User Experience

“i” is for Jobs, “A” is for Cook, and Other Thoughts about Time

Two days after the big Apple announcement event in Cupertino I’m was just beginning to digest all of the content. One of the things that hit home was subtle, meaningful and very much Apple. Amidst the hundreds of rumors and musings about what would be coming, the iWatch and a wallet of some sort were the headlines.

As it turned out a watch was announced and so was a wallet, but they weren’t iWatch or iWallet. Steve Job’s owns the “i” and it’s sacred territory. The iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac all these inventions and ways of changing so much belong to Mr. Jobs. Was Apple making a conscious separation from the Jobs era and the Cook era? So we have Apple Payments and the Apple Watch. Mr. Cook and the design team took the iPhone to a new plateau as only they can. Engineering, materials, technology and assembly all combined to give the world the next generation of iPhones.

Then came the Apple Watch announcement.

The Arrow of Time

I fancy myself a watch guy. A serious, but not showy watch collector, as in I own watch winders. Why? Well, the necktie is long gone (thank you), which means men have fewer accessory choices in our wardrobe. Actually that’s not the reason I like timepieces. Mostly it’s likely due to a hardwired XY chromosome thing. I own more than my share of watches. Most of them are very modest in price, but I do have a few gems. Watches are similar to wine. You can get a great one without overspending. But 99.9% of all watches do exactly the same thing. They provide a window into the arrow of time.

Sean Carroll, a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, studies dark energy and general relativity. He describes the arrow of time.

There’s something called “the arrow of time” and it is simply the direction in which time passes from the past to the future. There are many ways in which the past and future are different: things become messier toward the future; we remember yesterday and not tomorrow; actions we take now affect the future but not the past. All of those reflect the arrow of time.

Now, the origin of the arrow of time is a mystery. Based on the laws of thermodynamics, we understand how it works. But we don’t understand why there is an arrow. It comes down to conditions near the Big Bang; the universe started out highly organized and has been becoming more random and chaotic ever since. The universe is like a mechanical toy that started all wound up, and has been winding down for the last 14 billion years.

Watches don’t keep time, or track time, they simply tell the time. providing the illusion you are in control even when it’s obviously in question. They fix you in the time-space continuum and of course, remind you there’s yet another meeting to attend. According to the arrow of time, things are now more difficult today than they were yesterday. That’s somewhat true I suppose, but the arrow of time does not take into consideration we become smarter over time, even as things become more complex.

There are tens of thousands of watch designs, faces, bands, shapes and sizes. Despite varying features, they are all essentially built to do one simple, singular thing. Display the time.

It’s Time For a Smartwatch Conversation

A classic line from a Mad Men episode, slightly altered, but completely relevant today. The smartwatch began to gain momentum and my attention over the last few years. There are essentially two flavors of them. One is health related. It tracks steps, elevation, etc. and oh yes, it has some kind of timekeeping device inside. The other is a concept watch that tries to combine the utility of a smartphone onto the small but infinitely complex wrist watch.

I got sucked into the Tik Tok and Luna Tick hype. A Kickstarter project that created watch bands for the iPod shuffle. At first glance it was kind of cool, but the more you looked into it or wore it, the more you realized it was wrongheaded in so many ways. I have a smallish wrist and this solution turned out to be larger than I usually wear. But still, I was drawn in by the concept and of course, the potential for exciting convergence.

Next I learned of the Cookoo connected watch. The makers said that “it’s a wearable extension of your smart phone that helps manage your connected life.” Sounded interesting. It was not usable for a watch person like me. I couldn’t read the watch face and couldn’t use it to tell time. A problem? Yes. They only updated their app features once over the eight months I used it off and on. It was not an “extension” of anything and completely “unmanageable.”

Then I got a Pebble watch. Much lighter and more comfortable to wear. It has a lot of watch faces but none of them appealed to me except the Text Watch. I felt like I was wearing a wanna be Smart Watch.

Then I bought a Martian Passport. This one looked like a standard watch with a small window below that displayed texts and @twitter notification to my personal handle. It was the best of the bunch so far. The microphone / speaker integration with Siri worked seamlessly. I got excited about it in the morning. Alas, both these devices were battery hogs and required me to charge much more often than i wanted.

When you look at your watch, which, in the days before smartphones existed, occurred up to 50 times per day, your mind raced back and forward across that arrow of time. Take this test.

If you’re wearing your watch right now, close your eyes and answer these questions. Does the face of your watch have numerals? Are they at all twelve intervals? Are they Roman are Arabic numerals? Are there slashes instead of numerals? Do you have a calendar window? Does it also show the day of the week?

Chances are you can’t answer most of these questions with any confidence despite the fact your watch face never changes and you look at it so many times per day. We have been trained over our entire lives to use a watch in a rote fashion. Raise your wrist or steal a glance under the table to get a marker. Is time running out or dragging? The seconds tick away with consistent precision, but our state of mind swerves from guardrail to guardrail.

The Apple Watch

I predict that the Apple Watch will be the bestselling technology device of 2015. It’s light years beyond anything else that’s been developed and will only add to the genius and essential nature of the iPhone. Will you hand down your Apple Watch to the next generation to be cherished as an heirloom? No. We’ve got those analog models for that. What it will do is start others working on challenging and improving what Apple has done. That’s a very, very good thing.

