. So if you are in there shopping and you are in the back of the store and you didn’t get a shopping cart when you walked in the front door and you now find yourself with too many things to carry – no problem – just get a shopping cart right there – no need to go back to the front of the store (or worse – no need to put anything down.)

It seems inevitable that Amazon will be soon living in a post sales tax world. Here’s one idea on how that might change Amazon’s strategy . . .

Potential Scenario

Amazon has an edge right now. They don’t pay state sales tax. It gives them an advantage that perhaps 5% over competitors who have a psychical store in a state (which makes them pay the tax.) I see the state budget situation forcing states to force amazon to collect.

Impact & Change

If that happens, Amazon wouldn’t have any reason not to invest in physical locations. How could they do that quickly? Rite-Aid.

They have 4800 locations in 31 states.  Drive through!

Disclosure

I own Rite Aid stock.