There is this notion in society that events or interaction models center around a single person.  No where is this more true than with the concept of Father’s Day.  While the name of the event insinuates it is a day around one person it is in fact a day of family; father’s and their children doing things together.  Television is another area where I think this notion has been misunderstood.  If we look back at the history of television it is a very social event.  People even have parties around major television events like the final episode of classic shows or big sporting events.  Watching television alone is sometimes analogized to riding the chairlift alone in skiing.  There simply needs to be someone else there with which to share the moment.

While television in the 1950s through 1980s in the United States was a very social event, in recent years the advent of more screens and the move of TV onto the computer through IPTV has caused it to lose much of its social capital.  There is however recent indication that through a popular service and a new product the social interaction model is emerging again.

I think we have almost all been influenced in some way by Facebook.  It is truly become cross generational as even seniors now use it to reconnect after their 50th high school reunions and grandparents watch their grandchildren grow.  The 1:some, 1:many, some:some and many:many types of interactions that Facebook is making possible are changing the isolated nature of the computing experience into one where social is the new norm (again).

However, even more profound has been what I have recently observed around the new tablet space.  I really think that there is something magical about a 9.7″+ screen size.  What struck me at first was that everyone I knew who had an iPad wanted to show it off.  However, what I soon came to realize was that it was not the gee whiz of the device that they were showing off but instead the content on the device.  Whereas the small screen size of the smart phone has challenged the notion of it as a social appliance, the iPad and tablets will thrive by being able to once again share and be social around content.

What is most important to understand here is that the very notion of the Internet is changing as we speak.  What was in its infancy (1995-2000) primarily a broadcast tool became a simple interaction tool (2001-2007).  Today, the notion of the internet is that of a true collaboration tool far beyond simple interactions.  Witness the reality of youth dropping voice plans for data only on their mobile devices.  Consider the fact that the iPad has already eclipsed the Android and Blackberry platforms in terms of daily web page views.  We have moved from a centricity around the individual to the realization of the community/collaboration nature of the Internet.  Happy Fathers Day!

 

Since the earlier part of the last decade, mobile device designers have attempted without success to bring a dedicated social media device to the thumbs of the Twitterazzi.  The first generation included multiple iterations of Danger’s Sidekick from 2002 until 2008.  While it became a pseudo hit with a niche group it never took off with any serious momentum.  After Microsoft’s acquisition of Danger in 2008 the product suffered major pain with the infamous data loss incident of October 2009.  The second generation of social media devices came from Motorola on September 10th, 2009¹.  It was on that day that the Motoblur interface for the Android platform was announced.  Motoblur is a pure social media interface of gadgets on top of Android to facilitate “easy” picture taking, texting, sharing and general socializing.  To date, this attempt too has been rather unsuccessful having been plagued with battery issues, data latency problems, technical glitches and a general lack of adoption.

Which brings us to the Kin.  Some might argue that the Kin really is not a third generation but a forced rebranding as a consequence of the data backup failure of October 2009 that brought Sidekick to death’s doorstep.  Others might argue that it is a faint attempt to make Windows Phone 7 relevant to a younger demographic.  Regardless of the reason Kin is different.  Kin comes in multiple form factors to better suit users needs.  One version is definitely the more “female” of the two, looking more like a compact fit for a purse.  The other more candy bar like, or the male version.  Of course Microsoft will never say this so as not to limit audiences but who would not recognize this?  Spot and Loop are a step in the right direction.  Loop is the Kin’s scrolling interface for consuming your stream of social media.  The idea seems to overcome some of the problems with Motoblur’s gadget based interface by being more natural to the user.  Spot is an ever present green dot that users can think about as their “attach button”.  Use it to drag whatever content you like into your choice of distribution channel (Twitter, Facebook, SMS, MMS, etc.).