Mobile = Shift For Designers and Consumers

Humans have always been obsessed with what they need to “take along” whether it’s going to work or play. The advances of mobile phones and apps has led many of us to shift activities we once did exclusively on a desktop/laptop to our smartphone. This is naturally followed by an increase in the number of places we carry out basic computing tasks; now in the car, at a restaurant, waiting for a flight, watching a child’s sporting event, etc. It’s growing quickly partly because people are relieved of trying to remember what they need to bring with. As long as you have your smartphone (Swiss army knife) you feel better prepared. I have been reading, debating and thinking deeply about mobile these last few months.

I attended two mobile sessions at the recent South by Southwest Interactive track (SxSW) in Austin. The first was entitled The UX of Mobile, with Barbara Ballard of Little Springs Design, Scott Jenson from Google, and Kyle Outlaw of Razorfish. I’ll cover the second panel called Time+Social+Location with Naveen Selvadurai from foursquare, Josh Babetski from MapQuest and Greg Cypes from AIM in a later post.

This post mashes together notes from those panel sessions with what’s been brewing inside my brain and recorded in my Moleskine since last fall. It all runs together which makes it hard on the attribution front. The shape of my thoughts was obviously influenced by what’s out on the web and what was shared at SxSW. Thank you to all mobile thinkers.

In The UX of Mobile, the moderator kicked it off by asking each panelist to define user experience:

Allow users to reach goals
Think about the whole system, SMS
It’s everything that causes a user to not want to use your product; scrolling, buttons, etc.

Mobile today is hyper-focused on apps because the mobile browser is lacking (and because of Apple). When the mobile browser catches up to the app experience, there will be a monumental shift away from apps. The mobile web will be where things will get interesting and play out. But simply trying to put the web onto the phone (miniaturization) is not where the value lies. Mobile screens are a new window into the Internet. It’s the closest thing we have right now to wearable computing and so designs needs to account for mobility as well as personal connection. Design for interoperability, take advantage of mobile cache and leverage the cloud. One should design for the “mobile moment.”

Design knowing that interruptions are inevitable (the waiter comes to take your order)
A phone in your pocket can also be useful (vibrate to signal when you need to turn right or left)
Don’t bring the web to the mobile phone, bring the browser (Safari with iPhone/iPad, Chrome)

Mobile demands that you design for the screen. A smartphone has many more features available to the user than a desktop. Barbara Ballard ticked off a great list of things to be considered when designing for the mobile experience. Notations after → are my additions.

Gestures → Human
Accelerometer → Framing
Bluetooth → Extension
Camera → Pictures
Microphone → Voice
Location → Mapping
Address Book → Social
Calendar → Schedule

The mobile phones of today are closer to traveling ecosystems than operating systems. As such, usability testing for the small screen becomes more critical than browser designs. Designers/developers need to test in context, including social context; in short the real world. For me real world testing will mean getting out of the lab and test in cars, libraries, retail stores, restaurants, sporting venues etc. Internet connections are fairly reliable now; always on and fast. The cell phone carriers are not there yet. It’s better than the 9600 baud days, but not yet comparable to the speed we enjoy with today’s modems. When 4G arrives, we will be a heartbeat away from moving everything the mobile device. That will be a watershed moment.

The iPad is a Roaming Device, Not a Mobile Device

Pick up the April 2010 Wired magazine (I’d include a link but the paper version gets to me before the digital version; go figure) and turn to page 75. There’s an extremely insightful article by Steven Levy, Why the New Generation of Table Computers Changes Everything. In it he talks about how Steve Jobs is “writing the obituary for the computing paradigm” and how desktops will vanish and laptops will be used “primarily as base stations for syncing our iPads.” While at SxSW I spent a lot of time with Ian Magnini, principle at MCD Partners in New York. We work closely on strategy, design and visioncasting. He turned to me and said.

The iPad will replace the magazine rack in your home. There will be one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom and one in the bedroom – Ian Magnani

I think he’s dead on. The iPad has a huge mobile drawback in that it can’t fit in your pocket or purse. So maybe it’s not cell phone mobile, but it could be the perfect “roaming device.” I can picture people using the iPad to read magazines, newspapers, books, then launch the browser to order groceries or do online banking all while sitting in a comfy Barcolounger. Battery life is 10 hours and taps return instantaneous responses. Keypad will be the big challenge.

As always, Jobs will ensure that the design experience will be outstanding. I have heard that there won’t be a calculator on the iPad at launch because he didn’t like the experience. It doesn’t matter. Once it’s right, it will be included in a future version.

Much more to come on Mobile.

