Paying homage to my colleague, Bob, by posting a reference I made to him and his thoughts on Twitter today. And by doing so, illustrate the effect this 2.0 element of 'social networking' is having to change our daily experiences. [Read bottom-up]

For those less familiar with Twitter, it was originally designed for people to announce a 'current state'. Indeed the single entry field interface prompts "What are you doing?". It was also uniquely designed to capitalize on mobile text messaging. Thus, a single entry string cannot be longer than 140 characters even if using the full-screen desktop interface. Many 'inline' interfaces have been created so individuals can watch what colleagues/friends around the world are doing/thinking throughout the day.

It's a phenomenon of communicating with critical 'peeps' ("I'll have my people call your people") via 'tweets'. It gained necessary critical mass by adoption at the annual phenomenon-unto-itself, South by Southwest (SXSW) in 2007 -- the Woodstock of techno-dweebs -- where it became the mechanism for a networked conversation. Where, this year it was leveraged as the means to report on a reporter.

For anyone you 'follow', their tweets are like an instant RSS feed into a reader (I've got one on my iGoogle desktop -- way more fun than the fullscreen version). For those of us easily distracted, we have to intentionally stay away from getting caught up in the activity (heaven forbid if I got these on my phone). Even when slammed for time, eventually I catch up and comment back on things shared by others. It's my own personal idea orgy.

Catching up is particularly hard to do when several people are at a conference. During SXSW the history queue goes to overflow quickly (you 'miss' notes as they roll off -- my queue is about 200 messages).

For those who prefer to manage who sees what they say, there's an option to approve followers.

The power of social networking channels like Twitter is being leveraged by those 'in the know' as a source of data (ala. research channel). Barack Obama's campaign is following over 18K voices. Shortly after casually mentioning a very specific product in a tweet, I was suddenly being followed by a cow. So how much can you tell about potential consumers based on their conversations?

Two critical voices (there are many) are David Armano (@armano) and Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang). The @name format directs a message to an individual. @name puts your message in their queue (if they're following you) or puts it in a direct message folder (if they're not). @name messages can also be set up to be the only messages routed to your mobile device, and can be set on/off follower, by follower

David Armano suggests that Twitter has gained momentum because of the 2.0 elements which have been created all around it to offer a total Conversation Ecosystem. I maintain a collection of interesting elements of this ecosystem on del.icio.us. I picked up most of these from 'tweets' from my 'peeps'.

Writing about Twitter on Twitter is a phenomenon as well. But today there seems to be Twitterblogathon. Here I'm writing about it...Jeremiah Owyang suggests how to leverage Twitter as your own personal "social advisor" in real time, and an @armano peep drew attention to "Observations of a Twitter Newbie" by @marobella.

Pick a channel, any channel. Leveraged as a location device, as a mini-blog, as a 'man on the street' reporting device, paying due homage to Mr. Weinberger, et. al, it's still all about conversations.

And yes, there have been plenty of conversations around, "You know you're a twitterholic when...".

My original title for this was "Changing the Rules", but then I saw the broader beauty of what's being done here.

Start with a good recipe:
Find an experience people complain about...a lot.
[Get your ideas from the 'joke butts' of the late night talk show hosts.]
Find a way to make it better.
You'll not only get their attention...
(which is the 'best' you'll achieve with a multi-million dollar 30 second spot at the SuperBowl)
...you'll have immersed them in an experience that they'll appreciate, and remember.

Who better than a leader in recipes to figure this out: Kraft Foods

Here's their recipe:
Don't just advertise your product,
immerse people in it,
while they're captive'
and you really have their attention.
Provide free food on airline flights,
where they'll think anything tastes better.
And 'free' is a great sauce...

Duh!

See related details.

Great video review of the Amazon Kindle by Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid742148386/bctid1327153737

[reference previous post on Amazon Kindle]

While the likes of the iPhone expand our access to online, Amazon embraces our changing states of online and offline by synthesizing them in an experience-specific device, the Kindle, for wireless reading. Amazon reinforces the synthesis by using the term “electronic-paper”. With a pricetag of almost $400, the fact that they’ve had to post the following statement, says something for the market response since its November 2007 debut, and its potential:
Kindle Availability Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. We are working hard to manufacture Kindles as quickly as possible and are prioritizing orders on a first come, first served basis. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We will keep you informed by email as we get more precise delivery dates. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.

The Kindle even has its own Wikipedia post (maybe offering full access to Wikipedia offline is related? Oh, and did I mention a full version of the New Oxford American Dictionary?). The post reports that the initial offering resulted in a sellout in 5.5 hours. Sure beats standing in line for hours on the street only to end up empty-handed. While the device was announced well over a year in advance, and even though I’m on Amazon weekly, it’s never caught my attention until this week. That suggests to me, that there’s a lot more upside to this product. [Gosh and I’ve already spent my $400 buying a pair of XOs – I got as far as charging it up, but haven’t had the time to power it up. More later…]

Here’s where the total experience gets more specific to a focused scenario: If you look very carefully above main contents of the Amazon Kindle product page (bottom of the page header) you’ll see a series of links related to the Kindle Store. Select “Kindle Books” and you get a collections of book ‘products’ different than their non-electronic brethren. These SKUs will download, on purchase, to your Kindle device, in 2 minutes. Not sure if you really want that title, and thinking of going to a retail store to flip through the pages? Grab the first chapter for free. That, my friends, now differentiates the offering by the experience — an experience that spins endless new offerings for the brand.

When you specialize the experience to the product and the products to the experience, how quickly can the competition respond? [Repeat again, “The experience IS the product.”]