The biggest issue is not the Kin itself but the entire notion of a social media device.  It will be a failure or at best a niche product, never achieving the grand aspirations of Microsoft.  There are three major points in understanding why this will happen:

1. It is wrong to design, position, advertise and sell these devices as the center of ones social universe.  Social media, as known by any company who has launched a successful campaign is not about the campaign itself but instead about giving people something to talk about.  Today’s devices are more contextually aware than ever before (where am I, who am I talking too, what is next in my day).  Why are these device manufacturers insisting upon adhering to the old notion of have experience – capture experience – share experience?  Unleash the device!  These users have already demonstrated their willingness to share with applications like Foursquare and Tripit.  Don’t make them the center of the social universe, make them the silent conspirator.
2. Single use devices don’t work in this space.  Someday mobile device designers are going to wakeup to the fact that the center of our computing needs no longer is the desktop or laptop but the mobile device.  We have high expectations.  If we don’t have them going in then we quickly realize them shortly thereafter.  The largest criticism of Motoblur is that the interface inhibits the broader use of the smartphone or the overall Android application space.
3. Functionality in the name of simplicity is not simplicity.  Remember Bob?  Bob was the Microsoft disaster of 1995 that put a simple user interface on top of an existing user interface (Windows 95) to “simplify” it.  The designer’s battlefield is riddled with the carnage of attempts to create simplicity through layers of functionality.  The key to simplicity is not doing in 3 steps what you can do in 2 but instead finding a way to do it in 1 (or zero as inferred by the silent conspirator notion above).

Someday we will land on a way for social media to thread its way into the fabric of our life more effectively.  I don’t expect the Kin to bring about that day.

 

photo credit: steenslag

One of the more frustrating aspects of experience design is overcoming inherently bad teams.  I am purposefully using the word “teams” and not organization or firms here as a team is what successfully delivers an experience.  Maybe the best way for me to illuminate this point is the question I often get when counseling on college campuses.  Inevitably, I am asked “What classes should I focus my studies on?”  So, I take the opportunity to quiz the student, “What are you looking at for your options?”.  The response 99% of the time includes design, strategy and technology classes but almost never organizational behavior classes.

 

The story goes that upon arriving at his brand new home called Fallingwater, designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. remarked, “Why are there 7 buckets collecting leaks in my brand new home.”  To which Wright responded, “When you put a piece of art in the rain it is going to get wet.”  While many hail Wright as the pinnacle of the great American design movement, others eschew his work as it seldom reached a balance between form and function, always skewing heavily to form.  His furniture was often awkwardly upright and consequently uncomfortable.  For some, his room proportions while highly considerate of exterior light, created an obscure sense of scale.

The lesson learned from Wright is that as experience designers we should make it our goal to strike a balance between form and function.  Humans want things to be beautiful, enjoyable and even fun.  Humans need things to work to the desired objective.  One simple exercise I challenge teams to incorporate into their process is forced cycles of emphasis between form and function.  Just when they feel themselves diving too deep into the aesthetic or conceptual aspects of the experience, I encourage them to sway back to consideration of practical, contextual and even the more emotional elements of design that make up the function of the product or service.

Perhaps no better example of a balance between form and function is something those living in Chicago unknowingly find themselves staring at almost every day, the Chicago Window (pictured above).  Hatched from the same Chicago School that brought Frank Lloyd Wright to the world of design is this very simple concept of what a window can and should be.  The Chicago Window delivers on both form and function by creating a beautiful view of the outdoors through a large center pane that is complemented by two very functional surrounding operable panes.  This allows for appreciation of all the dramatic views the first Chicago skyscrapers brought to the world while also allowing for interior light-gathering and natural ventilation.  Even though it is very simple in concept and overlooked by its citizens almost every day, the Chicago Window is a shining example of the right balance between form and function.

 

photo credit: (from a second story)Mike Bailey-Gates

Building on a recent post that examined the cost of negative experiences as opposed to that of the value of positive ones in the domain of experience memory, I wanted to consider this phenomena’s implications on the cost of inconsistency.  Recent research into the human psyche has shown that both the persistence and magnitude of negative memories can be on the order of 1.5x that of positive ones.

 

Furthermore a colleague recently told me the story of some additional research around how we tend to amplify negative memories.  Take for instance a bad experience with an insurance agent over a claim.  Often times we tend to start to pile on additional events and their relevance to the initial event.  “My claim was slow to process which inhibited my ability to get around, consequently I was late for a critical meeting which caused me to miss an opportunity at work.”  This is a snowball effect which is very common in association with negative events is quite rare in occurrence with positive ones.

So what exactly is inconsistency?  Nothing more than the normal variability that goes along with almost any experience.  I would argue that rare is the organization that heavily skews to the positive in terms of the experiences they deliver.  Most organizations get it right and wrong with at least some degree of mixed occurrence.  Not only is there a mix but the randomness of the events also includes experiences of small and large magnitude as well.  When you put it all together, as humans we are bombarded with good and bad, small and large and our brains are putting these all in our “experience memory” which we will later draw in consideration of that company and their product or service.