Advancing the Useful, Usable, Desireable Framework

Forrester Research frequently advocates for their usability framework of useful, usable and ultimately desirable. The first two are table stakes and where designers spend most of their effort. When there is the luxury of time, which almost never happens, then one can strive for that elusive territory of desirability. If users find your design desirable you stand a greater chance of increasing conversion, garnering repeat visits and earning customer loyalty.

frameworkrefine — Forrester Framework (left) My Modifications (right)

Surfing on slideshare.net led me to a presentation that took this concept even further. Essentially the author moved from a classic pyramid to a honeycomb design and added some critical elements to the model. These include, valuable, findabe, credible and accessible. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t favorite the slide show and so I can’t reference the author or link to the actual presentation. My apologies to the person who created this really helpful PowerPoint. Here’s how it was illustrated in the presentation.

honeycomb-model — A Honeycomb Approach to Usability

This concept advances the Forrester model by giving designers and customer experience professionals more dimensions to consider. When I provide direction to my staff and agency, I encourage them to include desirable as a goal from the very beginning, vs. settling for useful and usable and then tackling desirable as a “fast follower.” Oftentimes there’s no time for a fast follower, so getting in as much as possible is very important. Some of these additional attributes found in the honeycomb model above are clearly more structural or work to support reputation, not necessarily spawned from pure usability needs. But they are real aspects users will weigh as they navigate a web site or attempt to use functionality, so accounting and designing for these will be a plus.

This one slide has caused me expand my thinking and build out my checklist. If anyone knows who authored this, please chime in so I can give proper credit.

Forrester Consumer Forum 2008: Maslow is Dead – First in a Series

I attended the Forrester Consumer Forum in Dallas earlier this week. It was my 16th Forrester event which speaks volumes about how I respect the company, value their people and study their work. It’s a day and a half of data, insights and big thinking with a sprinkling of small track sessions scaled down to snack size bites. They are also the consummate hosts. This year’s anthem was Keeping Ahead of Tomorrow’s Customers. An interesting theme, since most of the attendees (including me) were dialing back growth to match a briskly receding consumer. But Forrester did a great job at keeping things upbeat while recognizing the current economic climate and giving us some weapons we could take back and use.

One of the things that has been missing for me during the big top presentations as of late has been bold predictions. The research is still top notch, the analysts are smart, “wicked smart” as Carrie Johnson would say in her Boston accent, and they are frequently ahead of almost everyone. But some of the edge has dulled. I entered the main ballroom wondering if I would get something provocative, forward looking and passionate. My take? I got more stick your neck out than usual, and I was really excited about it.

James McQuivey, Ph.D. began with a talk called Satisfy Consumers for the Next Decade (and Beyond). He brought long lost relatives to life on the stage in an effective manner illustrating his story about why some consumers adopt early, and others late. His theme was: People share a set of universal needs. Satisfy those needs and you will win. He was really getting me to lean in until… Until he trashed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He said.

Maslow’s needs are not ordered, not orderly, and in fact they’re messy.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - Graphic: Wikipedia

As I said, I was looking for provocative statements and guts, and I got both. As a formally trained psychologist I take umbrage to disparaging Maslow. He had sound methods and studied some of the most actualized people he could find to help him create this classic pyramid. I don’t claim it’s perfect, that would not be remotely possible in psychology. But it is a storied framework that has stood the test of time and is to be respected. I don’t believe Maslow intended his concepts to be the basis for business sales, but Mr. McQuivey made a strong case for how the current social media trend should cause us to rethink many things. He then laid out his own take at people’s universal needs.

Connection
Uniqueness
Comfort
Variety

According to Mr. McQuivey, everyone has all four, but they vary in importance by individual, can shift over time due to changing circumstances and people will ultimately trade off one need against another. These are interesting to ponder and even more so as he lays them out in a Needs Profile designed to help marketers target consumers better.

He built his next section on the idea of a Convenience Quotient that can be found in research released earlier in the year. A Convenience Quotient (CQ) tells you how you compare with competitors as well as with other ways to meet the same needs. It applies to products as well as services.

I went from upset to inquisitive to interested by the time he wrapped up. At a high level it made sense, but I didn’t really know how to reliably arrive at a CQ for any of my products or services. Seemed very manufacturing focused. Will need to go back and ponder some more. Perhaps I’ll give him a call.

The event was held at the Gaylord Texan. Essentially it was like being in The Truman Show. A space the size of a city block enclosed in glass and steel. It looked more like a movie set than a resort. Perfectly manicured and very comfortable. We affectionately began calling it “The Bubble.”

Fellow Tweets Amy & Jayne — Tweeters Amy & Jayne

P.S. I attended my first TweetUp in Dallas. It was really a fantastic experience. Twitters send out Tweets and before you know it over 50 people descended on a BBQ restaurant in Grapevine, TX. All kinds of genuine, creative and fun people. Everyone is relaxed and talking about social media, politics, their start up efforts, etc. I felt so comfortable. You can get a better feel for what a TweetUp is by watching this video shot by Top Tweet and an amazing Forresterite Jeremiah Owyang. Check out his insightful and content packed blog here.

More to come on the Forrester Consumer Forum.

Agile Development in Training

Many firms are giving Agile Development a go, and it’s easy to understand the corporate motivation. Get to market faster with the highest value projects. In our company we’re in the 2009 planning cycle and struggling with the prioritization process and a crushing number of initiatives. All projects are scored for value to the firm and a level of effort is assigned by the IT department. As you would expect the highest value projects take the longest. And there are many more on the spreadsheet than we have resource for. So the direction from the top was to go back and see if the highest value/large projects can be scaled back to a small or medium and preserve most of the value. That way we deliver more to the company sooner. Makes total sense

The challenge is getting everyone on board to go back, open up the proposals and do the hard work to throw requirements overboard. Oh yeah, only throw out the appropriate requirements. We aren’t as skilled as we need to be to pull this one off. It seems what the top guy needs is agile development.