Amazon is a market maker. When some companies waste valuable cycles building walls against the competition, Amazon goes out embraces theirs. By expanding their model to include used and second-market books Amazon capitalized on a larger portion of the demand chain, and expanded the total market (just ask the many used book vendors who liberally leverage Amazon’s online storefront) – recognizing as Bill Gates did, that when the pie gets bigger so does their slice of it.

Amazon does this one better by creating the Kindle Edition of major newspaper subscription content. Bear in mind that these publishers have already had to grapple with the transition of their identity from newspaper to content provider. I wonder how long it will be before the section label will change to drop the “newspaper” reference? [I’d sure like to hear the debates that went on around the division of product collections and how to label them.]

And while there’s been some whining about the cost of the newspaper subscriptions being the same as the newspaper stand versions for content that is more frequently being offered for free online, Amazon is likely looking to capitalize on the long tail of economics. Don’t think that they’re not going to experiment with the elasticity of pricing for these offerings over time. In the meantime, they capture the small slice of the market that finds reason for this offering to most closely match their specific scenario needs. [I know I’d want to be doing some ethnographic work to identify a potential Kindle-factor on BART, WMATA, and MTA (amateur sightings welcomed).]

How many more dots can Amazon connect?

...well at least not nearly as much as comfort. It's amazing what a company can discover when they actually do deep research about their products from the customer's perspective. Discovering such facts is fairly significant to your business model when you're in the shoe 'shine' business, like Sara Lee is (gosh, I thought they made great frozen deserts).

The Wall Street Journal reported today about customer research done two years ago. So what do you do when 'shine' is 17th on the list of 20 related values? You focus on satisfying higher-valued attributes, like comfort.

If I'd been the WSJ writer I would have questioned Sara Lee about Kiwi's brush with comfort products in 1992: "Kiwi to Market Comfort Insoles to Consumers." I'd want to know more about why they decided on the range of products they're now marketing (what did they throw out?) and how/why they hoped to differentiate these from existing comfort offerings like insoles.

I'd also want to determine how much they really valued the results of research by asking what they've learned about the adoption of the new products so far (from the consumer's perspective) -- that is, what's been the feedback? I'd ask this, because the original research was initiated and conducted as part of a media/campaign budget, suggesting that ongoing Design Research has not be adopted as a key strategic contributor to their business planning.

Having continuous access to such facts is critical to adjust a strategic business model: "Today's footwear is made less from leather and more from canvas and synthetic materials. Even the military, one of Kiwi's best customers since World War I, had been moving away from leather, partly because so much fighting now takes place in the Middle East, where desert sand makes canvas more sensible. Most consumers today are more likely to toss out worn shoes than work to keep them in good condition." This is critical information to prepare for a shift in demand for products.

Amazing that a company's web site can be read like tea leaves, to infer critical things about a business and their agility: Sara Lee doesn't leverage the Kiwi site as a strategic component of their business. How do I know?

1. Limited content
2. More importantly, knowing all of the above for 2-years, why are products still organized by: Leather, Suede & Nubuck, Outdoor, Sport, Multi-Purpose?

I'm buying comfort. Are you selling any of that today?

Hmmm...the new products are not ON the web site. Wouldn't you want them there first -- particularly since retailers need to know about them to want to order them INTO the stores? Did they miss the obvious when it stared them in the face?

"And when the Sara Lee sales representatives who call on big retailers like Wal-Mart and Tesco were told they'd have to sell the new products, "they looked at their sales directors like they were mad," Mr. Casa says. "They said, 'Kiwi is a round tin, mainly for men, and now you're coming to us with colorful products called smiling feet. It's not serious.'"

Indeed, wouldn't you want to 'feature' your new products (and the stories about why they were developed) on your main page as a teaser, particularly on the same day that you've made the pages of the Wall Street Journal?

What better position to be in than as a writer from WSJ to ask Sara Lee what percentage of their revenue is allocated to the online channel (seems like a reasonable business question). There's got to be a model we could come up with to 'guestimate' a range of investment based on the evidence of the channel as it speaks for itself.

Doesn't seem to me that Kiwi was ever in the 'shine' business after all -- just polish, and only for shoes.

...hire the best.

Apparently that's what the U.S. Government believes -- at least the Department of Homeland Security. In an unlikely pairing, they've engaged Disney to create messages to welcome visitors to the United States:

The film and still portraits feature the diversity, friendliness and optimism of the American people. The film will be shown in the Federal Inspection Areas of U.S. airports, and in U.S. embassies and consulates overseas, while the still portraits will be incorporated in posters, banners and other imagery welcoming visitors to the U.S. The first airports to feature the images will be Washington Dulles International Airport and Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, to be followed by the nation's other international airports.

Source: MediaPost, Marketing Daily, "Homeland Security, Disney Team For Welcoming Film"

Don't know if you've tried this yet. Amazon offers a great example of a true cross-channel experience.

Cross-Channel 1: Online to Real Time
I had some books to return. I filled out the return information online and a return label was provided for me to print, tieing the box to my online entry. It made the return easy (which with my schedule is a critical barrier for entry).

Cross-Channel 2: Email to Online to Phone
I got an email today indicating that the box had been received on their end. The details of the return had an 'issue' (I was charged for return postage when I should not have been). I clicked through the email (I wanted to reply -- which I couldn't, but that's a different issue) to online and saw the option to contact Amazon by phone. A small window pops and asks for my phone number. I barely had pressed return and my phone was ringing! The item was resolved in 5 minutes.

Cross-Channel 3: Phone to Email
Back into my email, and there's already an inquiry asking me if my issue was resolved to my satisfaction. Even better, there were two separate links: one to click if I was satisfied, a different one if I was not. [and there's a closing of the loop]

That's a Total Experience!

Now, if they could just do something simple like offer me a complete inventory (list) of all the titles of books I've ever ordered (instead of asking me to open hundreds of orders to uncover that data -- and then do what? make my own list?).