I decided to run a little experiment to determine what exactly inconsistency could cost given the assumptions above.  I happened to have the data of a Fortune 50 company around the frequency of their delivery of the good and the bad and with what magnitude these were delivered.  I fed the data into a simple simulation model that used the assumptions of persistence of bad experience versus good and the results looked something like this:

The graph above shows the accumulation of bad memories in red over a 60 day period and good ones in green.  The model takes into consideration the persistency of both bad and good memories and some amplification of bad memories with this “snowball effect” phenomenon.

What becomes clear from the model is that bad memories quickly begin to overtake good ones (red over green) even when the good memories take place with the same frequency of bad ones.  Even more surprising is that when good experiences happen with twice the frequency of bad ones, there are times when our cumulative memory of experiences still skews to the negative as shown by the red over taking the green at the mid point of the simulation below.

So what is the cost of inconsistency?  One way to put it is that in order to maintain a positive overall impression all of the time, one could easily argue that inconsistency forces us to be at least twice as good as we are bad.  That is a lot of cost in anybody’s book.

 

photo credit: Darwin Bell

US Companies now spend over $2B annually on loyalty programs.  What are loyalty programs?  I would argue that they are simply a way to build up economic switching costs or a barrier to exit for consumers.  Loyalty?  I think not, lock-in is probably a better characterization.  Alternatively, some companies today are starting to think in terms of psychological switching costs.  This approach is often less expensive, generates higher profits and does not lead to many of the unintended outcomes of economic switching cost programs.  Some statistics on loyalty programs aka “switching cost” programs in today’s economy:

 

Think about how they work.  You commit to a single source for your products or services.  In return for your “loyalty” you are provided an account that builds up points.  If you ever leave that program, that’s it, you lose the points.  Stay with the program and the you can occasionally reap the benefits of your account.  Given the economic nature of these programs an even better characterization is probably “economic switching cost programs”.  Doesn’t sound nearly as good as “loyalty programs”.

However, economic switching cost programs are not without opportunity.  In return for their accounts, consumers provide in depth information about themselves (73 percent collect basic demographics and 68 percent track the location of members).  Unfortunately, even given this in-depth profiling of customers, the vast majority of marketers still miss the opportunity of gaining critical insights – such as advocacy rates (14 percent), brand loyalty and attachment (27 percent), personal preferences (31 percent), satisfaction levels (33 percent), and product preferences (38 percent).¹  Startling statistics given the opportunity.

There is an alternative though, a way to do it right.  Recently, after a long flight delay I checked into my hotel late at night.  The desk agent asked me if the airline had done anything for me in return for my flight delay.  I responded, “not a thing”.  She then proceeded to tell me about the time her Jet Blue flight was delayed for 2 hours and the flight attendants had brought pizza onboard to the delight of almost everyone.  She said she would never forget what they had done.  This moment of truth will live long in the minds of those who experienced it for a long time.

Contrast her experience with that of a friend whose father was recently taken to the hospital for a major procedure.  After overcoming serious concerns the big day finally arrived.  Unfortunately upon arrival to the hospital my friend’s father was horrified to find the check-in nurse to be the same person with whom he had an absolutely awful experience the year before.  His anxiety rose, his blood pressure went through the roof and the procedure had to be delayed a day.

Statistics show that negative experiences are at least 1.5x more memorable than positive ones².  The clear implication being that for every two bad experiences with your company at least three are needed to at least neutralize them, four to overcome them.  Regardless of the challenge of building psychological switching costs think of the potential.  Rather than having to add to your balance sheet the liability of the ever growing obligations of economic switching costs you build reasons for people to want to stay with you because they have an emotional attachment.  This has the potential to be less expensive and the lasting memories can be far more lasting.

Take the example of Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard their founder.  Yvon designed a culture that goes out of its way to delight its employees and customers.  Their employees live the brand.  If you have not read the story of one of the best experiential brands out there today it is highly recommended:

Part memoir, part manifesto — legendary climber, businessman and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia®, Inc. describes his life and his start in business as an itinerant climber selling pitons from the back of his car. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman offers a look at the guiding principles that Chouinard used to build Patagonia® into a global business — a business that has an environmental mission and is a fun place to work.³

I would purport that Patagonia, whether knowingly or not has designed a set of psychological switching costs.  They think of every possible way they can build positives moments of truth for the customer to put in their account.  In concept this is not too distant from the idea of the other type of switching costs but instead the customer is locked-in on the positive rather than the negative.  All negative connotations aside, this concept has all the potential of creating the equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome with your customers, let your customers love their captors.  Patagonia would tell you it is not such a bad thing.