We all know the waterfall project development process can’t live in our fast paced world and doesn’t perform in practice because most of the players don’t spend the necessary time thinking and planning. The idea that you can completely polish off one stage and enter the next without going back is unrealistic. The result. It takes too long and no one is really happy with the outcome, especially IT who now has to maintain it.

Agile allows the various disciplines to focus and control their areas of expertise, while interfacing with everyone else. Coding begins immediately and is delivered to the team for review many times during the project. Small changes are made quickly vs. the entire code base having to be scrapped. In the waterfall world you have no choice but to ship it. That means you’re the proud owner of home built on a sacred burial ground; forever doomed. In agile you only toss out small bits of code and keep the project moving. You are never forced to ship the first pass.

In the Cooper Journal email I received today, Alan Cooper, a brilliant programmer and user experience guru, bills his firm as providing Product Design for a Digital World. We’ve used them for persona creation and their work is top drawer. In the email there was a link to Mr. Cooper’s keynote address recently given at the Agile 2008 Conference. It was a fascinating and thought provoking perspective on agile development, how it should be done, and how it differs from the waterfall process. This one slide really caught my eye as a thinking tool.

He continues to deconstruct AG, laying out the various states of mind and stages (agile and fragile). But he goes far beyond technology and process, delving deep into human psychology to explain the various roles necessary to make agile successful and why. It’s the people, their emotions, motivations and desires that drives success out of AG. Overlapping those skills in a rapid cycle environment makes a difference.

I could never refactor his keynote, so I won’t even try. See for yourself, view the keynote slides and Mr. Cooper’s speaker notes here. He has entitled the address The Wisdom of Experience. It truly is. Enjoy.

Mellon Odyssey Ends, I Think

I set out to do the simple task of certifying my taxpayer identification number at the request of Mellon Investments, and ended up spending nearly an hour over three days and it’s still not done. You can see the earlier posts here and here.

Today I tried again to log into my account. Couldn’t, but noticed they have live chat, so I joined the conversation. A gentleman named Ed came on to help. He was very good at chat, clear and to the point. He was able to take me through a process whereby I could log in. Why I suddenly couldn’t is a mystery.

I’m in and so tried one more time to certify my TIN online as instructed in the mailer. Once again I was locked out, although I used the same credentials submitted at log in. I got this message.

I navigated to the forms section and downloaded the appropriate PDF, which is what the phone agent told me to do the day before. They had two nice controls at the top of the form. One that highlights the fields you need to complete; pretty nice. The other allows you to fill in the form online and print it prefilled, which means you only have to sign and mail. I selected this choice, keyed in the information and hit print. The form came out of my printer completely unreadable. The SSN was filled in, but it wasn’t mine. Who’s was it? Where did mine go?

I reloaded the PDF, printed a blank form, filled it out with an ink pen, addressed an envelope (I’m guessing on where it should be sent), and stamped it to be mailed. Hopefully they will receive and process it. Please let this be over.

Another Cross Channel Failure – Mellon

I received a mailing from Mellon Investment today with a request to identify and certify my taxpayer information. I was provided with two ways to carry out this request; over the phone or through the Internet. I had already set up my account so online was an easy choice. I logged in and followed the instructions. I verified my information and entered my PIN to complete the transaction. I received an error that my PIN was invalid, although it was the same one used to log in not 2 minutes before. Three attempts and I was locked out. So I guess I’ve got to use the phone.

I called the toll free number and listened to a series or prompts, none of which matched the instructions on the mailer. Eventually I got to the “for all other issues press 5,” So I did. I entered my ID number and PIN and was promptly told, “We’re closed.

Lots of things wrong here.

The mailer lists the phone option first vs. the cheaper online channel.
If you are going to drive people to the phone as a first choice, you better be on the other end when they call.
The online certification process was full of financial jargon and unclear.
The system would not accept my valid PIN.
No phone hours of operation were printed on the mailer, which is fair since they say the have an Interactive Voice Response system, but the expected prompts never came.

I am an experienced Internet user and work in financial services, and I failed to complete the transaction in both channels. Now I have to take the mailing to work, find time to call, wait in the cue and then conduct the transaction. So frustrating. True, the cross channel game is tougher to master, but it’s not that hard. Get it together Mellon.

I will give them one positive. When I logged off after being shutout they asked for feedback through an online satisfaction survey. Do you think I took it?

Flock Seamlessly Merges Browser and Social Media

Social community sites are popping up all over the web. If you’re active on several of them, like me, you are constantly navigating back and forth to see what’s going on, comment, blog, etc. It’s constant clicking and page loading. Having all this inside a browser would be a cool idea wouldn’t it. Well it’s here. At least the first generation. A new browser from Flock has been designed to be the first social web browser.

