aplo | designing experiences

Conducting yourself into great leadership

2009-10-29T19:39:34+00:00

Itay Talgam gives an inspiring TED presentation on leadership styles. It is really worth watching.

The aim of a good leader appears to be doing without doing. Here is the summary of the different leadership style:
The Muti: commanding, authoritarian, directive, almost dictatorial. It uses the team ‘as instruments not partners’. This approach produces results but stifles the team. It is all about the leader and his responsibilities, career
The Strauss: ‘Let it happen by itself, do not interfere’. Though it may look quite liberating, this approach does not allow much room for interpretation, as the team needs to act ‘by the book’. The control here is applied by reminding the team of the ‘official story’ that needs to be told.
The Von Karajan: The worst damage a leader can do to a team is to give it a clear instruction. Again this appears quite liberating but there is pressure on the team to guess the leader’s views, ideas, planes, etc. Having said that it seems to encourage teamwork, as the team needs to work together to realise the leader’s vision
The Kleiber: This approach is about letting the team add their own work, ideas, and interpretations. Control is applied by the forces of the process itself not the commanding leader. The team become partners as they know the process but there are no clear instructions provided by the leader. The leader has and needs to exercise authority but authority is not enough to make the team into partners. The leader supports, motivates, compliments, encourages but also reminds the team of the need to be professional. It can be quite exciting but demanding at the same time.
The Bernstein: enabling the individuals in the team to express themselves. It seems to me that this is part of the Kleiber approach.

my country needs me

2009-10-09T19:05:26+01:00

Transactional Greek websites...hm definitely a misnomer.
Here is my tale: I am travelling to Athens in November and my wife found out about a dance performance by Dimitris Papaioanou, the guy behind the Athens Olympics ceremonies. So I though I'll book tickets. Off I go to the National Theatre's website and after 20 minutes literally fighting with the website and booking process I think I booked 2 tickets. I say 'think' because I have yet to receive an email confirmation. Some highlights from my online mini ordeal:

The service offered by www.ticketservices.gr randomly assigns seats. I could not select my own seat, though i could see plans of the auditorium
The selection is valid for 15 minutes regardless of whether you need to register your details or not
Once details have been entered you have no option to make changes, for example give another telephone number or correct a mistake
It is not clear whether tickets are posted to you or whether you can collect them at the box office. Actually I had to call them and ask!
There is no way of logging out which means you need to clear the browser's history to avoid others accessing your details
There is no indication as to whether the site is secure (other than the https:)
After you or rather I have naively shared my credit card details, you get a minimal confirmation of no real use
There is no email confirmation

I could go on and on but it simply makes me mad. I now know why Greece lacks transactional websites. It is becasue the concept of customer experience and user centred design is unknown to the agencies building web services. No wonder Greeks are suspicious of e-retail, I do not blame them.

Off to call my credit card company to make sure my account has not been emptied by some wise guys in downtown Athens

Poor old TV sceens

2009-09-30T15:14:00+01:00

I can listen to music, check my email, inspect the weather, find out how to get from Bow to Chelsea on the bus, check the pictures my wife has uploaded on flickr, do some shopping, see when my sister’s flight lands in London, and check the TV schedule. All that on my iPhone’s 3.5-inch display.
So, why is it that I can do none of this, on my 19 inch (I know I need to upgrade) TV screen? Admittedly I can check the TV schedule but Sky’s solution baffles me and I find myself going back to my iPhone for a better experience. Even widget frames (see IHT) offer more than the good old TV.
I know I can get something like Apple TV but I really do not want to spend more on gadgets + my TV will simply become another display for my beloved Mac. I am talking about a service offered through providers like BT, Sky, or Virgin. Even American cable providers like Verizon and AT&T have started offering some useful interactivity. So Sky over to you….

Designing for the extremes

2009-09-30T14:02:26+01:00

There seems to be an increase in products designed specifically for the elderly (IHT Sept 7th). Apparently populations are aging and the elderly (what does that mean exactly?) have more cash to spend so designers and manufacturers are after a slice of the grey dollar, pound, yen, or euro. Ok, this is good, though the motive: make more and more money, is not what I would have wished. In the IHT article experts talk about how firms want to ‘know how to adapt their products’ and that there is a clear need to create ‘senior-friendly’ products. This is where I get confused.