[sigh]

Something I hadn't really noticed (reinforcing this message), is that Amazon no longer really has a header with their logo prominently featured. Their logo is only one of the tabs...taking up miniscule real estate. Thanks to Luke Wroblewski for capturing this entire visual evolution. Apparently this change has been in place for 2 years.

See, evolving design really does work!

The Design Council site features "Thirteen examples of successful brand experiences".

This piece exemplifies my issues with brand experience definitions of those who engage the phrase most often: embodied by an inherent element of 'staged event'. Our paths of understanding diverge.

Experiences happen. When they happen to include inference to a brand, the brand owner better hope that the experience is a positive one, or at the very least, not a negative one.

Each experience is framed by the fundamentals of economics. Consider the concept of elasticity. "Behavioral elasticity" and "elasticity of substitution" both come to play in brand experiences. Indeed, they help define a key element Marketers often rely on: affinity.

My throat is parched and I open my refrigerator. As my eyes identify a can of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, a positive brand experience begins as I imagine the taste of the Coke, satisfying my thirst. The reality is, if the formula is not quite 'right', my experience will be impacted. If the can contains "Classic Coke" instead, my personal experience will be quite negative. In all cases I have engaged in a brand experience. The latter, impacted by a breakdown in quality control, results in a negative experience. Repeated too often, brand trust is eroded. My affinity is weakened.

Severity depends on current elements that can impact my elasticity of substitution. If there is another brand with which I can have a similar positive experience, I will likely switch to that brand. If my perception of cola is only filled by a Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, then I have lower elasticity and will tolerate the variability as long as I can occasionally encounter the familiar experience that I prefer.

The impact of changing a preferred brand experience is readily illustrated in Coke's historic error in abandoning the "Classic Coke" formula, rather than creating a different product to expand consumption.

Consumer control over brand experiences, good or bad, is significant. In today's market, their voice is stronger. With lowering barriers to entry, there are many waiting to rush in and capitalize on the mistakes of others.

Please. If you're going to engage in a brand experience conversation, do it in a deeper, meaningful way. Do it in a way that truly increases understanding of the many dimensions of brand experience and its direct impact on relationships. Those who focus on entertainment or event aspects (e.g. Chuck E. Cheese), limit the types of products/services to which they can apply their principles. They are more subjected to the shifting whims of tastes, preferences, and clever competition. And they are less likely to account for significant variables that can impact product affinity, and therefore, sales.

Which definition do you embrace?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Image Attribution: Getty Images

A tease to content elsewhere...

Delta Air Lines is bringing its in-flight experience to the streets of New York City with a temporary lounge.

Visitors can drop by the 3,500 square-foot space at 101 West 57th St. called Delta SKY360 to test some of the airline’s newest features, including refurbished seats, new menu items and route information.

The following comment is a bit disheartening as it seems to imply an oversimplification as to the potential of real relationships and real conversations...it still implies an elitist business perspective to relationships with customers:

It’s an opportunity for us to engage with our customers outside of the airport.

It makes me want to ask, "What's wrong with engaging with them where they already are? Um, in the airport?"

As we try to catch Bob up with conversations already going on in the industry, let me illustrate the significance of having Design Thinking conversations by offering notice of an event planned for the DFW area.

For those of you in the area October 19th, plan to join us. For the rest of you, this is an experiment for continuing face-to-face annual events in local venues. The idea being that there is much needed energy bringing local companies together and sharing their stories and progress with others (including the press, academia, and generally interested souls).

Updates will be provided as we see where the conversation goes this first round. Already there are signs of a focus on organizational changes including new roles and new business models, but we wouldn't know these things were happening if we weren't coming together to talk about what we're seeing.

We hope to challenge participants to return to their own circles of influence with actions to influence change, and seed deeper understanding through related programs throughout the following year in existing local professional organization chapter meetings -- e.g. UPA, STC, AIGA, AMA, PMI, etc. (that's the adaptive/integrative gene).

Each year we'll convene to share and talk about our progress -- catalyzing latent Design Thinking DNA already floating in the organizational ether.

I was attempting to edit the abysmal entry for Design Thinking on Wikipedia. I began to doubt the appropriateness of what I was writing – not for its validity but for its style. I finally decided to simply put what I would have wanted for an entry there, here.

Design Thinking leverages implicit elements of design practices, as a means to approach problem solving. It is a critical factor for innovation.

"Design thinking is a term being used today to define a way of thinking that produces transformative innovation." [1] The term has gained significance as it is being embraced outside of the normal realm for which it might have traditionally been applied.

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, suggests that Design Thinking is central to value creation in the 21st century (see editorial "From the Dean"). It is not a matter of gaining an understanding of design, it's a matter of embracing design – a way of operating. Martin further suggests that success in the 20th century was defined by an ability to move through a continuum, from mystery, to heuristic, to algorithm, to binary code. In this way things are identified, a pattern is made, and exact replicas are generated. For a mass production economy this is an ideal model for operating success.

But as barriers to information are lowered (less expensive, more readily available/shared), the economics of competition change dramatically. The value of intellectual capital is now often greater when it is shared and allowed to evolve openly (a lot of lawyers suddenly become irrelevant). Fundamental business models rely on minimizing risk. Getting to binary code was an ideal way to lock down fluctuation and variance – both associated with risk.

New economic models embrace risk as reality, requiring a move back up the continuum to 'heuristic'. Roger Martin specifically suggests: "I would argue that to be successful in the future, businesspeople will have to become more like designers – more ‘masters of heuristics’ than ‘managers of algorithms’." For classic business models this is uncomfortable. The idea of managing something squishy is foreign. Design Thinking is required to operate in squishy-mode.