It’s ready for Mac, Windows and Linux. Simply download for free and in a few fast clicks all your bookmarks, etc. are seamlessly ported over to the Flock browser. I have been using it exclusively on my Mac G5 running Leopard and it’s wicked fast. A close cousin to Firefox in look and feel, using the basic tabs structure. But it also has connective design tissue to the Mac Safari browser with its iconic design.

Flock has taken the browser up several notches with many interesting features. Here are a few of my favorites.

My World – A place where all your social activity is collected onto one web page and is a click away.

People Sidebar – Once you log into your social sites with the Flock browser it is possible to open a sidebar that displays a micro social site (facebook, You Tube, twitter, flickr, etc.) or all your sites at once. From here you can upload photos, update your status see messages, notifications and more depending on the site.

Media Stream – With a simple click you can view your photos or videos in a stream that appears directly below the toolbar. You can also see your friends photos and videos. Click the photo or video and be immediately taken to the web page. This is way cool.

There are many more tricks that make browsing much easier and more fun than that stuffy IE you may still be using. If you are not socially inclined then you probably don’t need to learn another browser, but if you are part of the online community, give Flock a try and let me know what you think.

How to Frustrate Your Site Users

AT&T is my home telephone provider. I switched from MCI WorldCom (remember Bernie Ebbers now incarcerated for fraud and conspiracy) because MCI couldn’t understand that they needed to come to my newly constructed home to actually connect the phone wires from the outside of the house to the inside switch box. You don’t want me to start that rant. Let’s just say I will never be a customer of MCI or whatever they’re called, ever, ever again. Not in this or any future life!

Back to the post. My credit card was re-issued with a new number so I needed to log onto the AT&T site and update my payment details. Hadn’t been there in a while because I am enrolled in auto payment and turned off my paper statement. The less I think about my phone company the happier I am.

I typed in att.com and was taken to the home page. When I clicked on My Account I landed here.

Perfectly attractive page at first glance, but the Cingular acquisition has added complexity. Three places to register, login or get support. Pretty well designed and labeled except for U-verse. What’s U-verse, another planet? In short order I found the home phone section, clicked login, and entered my credentials. So far so good. Since I last logged in they added two factor authentication to the site. Two factor is a federal regulation for some industries and others have adopted it as another layer of protection. It often takes the form of question and answer, knowable only by you. Turns out that when users set them up, they are so secret they can’t even answer them.

AT&T is a case study in why they can’t be answered. Here are the questions offered to me in the drop downs.

First and foremost best practice site designers need to follow in selecting these questions is the answer should never change over time. Your father’s middle name will always be the same, and very easy to remember, but what country you would like to visit can shift over time. Almost none of their questions pass this test.

This means returning users will have a much higher likelihood of failing to answer the questions correctly, become frustrated and call customer service. The exact opposite result that AT&T and the customer desires. Using personas and goal-directed design techniques would reveal that a meaningful amount of time will pass between logins. Don’t expect users to remember details that they rarely think about. It’s not a test. Back to the drawing board.

Human + Machine = Manifesto

For purposes of the post, Human is the Marketing department and Machine is the IT department. Manifesto is my rant. Nothing should be read into the terms. I have the highest regard and respect for IT and Marketing people (I am one) everywhere.

I attended Interwoven’s annual client summit, GearUp 2008, held in San Francisco April 22-24. Interwoven is a major player in the content management software space with over 4,200 customers in 60 countries. They develop enterprise strength solutions that help companies create, publish and archive all types of content.

A software application such as this has largely been the purview of the IT department. But Interwoven has been working to expand their offerings into a tool set suite in the hopes of transcending IT and engaging marketers, by allowing them to leverage content with increased relevancy. They are re-proclaiming that “content is king” and is the single most important asset firms have to influence brand consideration and purchase. With the explosion of online community and social networking this approach makes sense, and their extremely well run conference really got me thinking.

As a marketer myself, working in the Internet space, I rely heavily on my IT department to understand what I want to do in the online channel and then execute. We come at the world from very different mind sets, which sometimes makes communication challenging. I know the following dot points are oversimplified, but I believe they make my point.

IT works in machine code and Marketing works in human code
IT has build guidelines, Marketing has information architecture
IT writes code, Marketers employ goal-directed design
IT has an instruction set, Marketing uses personas

We have a great relationship with our IT team, but are always exploring ways to make it better and more effective. In my opinion a major point of convergence is in the offing.

Companies should require regular strategic planning sessions that bring to the table the Internet solutions VP, the E-Business VP, the CIO and CMO. This will help the organization understand the breadth of what needs to get done from infrastructure to presentation layer, from database to targeting. These will be sobering conversations.
CEOs should combine marketing and IT functions into one seamless high performance team. It will be required if firms want to accelerate the return on their already significant online investment and extend its effectiveness to drive business results.
Get social or get served. This is a courage call. Think, smell, taste and breathe social (I know, duh). But not that many traditional companies are doing it for all the reasons we already know about. In order to get social, IT and Marketing must be one social team.
Set up social tools for IT and Marketing to communicate and build their unique community. If given the chance and mandate, they will find common ground. Actually I worry less about the traditional marketing areas getting clued in, as their activities will continue to get more expensive and eventually will serve to support the richer interactive channels.

