buena vista

Pictures and stories

Understanding people, your users, the consumers - call us what you will - is, in my opinion now key to successful design and innovation. This understanding does not just inform strategy but is also truly inspirational for generative design stages.

But apart from that - people watching is fun and incredibly rewarding.

When I look at the thousands of photos I've taken, many of them feature people (us) and the work-arounds, tweaks, and adjustments to the world we need to make in order to navigate our lives successfully. The products and services we engage with inevitably get used in weird and wonderful ways, often not always in the same way the original creators envisaged.

The 'what we do' that wasn't forseen offers huge opportunites with interpretation and understanding.

Take this example from a European city piazza. This young woman is taking photos of her friends (we can't actually see them but you can imagine where there are). The thing is, three or four of her friends have given here their cameras to capture the moment too.

What else? In truth I don't know the whole back story, but with empathy you can begin to fill in some of the gaps.

How did she get to be the photographer? Did she volunteer, was it her 'turn', was she 'delegated'?

Look at how she's holding the cameras she's not actually using - how does she know which ones she's used? Does she have a 'system'?

Is there a reason all the cameras look alike? They're all silver and have straps - is there something about conforming, maybe in a fashion sense?

How does she 'know' how to use each one? Did the owners of the cameras need to give her instructions and how might that process have detracted from the spontaneity of the moment?

How does she ever get to be in the picture? What will her friends do for her in return?

There's a wealth of insights that the unanswered questions from this 'extreme' situation can teach us and industry has been benefiting from a people-centred approach for some time. IDEO employs empathic research techniques using behavioural psychologists and anthopologists to underpin their user centred design philosophy, pioneered by Jane Fulton-Suri and illustrated in her book, Thoughless Acts. Some beautiful research work is carried out by Jan Chipcase for Nokia Design using similar methods.

I wonder if such approaches might be successfully applied to other creative industries? How might the challenged advertising industry benefit where consumer disengagement is rife?

It would certainly be interesting to try.

From décor to core

So… we’re all predicting melt-down of advertsing / marketing / brand / as the user glides effortlessly from passive thru active to ‘control’ but what are we going to do about it?

Well it’s not going to be a gerzillion myspaces/youtubes/flickers/blogs…

And the response isn't going to be 'user generated’ ads / films.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious we need to look for something that offers value to both the consumer and the brand. I believe we’re talking about Propositions.

Something of truth and proven usefulness, the very thing that delivers relevance and value to the consumer, that  that is desireable and delightful. No, it’s absolutely not about the ad.

It’s the actual service or product.

How do we know what that looks like?

Ask and understand your consumers. Engage with them. Collaborate with them in conversations, brainstorms, ‘un’focus groups, wild all night parties, whatever it takes. Avoid reliance on statistics, sure - use quanatitive research but more usefully and for inspiration mix in empathic research techniques alongside intuition.

Then use your very best skills of interaction, experience and service design to create these propositions. Of course if you’re an ad agency, those skills might not be ten a penny so therein lies a challenge.

But when it comes to awareness, that’s where the traditional advertising 1.0 skills pay off – so there’ll still be slots and posters and films and stuff but they won’t be really informing us consumers any deeper than simply that the product or service actually exists. Just kicking off the consumer-brand relationship.

Word of mouth will become even more powerful as us consumers really begin to enjoy those experiences ‘we’ helped create. Agencies will simply help that advocacy along a little.

So… post chaos we’ll be creating propositions that add value for the consumer and the business. Ad agencies will see decreasing revenue from traditional business models and the new creatives, experience / relationship / service / product designers hand in hand with empaths will become very busy. People like IDEO, live|work, Engine are explictly doing this, Many product orientated companies are doing it too, famously P&G. Many, many more design consultancies and digital agencies and some of the forward thinking 'ex' agency agencies are doing it even if they don't realise it.

The new consumer knows what she wants and won’t be sidetracked by lifestyle or fluff. She wants value for money and to be in control of the relationship.

We’re moving from décor towards core.

The new consumer

Thanks to Nick at agency.com for alerting me to Gabe Chouinard’s letter from the ‘new consumer’ on adrants. Here's a quick sample...

"You want me to buy things. You tell your clients that you can convince me to buy. You lie to them, and they pay you for your lies."

Enjoy.

Moo! - remember Art School?

Very excited by the whole MOO cards thing. If you’ve not seen it, it’s a service where for $19.99 you get 100 nicely printed mini calling cards of images you’ve uploaded to your flickr pages.  So what? Here are some of the reasons why I’m excited:

Reinventing business cards?
I always seem to end up with a lot of unused, corporate (boring?) looking printed business cards. Moo demonstrates just how fun and personal these cards could be (Hello – remember Art School?). The thing is, these are printed full colour bleed on the one side whereas ‘most’ company cards are 2 maybe 3 flat colours and rarely feature full colour images, so there’s an increased percieved benefit (ie. they look nicer) at a very good price. Importantly YOU get to control the design. Business Cards 2.0 anyone?