It's not to be confused with a method – it's fundamentally a culture, a genotype to reshape methods of operating. Contemporary organizational structures are antithetical to this culture. Martin elaborates,

Whereas traditional firms organize around ongoing tasks and permanent assignments, in design shops, work flows around projects with defined terms. The source of status in traditional firms is ‘managing big budgets and large staffs’, but in design shops, it derives from building a track record of finding solutions to ‘wicked problems’ – solving tough mysteries with elegant solutions.

Whereas the style of work in traditional firms involves defined roles and seeking the perfect answer, design firms feature extensive collaboration, ‘charettes’ (focused brainstorming sessions), and constant dialogue with clients.

Design Thinking is critical to and at the same time relies on emergent structures. As such, it is central to all aspects of 2.0 design.

Design Thinking is a specific concept (the significance between specific and general use of a term is illustrated in the reference to complexity). While common methods of thought include deductive and inductive reasoning, Design Thinking embraces these but adds abductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning is effectively embracing a posture of "Why not?", but with a layer of rationale.

Random trial and error is expensive. Rationale is too often replaced by random opinion. While predominantly driven by profit-motivation (e.g. search engine optimization, transactional growth), there is clear professional growth in the discipline of web analytics. To be most effective, Design Thinking must be informed by Design Research (transactional analytics, behavioral analytics, feedback loops, usability studies, and ethnography). I call this evidence-based design, Jeffrey Pfeffer calls it evidence-based management.

Another differentiating element of Design Thinking is a focus on synthesis rather than analysis. Claudia Kotchka notes:

Designers problem-solve holistically, not in a linear fashion. While the scientific method for problem solving uses problem focused strategies and analysis, designers use solution focused strategies and synthesis. They start with a whole solution rather than break it down into parts.

Good Design Thinking is the ability to see things not readily apparent to others (that's where market differentiation can occur). Thus my favorite Schopenhauer quote:

“Thus the task is
not so much to see
what no one yet has seen,
but to think
what nobody yet has thought
about that which
everybody sees”

It's the ability to see the 'edges' of something, to find shape and form in a mass of stuff. It's the ability to see things differently – to see the implicit and make it explicit.

Additional References

I loved Bob's cute image in his June 28th post. I think I was so taken by the imagery and his personal story that I missed the significance of his incidental mentioning of the Adam Greefield piece. Just for diversity, I'm linking here to the original version as a contribution to Adobe's Think Tank series.

Of greatest significance:

...the time would appear to be ripe for a new kind of designer to take center stage...neither a "graphic" nor a "Web" nor even an "interaction" designer.

Over the past few years, the domain of practice known (if only briefly) as "user experience" has begun to accommodate the new realities...recasting itself as "experience design."

Adam then suggests why the transition is relevant:

...our technosocial practices have transcended the rather limited model of the "user" ultimately derived from old-school human-computer interaction studies...

One of the challenges with the piece, is that Adam makes sweeping assumptions as to what he believes Experience Design has resulted in. Indeed, there are always malappropriations of any discipline. But good Experience Design is flexible. Indeed, the primary focus is to recognize that not every scenario can be accounted for, so the design needs to be flexible enough to not rule out possiblities. The true focus of Experience Design is to design out barriers. We're the engineers of facilitating individual progress.

The examples Adam selects are very narrow in focus and his perspective of "Experience Designer" appears to be more in line with that of Joseph Pine's perspective (one that I have always taken issue with, as a predominant focus), where the goal is to 'create' an experience. My definition of Experience Design is to 'facilitate' an experience. Fortunately, Adam is effectively arguing for the same thing, but doesn't realize it. [I can also see how this 'disconnect' could have occurred as he got his inspiration from AIGA perspectives of the space/practice, which are often in line with the 'creationism' theory (e.g. reference to theatre).]

He specifically states the architectural goals I have been defending for over a decade, that the ultimate design goal:

...ought to allow people to swap their own desired components in and out at will, to pull data out in a useful format...

The latter was a point I tried to make to Bill Gates, face to face, in 1990 when I asked, "When are you going to separate your applications from the data they create?" The former was the point we made to a collection of vendors at an internal MCI data warehousing conference in 1996, when we asked them to break their applications apart into component functions and allow us to assemble them at will and put our own interface on the front. While akin to the SOA efforts going on, I have IBM architecture diagrams from the '80s that purport the same thing.

Both of these concepts are fundamental to 2.0 thinking. But they're not specific to just digital -- digital just happens to provide a great platform upon which to effectively exchange stuff and facilitate open conversations, with recall.

In the end, it's not about designing 'in' an experience it's about designing 'out' barriers to end goals (intents). It's about tying together things that are often considered in isolation from one another. And fundamentally it IS about the whole (contrary to comment 2 from the blog post suggesting that "holistic never ever works"). The disconnect comes to play in various ways that want to focus on the parts (budgets aligned to a piece of the whole, breadth of responsiblity/influence limited to a part of the process, akin to Seth Godin's 7 Reasons This Is Broken, the first one being, "Not My Job").

Experience Design is fundamentally a practice of synthesis, not analysis.

Image Credits: L!NA, Flickr

UPDATE: I've added several postscripts to the bottom of this. Combined with today's information makes this worthy of a republish. Today I got a phonecall from AT&T (ok, what part? no clue...) to personally 'clarify' my concern and escallate this issue to management. At least there 'is' a mechanism and it's active enough that this case made it into the pipeline. What surprised me was that I had to paint a picture for the caller. They don't personally have an email account like this..."here's your sign".

Orignially published June 18, 2007
I'm still on hold as I'm writing this...such is the beauty of the 'channel of one' that blogs afford.

Companies need to begin paying attention to something besides the bottom line. They're missing 98% of the reason that dollars show up there in the first place...relationships.