Can you really adapt a product designed for one type of user to suit the needs of a different user? As Alan Cooper said many years ago, sand a chair as much as you like, it will never turn into a table. Rather than try to adapt a product why not do the unthinkable and start by looking at people’s needs, motivations, and experiences and let this insight drive the design?

Which leads me to the second point: ‘senior- friendly products’? What the … does that mean? Does it mean creating products based on a designer’s assumptions of ‘elderly’ people’s needs, which will certainly result in a product patronising its users? Products for the elderly do not need to be targeted to the ‘elderly’ or look like they are made for them. OXO and Smart Design are making beautiful objects that anyone would like though they can be based on the needs of a specific user group.

My final point is that grouping users by age may work for marketers but not for designers, grouping users by needs, abilities, motivations, etc, that makes sense

I was here

2009-09-29T18:20:13+01:00

This reminds me of those cheap T-shirts you can buy in any main metropolis that proudly states you’ve been in NY, London, Paris etc. what if you instead of taking something with you left something behind?

This picture was taken at Rough Trade on Brick Lane in East London. For £3 customers can take pictures of themselves in an old photo booth and then post them on the wall. Who needs Twitter!

Life at the airport

2009-09-29T15:14:19+01:00

Alain de Botton’s done it again. The author, cultural commentator, and philosopher-cum-ethnographer has just published his new book: ‘A week at the airport: A Heathrow Diary’, offering a unique, I hope, insight into the fascinating world of air travel. As Heathrow’s writer in residence, de Botton spent a week at terminal 5 at Heathrow observing, commenting and reflecting on the world of travel. More on this soon as I am expecting the book to arrive in the post in the next few days.

years on, and they still try to rip customers off

2009-09-26T14:31:21+01:00

Online shopping is maturing, right? e-retailers understand the value of offering a good service as a way of retaining customers, surely this is true, right? Unfortunately this is not the case according to a recent survey conducted in 28 EU countries that examined 369 sites selling electronic goods (and reported in the IHT). The survey concluded that 55% of the sites reviewed showed irregularities like not being open about returns policy, delivery charges, contact information. Basically all the things that customers want and need to know about in order to hit that ‘buy’ button.
No wonder customers can be weary of shopping online.

On the same theme, most airline websites automatically opt customers in into extra services like insurance leaving it to them to un-tick the boxes, if they realise it that is, so when scolded airlines gave a persuasively childlike answer: ‘we’ll stop doing it if the others stop first’

outsourcing the customer experience

2009-09-26T14:09:11+01:00

Can parts of a customer experience be outsourced to 3rd parties and still maintain a seamless brand experience across touchpoints? Monocle’s recent decision to bring their subscription service in-house after some not so favourable customer feedback shows it is harder than probably imagined. If a small, but strong, brand like Monocle found it hard to get a third party to behave and deliver a decent brand experience to its subscribers, then what hope do mega brands have?
Outsourcing certainly helps with managing costs and getting a service to market quicker than attempting it in-house; but to what cost to the brand and its reputation? What businesses see as interim solutions carrying a small risk of not getting it exactly right are exacerbated online via social media.

Is it really worth it?

peculiar yet interesting buying suggestions

2009-07-06T21:35:25+01:00

After placing a man's jacket in the shopping basket on Asos, I was presented with this helpful 'complete the look' suggestion (see image); I am not really sure what I am supposed to do with this? :)

data or insight?

2009-05-17T18:35:24+01:00

A few months ago Douglas Bowman, the lead visual designer at Google (now at Twitter) quit his job and used his blog to explain why. Basically he was fed up with the data-led approach to design. He argued that at Google 'data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.' A recent article in the NY Times debates the argument for and against user involvement in making design decisions. While on the surface the Google approach appears to be different to the one expressed by design and innovation experts quoted in the article, a closer look reveals that the differences are less pronounced. The argument for user insight, one that I strongly believe in, is relevant for all innovation firms including Google which I am sure runs a pretty good design research department. The argument for data lead design is one that still has its place after design research has identified solutions, innovations, and new approaches. basically you do design research to develop insights and design ideas and then data can help refine the design. So as long as data helps refine the designs and does not dictate it, I am fine with it.