For the second year in a row I conducted an experiment during the Super Bowl.  In parallel I run a video of the game coming in from my SlingBox and a browser window watching blogosphere activity as monitored by Digg Storm.  I then run a screen recorder to develop a multiple window movie of the whole event.  If you are not familiar with Digg Lab’s Storm product, it grew to fame with the launch of the iPhone by demonstrating its unique ability to visually monitor this seismic event as it propagated across the Internet.

The intent of this experiment is quite simple, determine whether any of the ads, the halftime show or even the game itself trigger “significant” online activity.  For the second year in a row the results were underwhelming.  While small “tremors” occur, nothing happens of seismic significance.  Certainly nothing of the magnitude of the iPhone launch.  Some popular ads, especially those around movies, trigger minor tremors.  Last year GI Joe was a surprise conversation generator.  This year kgb.com struck an interest chord with some bloggers.

A few days ago Twitter released results on their blog of a very similar Super Bowl experiment.  Contrasting the results of their experiment and mine, the “Twittersphere” appeared to have been a bit more reactionary than the “Blogosphere”.  I think the why is relatively apparent.  There is still a relatively loose place/space connection between the real world and the Internet.  Put another way, the half-life of a traditional advertising event in online media is still measured in minutes and seldom in hours or days.

If you stand back and look at another example in the American Football domain I think that Southwest Airlines is quite smart about maximizing the half-life of its traditional media investment.  This is a company that pours money into Sunday game advertising.  But it does not stop there.  Realizing that more than 80% of their revenue is generated from online booking they purposely build on the Sunday traditional media messaging with online advertising at peak times of online booking (Sunday evening, Monday’s during lunch hour, etc).  While others strive to extend the half-life of their messaging beyond the realm of minutes, Southwest can measure theirs in days.

Over time I have come to realize that this concept of “half-life” is quite an important measure in customer experience design.  Place/space convergence is emerging as a critical aspect of tomorrow’s products and services.  Tying the two together has always been a challenge.  If there is any lesson to be learned from these experiments to date it is that there is an interesting measure of an increasingly important aspect of customer experience design and if you think about your own efforts to maximize this metric, you will be far ahead of the competition.

 

photo credit: libraryman

Human beings have designed beautiful objects of both form and function.  Throughout history achievement has been marked by art, architecture and literally innumerable dimensions on which design has had its influence.

However, even with our ability to think of new constructs and push the envelope of societal constraints humans have fallen far short of the power of nature as a designer.  Given time, lots of time, nature and evolution have a way of creating beautiful and resourceful things.  Take the example of the banana.  Perfectly encased in its own package, subjected to environmental rigors during its growth and ultimately transportation to our kitchens, it somehow arrives ready to be peeled away to a perfect fruit ready for easy consumption.  Nature and its partner, evolution, arguably far surpass even the greatest achievements of humanity.

So, is there any way to tap into this process of design in nature?  Human design will always be a blend of art and science and by no means would I ever suggest that there is single recipe for design to come out of nature.  Yet I think there is a significant lesson to be learned from nature and with todayâ€s tools maybe even use some of its process to better inform our own attempts at design.

• One must understand that nature has the benefit of almost perfect information.  DNA strands of programming and outside influences that like a sculptor slowly erode away at the object until it is of the perfect form to meet the demands of the information around it.  In human design we rely upon interview, focus group, ethnographic study and a myriad of tools that build a data set, albeit one far short of that enjoyed by nature.  There is hope though in that today as designers we have more data at our access than ever before.  Consumers willingly share information about themselves, their needs and their wants.  Even survey techniques have grown in sophistication and their ability to gather much more information.  If you no not of techniques like adaptive choice based conjoint, be sure to check it out.
• Nature also is the beneficiary of the long process of evolution.  Objects evolve into their state of fit to their environment.  This is called genetic evolution and a whole body of science is finally maturing after decades in the labs around genetic algorithms or agent based modeling.  Now as designers we can take these larger data sets, load them into agents (akin to programming their DNA) and let thousands or millions of program agents work against, with and for each other in an evolutionary process.  Not only is this a process into which all this information to include environmental variables can also be loaded but it is also one in which time that is measured by units of millennium in nature can be sped up to hours or even minutes on todayâ€s computers.