If people paid as little attention to their relationships that most 'big' businesses do...we'd solve the population explosion. There's a lot of 'lip service' out there to customer-centric, but it's all a checklist, "Yep, I've got someone working on that." Forrester even has shown the numbers...no progress over the last 3 years in 'doing' anything about those great intents.

So, here I am on the phone stuck between two call centers: one that is supposed to help me with my 'issues' (but only the ones they have scripts for), and the other one that can close my entire relationship with AT&T...and there is not a single business executive in the mix to realize what is going on or why. So I'm telling them here.

It's not like I haven't tried (and oh-by-the-way...this costs me time and money too...multiply that by even 100,000 customers and that's a lot of time and money). I wrote an email...it went to Yahoo! My question was, according to them, something that AT&T needed to handle.

Weeks later (who has time to waste like this, going nowhere fast?) I was online again. I opted into the online chat...I was 56th in line and it was moving about 1 a minute -- you do the math. I was able to find a phone number. I called. The support line, mentioned before, could only address 'real' problems...mine didn't qualify.

I insisted that I be escalated. They didn't even have an escalation proceedure. So I gave them one..."Escalate this so that I can close my ENTIRE relationship with AT&T."

Now I'm on the phone with account close. They're asking me for information only available on my bill...never mind that I do all my billing online (so can you wait for 5 mintues while I go through your interactions to bring up a bill so I can look at it? -- who tests these rediculous scenarios anyway?).

What's the big deal anyway? Paying for a free service.
Anyone can sign up for a free Yahoo! email account. It comes with advertisement banners on every page. Until recently 'not' getting those banners was the benefit of paying for my AT&T | Yahoo! account. Not any more. My paid account now has advertisement all over it. So why do I need to pay for this experience?

Someone has made the decision to 'add' this to the experience without considering the implications. Maybe I'm a lone voice...I hope that I'm not [apparenly not]. We shouldn't allow our relationships to be prostituted in this way (as it is, this email account was originally owned by MCI...it was sold 3 times before it got to AT&T...I didn't change, they did).

I am looking for AT&T to take accountability for the products/services and corresponding experiences that they are selling...otherwise, the field is white with competition. Anyone ready for a new client?

I realize this is not world hunger...what it is, is companies being irresponsible in their decisions and their impact to customers...the whole reason for their existence. Ok, maybe for someone like AT&T, commercial accounts are worth a lot more...but if we can get 100,000 voices to stand up as a collective...they'd carry a little weight.

The beauty of 'online' is the nature by which one voice gains velocity and intensity through the inflection of others. The voiceless now can be heard. Relationships are not humanless processes.

Black isn't the only color cars can be made in.

Postscript:
I have continued to raise this 'voice' through any and every channel that I can. I posted a comment through the 'abuse' channel (the options didn't give me too many choices). I received a response dated Jul.03.07, which stated the following:

We apologize for the inconvenience. The advertising is a needed step
towards providing world class service at an affordable price.

Imagine you've just sent a tender email to your near-delivery pregnant daughter, only to have a 5" ape jumping up and down on your screen pounding his chest. Each time an ad shows up it reminds me how much I hate doing business with AT&T.

That's the kind of negative relationship equity companies would pay to avoid.
Instead, we get to pay for the priviledge of being annoyed.

While we typically wouldn't blanket copy an email announcement here, I think this one is significant in what it means as to 1) the potential to grow the discipline and 2) that someone can justify offering such courses (e.g. there's enough demand for them -- because there IS!). And Victor Lombardi is just a really sharp industry resource.

If anyone gets a chance to attend, please share your experience!
[Don't miss the discount code...]

What's also interesting is the 2.0 aspect of this. While only for New York City right now, imagine leveraging this 'community' and its infrastructure as a means to offer your own single session/event in your city (e.g. an upscale craigslist for classes/seminars). While we all might not have material to go into training full-time...sharing our own special knowledge for one course a year might be doable.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Smart Experience is a new school in New York City offering
classes for Internet professionals. We intend to cover
state-of-the-art topics taught by the most experienced people in
town. The school is organized as a marketplace, so you can tell
us what classes you want us to offer, and what classes you want
to teach. Learn more... http://smartexperience.org/

Use discount code "Beta" when signing up for 20% off tuition...

* BRAND & USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
How do you proactively design an experience that expresses your
brand? We will address the complexities of applying traditional
brand guidelines to interactive environments, the relationship
between the traditional brand elements of brand promise, goals,
positioning and how to translate these to interaction and
experience guidelines. Taught by Karen Hembrough who has worked
with AOL, National Geographic, and iXL and just earned her MBA
from Columbia University.
1 two-hour workshop, Thursday, July 12. $70.
http://smartexperience.org/classes/brand-uxdesign/

* USING INTERNET BUSINESS STRATEGY
This class will introduce the topic of business strategy and
illustrate how Internet strategy is practiced by online and
traditional companies. In class we'll discuss how Internet
strategy applies to our particular situations and create our own
fictional business by applying a particular strategic method.
Taught by Victor Lombardi, the Director of Smart Experience, who
also consults on Internet product development and is a leader in
the field of information architecture. 2 two-hour workshops, Tuesdays
7-9pm, July 10 & 17. $140.
http://smartexperience.org/classes/internetbusinessstrategy/

There are more classes on the website, as well as a listing of
the best Internet events in New York city available via iCal,
RSS, or email newsletter...
http://smartexperience.org/

Victor Lombardi
Director, Smart Experience
NYC Internet, mobile, and software education
http://smartexperience.org/

Note: I've redated this to raise it again with new info. Forrester had published an insightful report (July 2006) that spoke to larger considerations for workspace design: Untethering Information Workers: Rethinking Workplace Location and Layout (subscription only access). I was going to call out a few key points here but there were too many to pick from. Let's just say that it does a good job of highlighting many critical aspects of the TOTAL experience. Someone in our discipline could run with this and add tremendous detail and value to this 'start' of the story.