It’s all about having system(s) flexible enough to be both a marketing and servicing platform. Then it’s about the teams working to connect these systems in an online ecosphere. There are very big things looming on the horizon and companies that have not set-up their infrastructure and organizations to be more agile, will not grow. Or worse, they will be overtaken by competitors who are able to do this.

Now back to the Interwoven GearUp summit. Guy Kawasaki was a keynote speaker, tackling The Art of Agile Development. Guy is now a venture capitalist, but spent several years at Apple Computer in the late ‘90’s as their software evangelist, trying to get more coders to produce products for the Macintosh operating system. I first met Guy in 1996 in Chicago. He was on one of his road shows for Apple and spoke at the Chicago Public Library. He was engaging, funny and smart, and it appears that some 12 years later, none of that has changed. Guy knows the marketing speak, but he exposes the long held marketing doublespeak for what it is, and that rings true to IT. This is an important clue to getting the two teams on the same page.

You have to see Guy in person to really appreciate what he is saying. My notes can’t do that, so I won’t even try. I don’t have the slide deck presented at the summit, but this one is very close. Catch him live if you can. If you can’t visit Guy’s blog is here.

More to come.

NeuroMarketing – New Tools For Engaging Customers

Fast forward to some time in the future. The marketing game has completely changed, having evolved beyond test and control, research, etc. Imagine you can understand how your customers react to your products. By react I mean physical responses such as eye movements, heart rate, breathing pace, galvanic skin response and body language. You can map these responses to human emotions and cognitive thinking styles. Next you capture how your customers form relationships with your products (abstract, concrete) and how their social preferences interplay with and drive consideration. But wait there’s more. Throw ideolgical values (taste, morals) into the calculus and you will be able to mold a product that satisfies all basic human pleasures and by definition is the most desireable item on the market. You are are flying, and instantly promoted.

Science fiction? Is it even possible? It is possible, and the technology is available now. Welcome to Part III in my weblog series from the Forrester Marketing Forum 2008 (Los Angeles, April 7-9). The Forum’s theme was customer engagement. In this installment I make an attempt to summarize and connect four separate presentations (two breakouts and two keynotes), that starts to show marketers how to create more engaging online experiences by making them more pleasurable and deisrable.

At the heart of this task is a new type of practice called NeuroMarketing. It’s in very early days, having been largely confined to labs using expensive equipment that was uncomfortable for the subjects. As with any technology, it’s getting smaller and cheaper. There is only so far marketers can go with our current practices. In my view it’s critical to employ new tools that can measure human response and desire. Let’s get started.

First – The Four Pleasures Framework by Patrick Jordan. Mr. Jordan is a design, marketing and brand strategist and holds a PhD in psychology. He has worked with major brands to create campaigns and products using his pleasures framework.

The objective is to help people feel good about your product, your brand/company and about themselves. The four pleasures are:

Physio – Physiological, the body and its senses
Psycho – Psychological, the mind, emotions, cognition and interests
Socio – Relationships, social connections in the abstract and concrete
Ideo – Ideological, the values, taste and morals

During his talk Mr. Jordan cited real-life examples for each of the pleasures. To illustrate physio, he spoke about how the car maker Fiat has an entire lab and team devoted to only three parts of a car. The steering wheel, gear shift and inside door handles. Through research and observation, Fiat discovered that these were the first three things a customer actually touched when in a car showroom. The salesman would usually open the door, the customer would step in, put her hands on the wheel, then on the gear shift. When she wanted to exit she would have to touch the door handle. If the designers could elevate the sensory experience of these physical parts to one of pleasure, product consideratin is off to a flying start.

He provided examples for each pleasure, but I won’t go into them here. For those explorers that want to give it a try, he offered this brief summary.

Create robust personas
Conduct indepth ethnographic research
Immerse yourself in your customers
Look at what’s going on in the media

Second – Amplifying Engagement: Measuring Customer’s Emotional Reaction to an Experience, was given by Jeremi Karnell, President, One-to-One Interactive. His company(s) are working in the NeuroMarketing space, and he defines it this way.

NeuroMarketing is a new field of marketing that studies consumers sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli.

He discussed what he calls the mind-body nexus of engagement, consisting of perception, attention, brain function and behavior. His firm developed the Quantemo Engagement Index, a scientific approach to measuring a target audience’s emotional reactions to digital media. In short, they put sensors on subjects (simple things like bands, nothing sticks to the skin) show them web sites, ads, emails, then report on heart rate, galvanic skin response and breathing. The sensors can also detect eye tracking and body movement. Are the subjects leaning in (interested), or sitting back (bored). These measurements are graphed and presented alongside the usability testing video and reports to give designers more data points to validate or refine designs or marketing messages. Can be employed against your competitors sites as well.

Third – Creating Personas that Support Engagement was given jointly by Neil Clemmons of Critical Mass and Mike Madaio from QVC. I won’t go into defining personas or how to use them in this post. You can easily find that through a simple search. The value in this talk was how Critical Mass extended the Forrester useful, usable, desireable usability model by adding sustainable and social to the persona matrix.

I have been doing a lot of thinking along these lines lately, and this really made it clear. The more offline experiences migrate to the online world, the more tools designers and marketers will need to be effective. The rapid growth of social computing is being accelerated by technology advances. This will require new ways to think about how to create online experiences that will keep up. Expanding the persona/user-centered design paradigm is a natural next step. Mastering these techniques will be critical to engaging users in your online properties.