In the end, the designer is able to tap into the insights of these modern modeling tools to perform “what-if” scenarios and use the insight to inform other parts of the design process.  We may not be able to do exactly what nature can today, but we surely can begin to learn from it.

Standing back and thinking about how and why consumers make purchasing decisions is not overly complicated.  They have needs that have to be fulfilled whether they be discretionary or mandatory.  Society provides options in the form of either advertising, marketing or word of mouth that when combined create awareness of an option set.  Finally, consideration is given to a set of options, different choice models are placed upon our option set either intuitively or with intent and a purchase is made.

During my recent efforts to build better models of experience design I stepped back and thought about all those things that effect the choice model or the narrowing of the consideration set.  While much of selection and even the basic construct of demand curve can be attributed to Daniel and Nicholas Bernoulli and advent of the utility function, experience seemed to have time and storage (memory) attributes that just didn’t fit into utility functions precisely.

This “bucket” or memory appears to be something shared by both loyalty programs and customer experience.  I think it is easier to think about in the context loyalty programs first.  In a frequent flyer program for example you build up points that go into my bucket.  Most times you make a purchase you think about the state of your “bucket”.  Is it near a threshold?  Are you reaching for a goal?  Should you add to your bucket?  All of these things help influence the purchase decision at the time of purchase and for the most part only at the time of purchase.

Alternatively, you have another more sophisticated bucket that I call your experience memory.  It is different for many reasons and more complex than your loyalty program bucket but two reasons stand out:

1. This bucket is in a continual state of flux.  Everything that happens to someone in the context of a product or service will either add or sometimes detract from preference for that product or service.  Good companies are always thinking of ways to add to this bucket and minimize those bad subtractive experiences.  The really good ones even figure out ways to turn lemons into lemonade.
2. This bucket is influenced all the time, not just during the time of consideration and purchase but during use.  Unlike many of the attributes that drive our utility functions for a product or service that for the most part come into consideration at the time at the time of purchase, “using” or “use” is the dominant force that drives this bucket.  Consider buying a new car.  The sales process, the mileage, the warranty and even the smell all are dominant at the time of purchase.  We use Edmunds or some service to help refine our understanding.  Additionally, though we rely on our Experience Memory to make a choice, a memory that has been built up over time.  Some studies say have shown that this is the biggest challenge for General Motors today in that over 40% of their target consumers have built up a negative memory through use of their products.  For most this is a lasting memory too, one that in the case of General Motors has kept them away from entire generations of potential buyers.  Overcoming a heavily burdened negative bucket is not easily overcome.

I am using some of this insight to build better prediction models using tools like genetic algorithms to better mimic the process of the human brain, evolution in the market place and the eventual market share, margin and longevity of new products and services.  However, the more important result is that simply thinking about experiences as creating either a “heavy” or a “light” bucket all consumers carry around is a powerful image in the process of Experience Design.

photo credit: Chris Devers

I am generally quite disgusted with the effects of the recession on the retail shopping experience.  Having just returned from a day of shopping I observed far too many retailers that have returned to the days of 24″ space between racks and wall to wall displays.  The clutter is simply overwhelming.

Why this amazes me is that at least two retailers have had dramatic influence on their competitors in recent years through the use of white space in the retail shopping environment.  Apple is an easy mark.  They literally use white space by using lighter tones and lots of white on their interior design palette.  The white space is effective in that the products jump out at the consumer and also provide the consumer a “clean palette” for tasting and consideration.  Another easy mark in the use of white space is Target.  It has become obvious as of late that even Walmart is having to react to the clean open environment of Target stores by reconfiguring their aisle spacing and density.

So even in the face of obvious trends towards the effective use of white space and how less can actually be more in the world of sales per square foot why are all these retailers turning once again to clutter and density?  Consider the numbers.  Saks in NYC generates sales of $362 per square foot a year,  Best Buy stores turn $930,  Tiffany & Co. takes in $2,666 but Apple takes in a whopping $4,032!¹

I would argue that the why is simple.  Consideration of experience design is forgotten in the world of falling revenue.  More has to mean more, less cannot possibly mean more.  It is unfortunate in this declining economy that so many of the lessons learned in the past decade decay so quickly.  Remember that when the day is darkest, experience design is still a lever that you can and should pull.