buena vista

The right profile; square pegs in round holes and T-shaped people.

Met a couple of very interesting folk the last few days. Both very different, hugely different backgrounds but crucial things in common:

One is an old friend, the other I worked with briefly (I'll keep them anonymous)...

One trained in ergonomics and product design at Loughborough, the other studied English at University. The product designer spent nearly 10 years in transportation and ergonomics, then started up a design consultancy in Singapore. The English grad went in to the music business, organising band nights and managing acts.

The product designer then spent a while in branding with Wolff Olins. He was in his time, also a very serious racing cyclist.

The English grad then went back to study at Central St. Martins and became a very accomplished animator (which is how I met her). She also discovered that she loves standing up in front of large groups of people, teaching and leading workshops.

So what ties these brief stories together? Both have expressed to me that they no longer feel challenged, that there must be something else to give in their creative lives. Both have user-centred leanings (one as trained ergonomist, the other discovering user research). Both are intrigued about my recent career path from IDEO, through Sense Worldwide to Engine.

Both have also articulated (like myself) that we feel like the proverbial 'square peg in a round hole' and that the established design community is struggling to provide adequately for them. Recruitment consultants on the whole don't know how to deal with these non-conformists.

So why is this interesting?

Because we need more people like this. People like this are the future. Tim Brown calls them 'T-shaped people' Whatever shape they are - for me, they're the right profile.

They're not 'Jack of all trades, master of none' but neither are they the sort of precious creatives who only design for themselves.

Props to Jeff Howard for this piece by Richard Seymour (ex Seymour Powell) from InterSections 07 'Richard Seymour: Leviathan. The rise of the Polymath'.

"Reflecting on his discipline-busting career, Richard believes that designers need to adopt a wide-spectrum approach to the future, encouraging them to broaden their bandwidths. In a lightning tour covering Leviathan, lasagne and Dan Dare he argues that we now have a unique opportunity to reinvent our future and that designers need to start focusing on the real problems that matter..."

It's a super challenging but also super rewarding world out there... I wish us all the very best of luck.

Real and Right people.

first direct - possibly the most innovative amongst UK banks, known as the first telephone only bank, open 24/7/365, plain talking and user-centred in it's approach, is an exemplar of good customer service. It's been around since 1989 and is the only bank within the HSBC roster to retain it's own identity, Oh and 1 in 3 people who join the bank do so through personal recommendation.

I like this ad for which talks about the right people.

"Technology is responsible for some pretty amazing things. The internet. Mobile Phones. Karaoke machines. And we love that. But there some things technology just can't do. Like talk to people, for instance.

That's why we have real people answering your calls. We don't want to waste your time by making you punch digit after digit into your handset. We don't read from a script either. We know that every one of our customers is an individual and they deserve to be treated that way.

That's also why we hire people who are naturally approachable, engaging and friendly and train them to be bankers, rather than hire bankers and train them to be approachable, engaging and friendly, which can be a much more difficult prospect.

Give us a call. We're looking forward to talking to you."

The portion that resonates with me most is the 'we hire people who are naturally approachable, engaging and friendly and train them to be bankers, rather than hire bankers and train them to be approachable, engaging and friendly' bit.

In designing a service, we typically around People, Places and Things (pretty much everything then). All these three are vital, if one element not right the whole house of cards falls down.

For a bank, even a 'virtual one' (first direct has no physical branches) people are traditionally at the very sharp end of delivering the service; but to explicitly hire folks who are not bankers is actually very clever.

In a world where we're increasing seeking to design-in service differentiation, people are a prime way of delivering just that - typically through an emotional even empathic understanding of the customer; as the ad puts it 'approachable, engaging and friendly'.

In a physical retail space, the sales assistant can see you and assess physical signs; where you're looking, what you look like, body language etc. but for services delivered with no face to face interaction, that's not possible. This is where super empathic and emotional detective skills are more important in a co-worker over and above content skills, especially if the latter can be taught - as clearly they can be at first direct.

So where else are these emotional skills more important than content skills? What other content skills are easily taught?

Or is this merely an update on the traditional sales skill - where this sales skill is the indispensable ingredient in staff given you can more easily give them the product training.

What do you think?

The people bit of Service Design and Going Native

I'm attracted to this article in November's Fast Company magazine. Alex Frankel quite literally goes 'native' in order to understand the value that front line employees play in adding value to the brand. His book, Punching in: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee is published in December through Collins.

In the design of services,  it often comes down to the role you expect your employees to play, and Alex worked (or tried to work) at Gap, Starbucks, UPS before finally landing a spot on the shop floor at Apple.

Me? I've been a lift boy, delivered carpets, sold hi-fi, worked on company exhibition stands... not much and I'd be the very first to admire the people skills required in retail.

And it's far more than just selling. Retail is detail - as I've heard.

These days truely great retail has more in common with the emergency room than the sales floor - triage, diagnosis and even empathy, are today's skills in understanding your customer - and building a (valuable) long-term relationship.