Simple to use
I haven’t received my first batch yet – the ordering process ain’t perfect but is beautifully simple and full of nice tone of voice. It’ll be interesting to see how the service develops over time; (can Moo work out important dates like birthdays from photo captions and respond accordingly?). That said, a box of printed cards is also really useful but it’s hardly hardly unique is it? It’s the emotional experience (alligned with the Flickr experience) and the service delivery that makes it a little bit special.

Delightful
A delightful box of 100 different super small super ‘sexy’ little cards that all tell a different story. Nice packaging, presentation, peresnable tone of voice and overall design - I’ve heard recipients describing opening up the box as ‘just like Christmas’. Desireable. Cute, like millimetre / milligrams ‘PLAY 100’.

Appropriation by users
Business card or social networking tool? Doesn’t matter cos users will figure out how to make the most of this service. Already we’re seeing the early adopters find new uses for the cards as ‘social jigsaws’ and ‘traditional’ business cards (co-creation?). Of course it’s a lovely tactile artifact of something (digital photo) that’s typically buried on a hard disc.

Advocacy
They’re perfect little artifacts of the flickr service itself (service artifact as artifact of another service), whether you leave the little flickr logo on the reverse or not, folks are going to wonder where you got the cards and ask about the image. I learnt about them from my moblog and got mooing straight away…

Extending flickr
It’s important for flickr to keep evolving by improving the experience and adding new services and features that fit and add value for both users and the brand. There seem to be a fair few 3rd party developers creating bolt-on services like this one, part of a growing service ecology. This is great for business and keeps flickr’s nose ahead of the competition.

I’ll let you know as the experience unfolds…

Black and shiny...

Many thanks to Graeme for this one... a very interesting approach to the clock by product designers Art.Lebedev studio in Moscow.

The Verbarious electronic clock tells the time in words, in different formats; forty-five minutes past four, or fifteen minutes to five, or four forty-five, or a quarter to five. and all in five different languages. Aesthetically it's very much on the Apple tip - unfussed clean lines, radius corners and a mix of matt and gloss surfaces. With a design language reminiscent of the recent Olivetti MY_WAY printer by IDEO. The clock is a snip at around €135 but not available until the end of this year 'sigh' (but maybe in time for Christmas!).

As seems to be fashionable these days, they have an online store where you can buy loads of fab goodies.

They are also very accomplished graphic and interaction designers. And that's the point. These days it really pays to be multi-disciplinary, you can clearly see the benefit to the clock project of having not just quality product designers but also gifted interaction designers and graphics / tyographic designers on the team. Keep a look out for Art.Lebedev Studio. Is there no end to their talents? 

Why The North Face is my favourite brand at the moment.

I just realised this the other day – The North Face (northern Californian Outdoor clothing and equipment brand) is my favourite label of the moment. It’s really the result of a few positive experiences I’ve had.

I had to travel to Seoul, South Korea last December and was slightly surprised how cold it might be and decided I needed a new jacket. (Experience number 1) An outdoors persuits shop near me seemed to be a good place to start and I’d mentally figured on an extreme / technical climbing thing. Not so said the assistant, indeed after popping in several times (and several assistants later…) I’d been happily ‘downsold’ to a more urban device nicely showereproof and warm buut not bulky or ‘in your face’. Were they protecting their brand I wonder – one less wally in a technical outfit 1000s of km from the nearest moountain?

This jacket prooved perfect in chilly Seoul, and smart enough to replace a suit jacket, and comfortable (in a fashionable way) out at night. Made me feel like I’d made the right choice :-)

One interesting thing I found was that there was a fair amount of stuff on ebay (Experience number 2) – not too much, not too little. I like that. Too much and you wonder why people are selling, and how the brand isn’t controlling counterfeiting better. Too little and you wonder about supply. I dunno, just seemed a healthy balance. Their online presence is OK – but really only for guaging range, you need to feel the qaulity and try for size in person.

There’s nowt wrong with boys liking bags and I always have lots of stuff with me, so I reckoned a new bag? (Experience number 3) Of course North Face had a few interesting ones, massive shiny PVC duffles on wheels, messenger bags, and other technical looking combos. Of course the one I fancied was full of plastic bags (zzzz) and as I proceeded to unpack it (to check out inside pockets and the like, the manageress caught me and went out back to dig out a fresh unopened one.

What ws interesting was the charm, the humour and relaxed-ness of the staff service I felt (of course I was paying good money but I also felt good.  So The for these few reasons, North Face is my favourite brand right now… and it’s winter.

Oh and I almost forgot - it's well designed, beautifully made, makes me feel like a real adventurer, well priced, has a nice brogth red logo, is almost 'in' right now and totally cool. IMHO.