Fourth – Designing for Engagement by Forrester Principal Analyst, Kerry Bodine. Her talk orbited around desirability. She didn’t offer a textbook definition, but instead quoted Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) as he attempted to define obscenity.

I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

I know it when I see it. Clearly desirability is a subjective call and as unique as humans. But like so many other things the mind processes, it’s real. That’s why NeuroMarketing is going to be important. It pulls the subjective, which is very difficult for marketers to deal with, into focus using something more concrete than a gut feeling.

Kerry Bodine – Photo: Steve A. Furman

Ms. Bodine showed the standard usability strata Forrester has been promoting for years, and suggested it should look more like a point to point map, increasing the role desirability should play when designing. This is a subtle change, but one that challenges designers and web architects to think about desirability along side the other dimensions at the outset, vs. something to aspire to after launch. Makes more sense.

I would love to see Forrester refine, actually update, their persona framework to address the rise in social computing and match what they have done with this change. Since 2002, I have worked with Cooper to create the personas we use today. Their persona philosophy and methodology was a natural fit with how we think about segmentation.

Ms. Bodine used a number of personal and observed examples of desirable experiences. One as mundane as ordering room service in a hotel. Her summary and advice to marketers was as follows.

Learn to recognize desirability when you see it
Give desirability the recognition it deserves
Find a way to create desirable experiences

My take on what it means

Online marketers (DM guys and product managers) need to get much closer to interactive design than they are today. The pure plays are way ahead of the analog legacy firms (less baggage). Traditional direct marketers have the luxury of creating dozens (sometimes hundreds) of test cells and corresponding creatives. But they do this, for the most part, not so much through observing human responses, but by mechanical test and control (trial and error). I’m not suggesting that this is not a valid science, but it leaves out the human emotional reactions that are hallmark to the web’s interactivity.

Online testing tools available to raise interactive marketing practice to DM levels are getting better, but most firms don’t have the understanding, budget, expertise or technology infrastructure to acquire, implement and use them. They cannot support a network of sites or instances of sites or even regions on pages necessary to conduct robust DM-like testing. Don’t get me wrong, some firms are doing this well, but they are the exception. In my company we had at one time over 14,000 direct marketing test cells for one product! Nothing even close to that online.

I know it’s counterintuitive, but the online channel in most companies is fairly static because of tracking challenges, staff support, lack of a content management system and the reality of having to integrate with back end databases and systems real time. Content management suites like Interwoven, are helping, but they are big enterprise solutions. Could there be an Interwoven Lite market out there?

NeuroMarketing, is real today and could be baked into the normal project plan without extending the time line or breaking the budget. It can give the online marketer a new and powerful tool that doesn’t result in an extra large IT project.

What do you tell your CMO when asked to explain desirability? “I know it when I see it” is probably not going to do it. Use the mind. Neurons tell the truth.

In Summary

Create personas now. If you already have them be sure they are up to date.
Get buy in on personas from your DM marketers and Product Managers.
Bring them into the design and development process early and keep them there through the validation cycles.
Integrate NeuroMarketing techniques in your usability testing plan.

Read my other Forrester Marketing Forum 2008 posts here for Part I and here for Part II.

Hulu Raises the Bar on Social and Television

I have been having a lot of fun playing around with hulu.com for the past few weeks. It’s a joint venture between NBC and News Corp. It’s in private beta right now, so you have to make a request to gain access. Here is how Hulu describes what they are in an October 29, 2007 press release.

Hulu is an online video service, offering viewers a vast selection of streaming, on-demand, premium programming on a free, ad-supported basis. Hulu content includes full-length current and archived television programming as well as clips and an initial selection of feature films.

When you first log-in the marquee promotes feature properties in a slide show. Below that, content is displayed in identical rectangular bricks down the page. The thumbnail images are chosen carefully and easily recognizable by the visitor. No need to give one or the other more weight. Since the advertising is embedded within the videos on the player page, there are no annoying banners or takeovers to avoid. This makes it inviting and you immediately feel like exploring. Looks like my finely honed “banner blindness” skills will be going to waste here.

Only three navigation choices plus a search box are offered across the top. All landing pages from these links are intuitive. You can also dive right into the clips from the boxes or links found on any of the pages. Users will be familiar with the content, so there is little risk in starting the video. How many times have you wished you hadn’t seen some of those You Tube videos? The search box is smart and the results page contains a left hand navigation with a rich array of filtering choices.

When you find something to watch, simply click and sit back. Once on the player page, a short commercial from the sponsor runs. The progress bar below the screen has small white dots, signaling when the commercials will appear. You can scroll back and forth within the clip, but not through the promotional spots. Kind of opposite of Tivo. Once a spot appears, a countdown lets you know when you can expect your show to restart. The spots are short, 10 seconds or so.

Yes this is another entry into the already crowded and confusing social network world, but unlike so many other sites, these guys are getting a lot of things right.