Apple apparently employ Position: Permission: Probe. which is where Apple co-workers explain to customers that they have some questions to ask, get permission to fire away and then just dig away to figure out which products will be best.

Have you been on the receiving end of this transparent approach? Did it work? What are your stories?

Of course iTunes is a classic and often quoted super example of great Service Design, but it's easy to forget the nuances at work on the shop floor.

Training of Apple store employees is like the iPod user interface - carefully designed...

Apple store are almost over-staffed, so no one has to wait too long.

Apple staffers also hand out business cards like in a high-end or bespoke clothing store.

Such are the insights gathered when Alex worked on the front line; and it's not just authors or ethnographers who can benefit. Here in the UK Pret a Manger regularly sends out new exec hires to work the floor.

Maybe Service Designers should give it a go too, there's obviously plenty to learn.

Links and thoughts - late September

First - let's get the apologies over with. I'd not realised how much effort I was putting into regular posts and therefore how easy it would be to cease posting once work became all-consuming. Still, just excuses. Sorry anyway.

So a couple of links, one via Leisa - this one Demystifying Data Analysis where Rachel Hinman of Adaptive Path eloquently captures some of the techniques we employ to gain real actionable insights from research.

Next - again from Rachel, this time in conversation with an ex-colleague of mine at IDEO, Mark Jones (he's still there, I'm not) - on Service Design.

Now these techniques are shared by many creative folk in the innovation space - and I was lucky enough to help lead a project with London research and innovation consultancy, Sense Worldwide - actually worthy of a post of it's own, especially around their particular approaches to gaining insights. Great bunch of people too.

And of course Service Design is a particular point of focus, one I share with Engine, who I'm now working with.

As a freelancer it's interesting to compare and contrast these two consultancies with each other and, of course with IDEO, a point I will expand upon soon.

Link for the first bit of August

Rashmi Sinha helps us with planning and packing for a roadtrip
Boxes? bags? How to label for best access  and using Information Architecture best practice. Interesting as I'm often wondering how 'online' skills might be deployed 'offline'. Like this... It's an old link on Human Factors on Rashmi Sinha's blog - check July 12 2002!

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.
Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or - eventually - a television...

The Penguin that sold it's soul to a Mouse.
What with the release of the kids movie Surf's Up - following up on last year's awesome Happy Feet... Penguin seems to be the animal 'du jour'. So I'm happy to see that kiddy soc net site Club Penguin has sold it's soul to Disney. Now if had sold to Pixar, that might be interesting but heck we haven't even visited Disneyland so far and there's clearly life in the old mouse yet...

Awesome - how do they do that - shame it's only for PC - moment
mixalbum.com - an interesting new 'service' to benefit from that bloke off Dragon's Den (Ideas as social commentary / currency) Try before you buy (yippee!) but it only works with .wmv files and PC, or something like that. Shame. As a mac user, I'm clearly in the minority. Mind you when Apple releases a rev of iTunes that mixes and blends tracks perfectly... Can't wait for some tasty Rotterdam industrial nonsense beat mixing perfectly into vintage Simonelli.

Links for the last bit of July.

As an experiment, I'm going with the short links approach to posting. So here goes...

iPhone product and AT&T service mess-up.
Good service ecology example of poor integration of front of house experience and back of house systems, cool product promise and dreadful service delivery.

Germs are in the details
From Steve Portigal's excellent and observant All this Chittah Chattah blog - this is an insightful look at simple but useful innovation ideas and how well they're implemented. This wonderful example - hand wipes for shopping carts and the contagious deconstruction of photographic evidence from the field.

Product and Service innovation (or not) amongst US cellphone carriers.
Another from NY Times' tech journo, David Pogue. Interesting with all the talk around the iPhone and what the other poor handset manufacturers and service providers are going to do in response. Get a decent people-centred innovation strategy say I.

Future of Mobile
Hurry hurry for tickets to November's mobile conference. I'll be looking out for Future Platform's Tom Hume and Daniel Appelquist from Vodafone - both of Mobile Monday fame and both of who I hope to speak more user and less tech ;-)

Ten reasons to throw away your cellphone
More anti cellphone tech advancement business from Wired magazine. 'Hell is other people's ringtones'.

Culture Shock - Picture of the week no.4

With all the usual 'stuff' we have to deal with; family, jobs, money, even the weather - it's useful to stop and think about life outside of your world.

This illustration by Lea Becker helps me do just that.

Lea's probably one of the most talented interns people I've ever been lucky enough to work with, and now she's started her studies and is working her summer out in South Africa. Apart from being a super smart thinker she's also an awesome artist. She's started a blog and this illustration is her latest entry.

Kind of puts everything into perspective doesn't it?

Tiny thing, Facebook.

OK, so it's my Birthday today and one of the cool things about Facebook is that you can see your friends' upcoming Birthdays. And no, I don't think there's any expectation for them to write messages - but a lot of them did write on my wall and create nice graffiti ;-)

In fact I got cards through the post, cards and drawings in person, calls on the land-line, calls, and texts on the mobile, plus a few deliveries to the front door. Phew - and on your birthday there can never be enough communications channels.