Alternate Title: Microsoft Embraces New Work Spaces Reminicent of the Purple Sofa Era

Both titles bear a bit of explanation. Marketing has 4 P's used as a model for strategy: Product, Price, Promotion, Place. In the process of uncovering the details of events going on within one group at Microsoft, I realized that they'd effectively identified 5 P's for Design & Development. These are shared in the context of this piece.

As to the Purple Sofa Era, those of us who lived it, immediately identify with it. In the late '90s, nearly every dot.flop interactive agency (and even some internal corporate eBusiness groups) created more dynamic, creative physical work spaces to support the different work they were intending to generate, and to attract highly-creative resources.

These environments seemed to have common elements: purple sofas, Herman Miller furniture (especially Aeron chairs), writeable walls, and foosball tables. What is disheartening is that what follows in this piece was clearly suggested, with research (The People Are the Company), in 1995. So we're a little slow on the uptake.

There are two supporting media pieces: the short version (a 15 minute tour of Microsoft's Patterns & Practices Lab) and the long version (a 49 minute interview describing the evolution of the group and their workspace).

Notes and Observations...

[Happy Birthday to me! Heck, what's the point of authoring a blog if you can't send yourself wishes?]

I'm following up on Bob's post today with the unanswered question, "When does an experience end?" My answer: when you're done. The problem is some companies end an experience based on some parameter other than what the reasonable expectations might be for a customer (or other relationship). Let's consider a few common ones:

• The end of 'scope' for a particular initiative

• The end of budget for a particular project

• The end of attention/patience of a manager responsible for implementing a service

• etc...etc...etc.

So I have a question for Target: what was the reason you stopped short of this particular scenario? Don't get me wrong. Target is one of our favorite companies for paying attention to design...just not particularly to interactions (hmmm, and now that I think about it...I have a cherished colleague that's a designer there...maybe I need to ask him this question). So this isn't about pointing a finger -- this is truly about, what are the reasons experience designs fall short?

Scenario

• My weeks of late have been beyond hectic (thus, not covering for Bob when he was gone -- I barely had time to talk to myself, let alone do blog posts).

• I have an important wedding shower to go to later this week.

• I learned that the bride-to-be is registered at Target.

• I go to Target.com.

• Fabulous: quick access to the gift registry.

• Easy access to her registry via her name.

• I spin through her list and my attention is drawn to some items listed with "free shipping".

• I find that I can order two of the items in the list and still be within my budget (that makes me look good).

• The order can be shipped directly to the bride-to-be without me knowing her address or Target having to tell me what it is (tremendous).

• I get a confirmation on the screen and a nice html email.

• This is all great! But I am sorely disappointed...

What happened? Target didn't finish the scenario. I wasn't just buying a gift. I was buying a gift for a shower. I still have to go to the shower. I will be going without the gifts. I will bring a card...but what can I put into the card? Target did not offer me (the template for which would be next to nothing to design and could be reused repeatedly) a simple printout that listed the pictures of the items, with their titles that I could include in my card to announce my soon-to-arrive gift! A simple solution would have sealed the deal on my otherwise 'exceeded' expectations. Instead, my expectations were exceeded all the way to the end...and one simple action turned my experience into a disappointment (I now have to take the time to create my own 'gift announcement' -- like I have time for that...).

I don't offer this to 'complain' about my situation. I offer this as an example of just how minor the big things are. Somehow, real world examples are better at illustrating the points we're trying to make than us talking about them endlessly.

So...for one rule of thumb, the experience ends when the scenario is over (satisfied) -- not at the end of the scope, the budget, or the patience of the manager.

I'm in this line of practice to combat blatant bad behaviors on the part of businesses -- particularly those with long-standing histories and solid brands -- they should know better. But longevity does not guarantee continuuity of brand experience. Companies do not appear to recognize the risk of ignoring customer experiences.

Case in point: GE and the sub-brand, GE Interest Plus. Based on my entire relationship with this company (which hasn't been that long, but has been extremely painful), I wrote the following message to them last week (via their online feedback loop -- which will likely never reach anyone who can/will initiative change in the company).

This is clearly a company in trouble, if we're to measure success based on solid attention to touchpoints. Let me illustrate (this will also be blogged). [I covered my 'disclosure'.]

I signed up for Quick Transactions. I have in front of me the brochure: "How to Manage your Investment On-Line or Over the Phone". Indeed the 'first attention' position of information after opening the tri-fold brocure communicates the following: "GE Interest Plus offers you the ability to manage your investment in a number of ways: + Through our Account Access website (www.geinteresplus.com). + Through our automated telephone line at 1-800-433-4480 + By speaking with a representative from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. E.T."

Last Wednesday (before the tax deadline) I called to speak with a representative (one of the three channels offered in the brochure). I asked for clarification on transactions, as my last online transaction took 4 days to post to my bank account. He assured me that it should be transacted in 24 hours, so I requested that a large transaction be executed.

To my amazement, 5 days later there was no money in my bank account. Indeed, when I checked my Interest Plus account nothing had been transacted at all.

My life was too busy this week (marathon planning meetings at work) to do anything until this following Friday, but my husband had called earlier in the week and had been told that I couldn't have possibly attempted a transaction with the rep because they can't DO transactions by phone (hmmm, didn't the brochure state otherwise, and didn't the rep I spoke with give me the distinct impression that he'd indeed completed such a transaction for me? I did insist that the tapes be pulled and reviewed).

