TibetanTailor

Connectile Dysfunction by Mark Baskinger

A great read in UX Magazine. Almost a must read if you are looking into how interaction design can feed into industrial design.

Key concepts

1. Design for Impact and Design for Experience
2. Refrigerator- design of an organizational system for cold storage
3. Boomer and Elderly similarities and differences
4. Co-design
5. Steering Wheels as insight for stove knobs (unified product forms and interactions)
6. Strike Zones

Big Themes

1. Integrating interaction into form
2. Situated interaction in environmental context
3. Express through physical/visual form
4. Narrating the interaction

The movie Salt gives us insight into deep culture's conception of how many profiles one person can have.

Observation: In the movie Salt and in other spy movies we have seen a move from a single profile of a spy (James Bond) to a multiple profile spy (Salt) in which Salt is a spy, a counter-spy, and a counter-counter-spy. People nowadays seem to have no problem following this plot line  and character  (the wilderness of mirrors.) This is addition to her 2 "cover" profiles which would exist in each national culture.

Observation: In high schools now kids are no longer exclusively nerds, jocks, stoners, etc. Each of these can be short-lived roles even within a single day.

Observation: Facebook and Linked in are used by the same people in very different ways.

The Question: How many different profiles can a person have? And, how many different profiles of 1 person can other people keep track of?

Answer: I think the answer is 3 to 5. We see Facebook, LinkedIn, and usually peoples corporate in-company profile, and their personal profile (usually mediated through the channels of email/phone-calls/text messages. From the movie Salt we see 5. It is without a doubt more than 1.

References

Chris Messina talked about people having 5 profiles in NY at the Overlap event.

Why spies, counter-spies, and counter-counter spies are so popular right now.

The Official Site for the Movie Salt

Comments on high-school groups (I'm still looking for my reference)

See Also

Shoptimism

Build anticipation

At Akira, on State Street in Chicago I found this window display and thought it a good example of building anticipation. "New Shipment Coming Soon!"

Rothman's Warehouse storefront makes it look like it would be piled high with boxes inside. What an interesting window display.

Last year at Overlap Cindy Chastain talked about screen-writing and scenes and people used those improve their bodystorming. At one point in the weekend she distilled her wisdom into 5 points.

1. POV. Whose story are you telling? (Ask: Who are you telling it to?)
2. Set up the scene" The Big Problem is "this"
3. Inciting Incident: "What if" (concept elaborated)
4. Climax: Result" How it solved problem
5. Resolution: How the main character feels about it

If you come to my Bodystorming in the Park in New York next Month we will be working with some of these 5 points to take your bodystorming to the next level.

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

• The Art of the Trench by Burberry
• Levi’s Friend Store “I Like”

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