The tiny (very tiny) thing about Facebook was where and when it wished me happy birthday.

Now I got 'happy birthday' vouchers from our local Indian Restaurant (tick), I even got a happy birthday Email from Clairol cos I bought my wife some hair products for Christmas (half a tick, I don't have any hair, but it was my credit card) - so although we have all the data, there's no guarantee how well it will be utilised.

I like what Facebook does in flashing up pending birthdays a few days in advance and strangely (or is that serendipity?) quite a few of my new friends have birthdays around the same time as mine, which I never knew.

So, cutting to the chase...

What does facebook do when it's MY birthday? Well it tells all my friends (big tick) so I get messages on my wall (another big tick) but what does it say to me, the birthday boy? NOTHING, at least not at 08.00 this morning when like the slightly sad person I am, I check. Facebook 'knows' my date of birth  cos I told them- but that little box titled 'Birthdays' is empty. How come - what about me?

Doh! - and here's my point. When creating a service experience like Facebook and designing in all those little personal service gestures I would have put a nice little birthday greeting there - right in that box (with the heading 'Birthdays') where I expect to see birthday info like the reminders. But they didn't.

What they did do about 3 hours later, however was put it up above the News Feed stuff.

So what you say - they wished you happy birthday didn't they? And wasn't that 'news' Well yes they did, and in a way it was but on an emotionally charged day, it wasn't quite right enough and a real tiny, tiny thing made it wrong, all wrong.

By putting it where I expect to see 'news' and not where I expect to see 'birthday' and by posting it 2nd thing in the morning, for me they got the 'where' and the 'when' wrong.

So when thinking about the necessities of the core experience, yes they manage that very well indeed, they also manage to 'remember me' too but the 'surprise me' bit was badly delivered.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Absolutely not - as it's these little details of the experience that are the ones that make or break it, attention to these aspects of the experience will begin to differentiate one service from another. The good from the excellent. This is what we mean when we start talking about 'Experience Design' - tiny, tiny details, often totally human-centred that designers need principles or some kind of 'design language' to figure out.

And when they're not quite right you get people like me posting long rants about it.

Even on their birthday.

Photo of the week no.2

This group of people really caught my eye. Not immeadiately though. They were American tourists waiting for a train to take them up to London and possibly some regular sightseeing. Nothing unusual there.

The I looked down (don't ask why) and their footwear interested me. Mom, Pop and Daughter 1 (I'm guessing) were wearing sensible running shoes, Whereas Daughter 2 was wearing Converse.

What delighted me was what she was clearly expressing - individuality, personality, going against the grain - adopting non-standard issue. But only in footwear - every other item of clothing was conforming with the family strategy.

It's probably true that the running shoes are more suited to walking around the metropolis but practicality and rationale weren't important, emotional expression and what those Converse said about her, clearly were.

So I'm wondering, How Might We... express those small (discrete) but important personality differences in online environments whilst maintaining a level of conformity?

Experience Design - locked down or thumb tight?

Came across this interesting and well written introduction to Experience Design on the Adobe site by Adam Greenfield.

It gives a basic introduction to the new discipline (as you might expect on the Adobe site) but it also raises some interesting points.

"(But) it turns out that experience design, as it is currently conceived, does not always lead to successful experiences. Ensuring that all phases and aspects of someone's interaction with a product/service ecology align with a singular vision requires a large degree of control. This, in turn, leaves little room for the self-evident (and lovely) messiness of our lives, and not much in the way of flexibility should the scenario of use deviate to any significant degree from that contemplated at design time."

So, how might we design an experience which is only 'thumb tight' (my phrase), which leaves room for the participant to play, input and in a way co-create the experience?

The article goes on to describe how the success of experience ecologies are subject to the 'house of cards' theory - where all is well except for one (often small) detail which ruins the whole experience. Sometimes this missing piece of the jigsaw is the responsibility of the service provider, like infrastructure or rolling stock. Sometimes it's people like us who are the cause.

"...a particularly acute issue wherever a designed ecology brings human beings face-to-face with one another. As things now stand, experience design's Achilles heel is customer service. A combination of low wages, disinvestment in training and deeper cultural factors has left American businesses without a large pool of workers motivated to provide customer service at the level routinely specified by designers. The result is that experiences seamless on paper break down the moment a human being enters the loop."

So in designing experiences, it pays not only the be empathic to the user's needs, but also understanding of the other actor's human issues, like employee training, and incentives. Not traditional design territory, but when you think about experience design in the context of designing relationship - then of course people, the 'actors', be they 'us' the users or 'them' are right at the very heart.

Extending the acting analogy a little further, the ability for staff and providers to go off script, to improvise, whether at a call centre or face-to-face in the store is another example where 'thumb tight' is better then 'locked down'.