When I called I got a very patient representative who continued to restate to me the basics (none of which are called out in the brochure). Indeed, when later asking to speak with a supervisor I was told that wire transactions (not mentioned anywhere in the brochure) are called out in the prospectus. Where are the research findings you have which suggest that a prospectus is a means by which to effectively communicate with your customers?

It was noted to me that there is a $15 fee for 24 hour wire transfers. When I suggested that I would like to have a wire transfer initiated with the fee waived to make up for the mis-information on many fronts, I was told that they would readily waive the fee but that my account was not set up for wire transfers and that paperwork would need to be mailed to me for signature.

Welcome to the 21st century.

But the story doesn't end here. I went online to execute the transaction I was assured had occured 8 business days ago. I tried to log in. I couldn't. After several tries, I suddenly realized something that had only been partially evident to me before: the web site and the phone system maintain two totally different passwords (and yet neither channel communicates this).

None of this is remotely indicative of the practices which individuals experience via other online relationships. Clearly even your print and phone interactions are highly flawed in their ability to communicate and/or engage in reasonable transactions. Your comparative competition is not other investment institutes, it is the whole financial services industry.

I recommended to the supervisor that he look for another job.

It's quite sad, because they have a great product. They stopped short of the design cycle, by focusing just on the product -- not the experience that goes with the product.

While there are certainly more 'scum-laden' behaviors worthy of industry attention/correction, latent bad behaviors such as these should have full disclosure. Mainly, because in the case of companies that should know better, these behaviors are often in management blind spots. These companies are so large and so impersonal that the 'voice' of the customer and the 'voice' of the employee are drowned out by the noise of a monolithic, thought-to-be well-designed machine.

Every once in a while someone needs to pull the whistle on the line to get management to come running and check things out.

When you can't seem to find the right words to explain what experience design is all about and how it fits into business, point your conversation partner to this fast-paced 4 minute video of Peter Merholz describing the what's important to consider -- how customer experience is something beyond the product itself.

I experienced my first chink in Amazon's brand experience armor. It wouldn't have necessarily been enough to report on (how many random issues do we run into in experiences daily?), but this seemed too different in too many ways. I did a search to see if anyone else had reported anything (not that the search engines aren't so clogged with 'noise' that results would be meaningfully indicative of anything) and found only 1 artifact, which isn't even directly related. Take my observation for what it's worth.

I went to order a book on Amazon yesterday. Amazon set the bar for simplicity in online ordering. I could have used 1-click, but after the initial novelty wore off (years ago), I often find that I change orders a lot and like to mess with a shopping collection for some time. But in this case it was just one book.

When I got to the payment page, my head tilted to the right -- you know, the autonomic inclination when your eyes and brain are trying to resolve some unidentified conflict -- where "something's different" is trying to raise to the level of conscious awareness.

Months earlier, as a result of very successfully-crafted persuasion, I had set up my primary payment option as my bank account. It was suddenly not there. Then I noticed that issues at the payment stage were not supported in any way: there was no access from the page to your account information and there was no access to any help links. I bailed out of the transaction to do some research. This was the first of many repeats of this action.

The only 'clue' that I had was that there was some 'red' on the payment page: one of my cards on file had expired. Having been in this business too long, I'm supposing that there might be an error condition overriding the display of my bank account. I check and my bank account is listed as my primary method of payment. I'm running short of time -- I wasn't planning to spend this much time to order a book. I engage the online feedback loop to get some clarity.

The next morning there's a response in my inbox. Well, there's an email. There's nothing in the response that even remotely addresses my concern, but there are phone numbers. I call. While the support agent spoke perfect English I knew they were not US-based (I had to spell everything). They had no answers and suggested at least two actions I was not happy with (1. Would need to wait until Monday to get someone to help me 'fix' issues with my bank account -- there was no evidence that my bank account had any issues and 2. They'd report that I had problems with a virus (where the heck did this come from?)). Lastly, they gave me an email address for the web team.

In the meantime, the prior email had a feedback feature for me to respond if the email had solved my problem, and the call itself generated another one of these. It was through this mechanism that I got some real answers:

Hello from Amazon.com.

First, please allow me to extend my sincere apologies for any inconveneince this matter has caused to you.

I want to let you know that we've removed the option to "pay directly from your bank account" temporarily due to an issue with our payment processor. I'm afraid I don't have any information about when or if we may offer this option again.

That's pretty significant. And yet, through at least 4+ touchpoints this oh-so-important piece of information was not available to either myself or the interacting support staff/mechanisms.

Has Amazon finally exceeded the optimal tipping-point of size and control?

Or are they too focused elsewhere?

Lately profits have fallen, dragged down by spending on new technology projects and on free-shipping offers that Amazon considers marketing in place of TV ads. Analysts expect full-year net income this year to come in at about $180 million, or half of last year's total. Most worrisome to investors is Amazon's three-year-plus binge on new technologies. So far this year its spending on technology and content, including hiring hundreds of engineers and programmers to produce all these new services and buy more servers to run them, is up 52%, to $485 million. As a result, operating margins, at 4.1% for the past four quarters, now come in at less than Wal-Mart's 5.9%.

PayPal, likely the most frequent subject of phishing expeditions, has now turned the tables on the practice and without doing a single thing to change their business model is using this practice to their advantage.

Getting a PayPal email in your inbox is almost an immediate 'mark as spam' action -- unless you see the title of something you recently bought in the subject line. This subject line said: "How to spot scams and protect your identity"...not too many phishers would pick this as a topic. But just to make sure, I opened it. Inside was a beautifully-crafted html page with various sections and links, better than some of the finest of online page design. At the top of the page banner, centered off of the PayPal logo was a large "Hello Paula Thornton" (most phishers don't have a lot of personal information). There were enough cues in the piece to clearly suggest that this indeed was from PayPal.

Of the many actions available on this newsletter-like piece was the following:

How PayPal Works
Check out the new demo
See why PayPal is the safe and simple way to pay online.
Find out the many ways you can use your account. Watch the demo.

While they never really use the words directly (very crafty) by the tying in of this message to all the other messages around identity theft, phishing and the like, they're reinforcing the opportunity for people to use their service as a means to secure their personal identity and related financial information.

Classic.

Harold G. Nelson offers an interesting perspective on the realm of our discipline:

"Scientists and artists legitimately serve their own interests-their curiosity or need to express themselves. In contrast, design is defined as a service to the 'other'. Design is relationship-based-a social system-and designing is a complex, dynamic process I describe as a 'conspiracy'-a breathing together-among stakeholders in the design."

He also talks about our ability to be transcendental (well, not exactly, but it seemed like a great '60s attribute to try on for fit). His case for design as a basis for leadership is all the more intriguing when looking at its reliance on a "service relationship" (it's likely slighly different than your first mental image). Based on my own heightened focus to embody more 'change management' practices in our discipline, this quote was also quite relevant:

leaders forget, people like to change -- they just don't like being changed

Mr. Nelson suggests that a design culture helps accommodate the change, but this also requires an organizational design competency.

A quick review of his book, The Design Way, strongly suggests that there are some keys here to crossing the chasm. The more I learn about Harold Nelson and his work the more it looks like it could be the missing Rosetta Stone for our discipline. He certainly has pegged a primary reason I've never pursued an advanced degree.

Quotes from in-depth interview in NextD Journal: ReRethinking Design
Caution: While purported as an 'interview', GK VanPatter has a tendency to pontificate too profusely at the expense of gaining greater understanding of the individual being interviewed. The last 20 pages (printed html pages of 44 total) is an endless stream of GK interjecting material which should have been published in a separate piece.

Just keep finding ways to introduce the principles. Check out this example, excerpted here from a manufacturing publication:

...won over by a Kaizen demonstration that stressed the importance of videotaping. Seward was inspired enough to purchase a video camera on his way back to the plant. On his return, he made a 10-minute video of an assembly/packaging process that he sensed incorporated too many duplicated steps. He then invited three operators, an engineer and an operations manager to watch the video with him. Their curiosity about Seward's plan turned to active involvement when he then asked the workers to describe problems they were having with the process. "The flood gates opened," says Seward. "I filled many pages. When they finally slowed down, I asked what they thought we could do to improve the process."

The team quickly noted the wastefulness of having expensive process machinery sit idle while the operator assembled parts. Then automation was discussed, which led an operator to ask if Seward's experiment would mean the end of his job. "I assured them they would never lose their job at this company because of this process," says Seward. "I said it will make their job easier and allow them more time to get involved with additional work as we bring it in, which is good for growth."

Seward's impromptu Kaizen session led to a new, partially automated machine the company designed and built in-house. "It paid for itself in five weeks," says Seward, by enabling more units to be built in less time.

Now maybe someone should point out to them why it works...

Leveraging the common model to combine a book with a discussion, Wikinomics claims to focus on how mass collaboration changes everything.

The thoughts framed by this concept were central to the discussions that went on at the recent FASTforward 07 event (which I'm already planning to attend next year). Conversations around the event and the thinking that went on, continue with high energy. Aside from the uniqueness of the event in the pre/post use of the blog which was seeded with some high-energy thinkers in the intranet / Enterprise 2.0 space, the event was unique in that although hosted by a vendor (and sponsored by several others), it was clearly an event to bring together bright minds and allow for deep conversations to go on around the topics and possibilities for this space -- such that the vendor(s) themselves can learn from the discussions as equal participants.

What was refreshing is that principles of Experience Design were front and center in the conversations. It was clearly a 'design thinking' sort of event.

One concept that came out of the discussions, which is reinforced by the Wikinomics artifacts, is that we need to embrace the power of the 'individual as a channel'. Major companies are thinking through new business models to both embrace and capitalize on this reality. Related discussions were quite heady.

Online Video: Executive design recruiter, RitaSue Siegel, offers her perspectives to assess whether or not a company is commited to design strategically. [QuickTime, 03:40]

In it, she closes with one of her beliefs: that getting an MBA is not a relevant step for increasing one's ability to be effective in design leadership. Other more recent pieces contributed by RitaSue provide a great perspective on the growth and potential of the larger discipline of design.

Notable Quote

Five years ago few designers used the term experience, as in experience design. Today, virtually no designer leaves the office without it.

When I posted my HDTV comments earlier this week, I'd forgotten that I'd previously shared my dilemma of finding the right HDTV equipment. In that post I noted the opportunity to bypass programming schedules and avoid the necessity to store programming yourself, but to rely on the source for the programming.

It only came to my attention today that the BBC is specifically addressing this issue, as a public entity. An "on demand application with the working title of MyBBCPlayer".

Of significant note is this quote from the Director-General: "Quite quickly we expect many more households to adopt a range of solutions for moving media from PC to TV and vice versa and from fixed devices to mobile ones and back again."

I'm ready for it...

Footnote: It's obvious from additional comments why we can find some of our best practitioners coming out of this organization. We'd all love to work in an environment where at the highest levels this was the focus of the work:

This picture of a possible on demand future is part of a bigger story – which is the BBC's response to what is often referred to as Web 2.0.

The second chapter in the web's history requires other changes from the BBC: a much greater focus on content management and supported metadata to allow for sophisticated search and navigation, a shift of gravity from text towards rich audio-visual content across the piece, an engagement with user-generated content, user-recommendation and personalisation which goes beyond anything I've touched upon this evening.

And it requires a different kind of BBC

To our colleagues at the BBC, don't let us get in your way...

Having come through the ranks of