First, being a major media production and distribution company with popular entertainment brands, they instantly have permission to play in this space. The selection is huge and spans across dozens of content providers, not just NBC and FOX. You Tube is fun and entertaining, but the production value, or lack of ,wears me down quickly. You Tube also has a huge limitation. It will not play outside the web. Television and film can be anywhere here’s a screen and the emotion pretty much remains the same.

Second, the visual grammar of the site is crisp and clean. It feels more like a publishing landscape than a web site. Certainly not a blog. A pristine white background makes the logos, images and actors pop off the page. The copy is slightly gray but readable and easy on the eyes. The focus is on content. Everything works together as you navigate through the site.

Third, the usual social network features are available, but not in your face. One of the problems I have with many social sites, especially Facebook, is they have become very busy and confusing over the last few months. This coincides with “application mania” and dense and growing population. Facebook has introduced some new features to address this with their show more / show fewer profile boxes, but at some point they will need to redesign. That will be an ugly exercise. Hulu is absolutely full on social media, but doesn’t allow that to get in the way of the viewing experience. The user-generated content fits into Hulu’s templates, rather than allowing their site to be controlled by it.

When mousing over the screen the controls emerge. You can share the clip with a friend, even select a specific section of the show by dragging the progress bar handles. This allows the user to further customize their message. You can rate the clip, see details on what you are watching (original air date, etc.) and get an embed code for your blog (I can’t embed any of the videos here, because WordPress strips out flash tags). A feedback form is provided for quality or any technical problems. You can watch it full screen or launch a pop-up, even lower the lights (the white background fades back to gray) to simulate a TV viewing room experience. Of course you can write a brief review for others to read; a must. There are links to Amazon to buy DVDs, not a surprise, as Hulu’s CEO Jason Kilar used to work at Aamzon. We’ve seen most of these features before, but not this elegantly and intuitively integrated in the user interface.

There is a Hulu blog and I found an interesting “time capsule” post that could only be pulled off by one of the long standing networks. On February 19, 2008, President’s Day, they included clips from three former Presidents, JFK, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Fascinating viewing when you think about what we are going through this election year.

Social Influence Marketing (SIM) is buzzing right now as companies and marketers search for the business in social media. Hulu appears to be getting close. It’s not perfect (it’s Beta after all) and I am unsure of the brand play, as there is no equity in Hulu. But it’s the most excited I’ve been about Television in almost 15 years. And the best part, it’s not Television! Check it out.

Super Tuesday, Good Experience

We’re so spoiled. Anyone who grew up a U.S. citizen and is reading this has always had the right to vote under the rules of our democratic process. No dictators ruling with an iron fist, no military coups forcing regime change. We get to have our say. But so many of us don’t choose to exercise this wonderful privilege. But I guess not voting is also making a choice, and I have to accept that.My oldest son (26) is keen on the voting process. He carefully reviews what the candidates are saying, and makes a thoughtful choice. He prints out the ballot from the county web site ahead of time so he is prepared when he enters the booth. This is serious business for him.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

My youngest son (3) had his first experience at the polls on this Super Tuesday. Of course he has yet to declare a party affiliation, for today he was only observing the process, and quite a smooth process it was. There are a variety of ballots and machines available for casting votes in this country. For many years I used the punch card process. Some areas of the country employ a touch screen. Standardization would be a good goal for the country some day. In my precinct, we use a very low tech paper and pen method. Although it was not fancy, it was quite orderly and very easy.We entered the polling place at about 8:30 am to find there was no line. Simply gave the official my name and address, signed for a ballot, and went behind a cardboard booth to vote. Every aspect of the process was clear and well signed. Granted the signs could use a little updating, but hey, this is not about the presentation, it’s about the content. Once again my iPhone camera comes in handy.

I took the black felt tip pen and filled in the oval next to the candidate’s name as instructed. Like my son I had taken a sneak peek at the ballot, so I knew what to expect. Once my selections were made I inserted the completed ballot into the privacy sleeve and fed it into the ballot counting machine that looks like a giant industrial paper shredder. My civic duty had been neatly dispatched.

Although it was over in short order–no more than 10 minutes from beginning to end–the elapsed time had no bearing how I felt. When alone with the ballot, I play out numerous scenarios in my mind. What if this person was in office and this happened? How would they react? Has the country really matured enough to elect a woman or an African American to the nation’s highest office? It’s a satisfying feeling to be sure. But not one of power or entitlement. Instead I feel a heightened sense of responsibility. The process has weight and importance and heritage.I am very proud my oldest son is actively participating, and committed to ensuring my youngest one will be exposed to the process every time the opportunity arises. No it’s not s perfect system, but name one that is. Nothing is sadder than sitting on the sideline outside of the deal flow when you could be right in the middle of it. If you voted, congratulations, and thank you. If you didn’t, it’s never too late. The big one comes in November.

Pandora – Radio From Music’s DNA

For the last four months or so I have been exploring the Pandora music service from my computer (via the Internet) as well as my Sonos music system. Pandora uses the phenomenal work done by the Music Genome Project to serve up individual songs in a radio station format.

In case you are unfamiliar, the Music Genome Project is an attempt to organize music into over 400 attributes via a complex mathematical algorithm. They have developed musical genes, each corresponding to a specific musical characteristic, then applied the math to tens of thousands of songs. What you are left with is a genetic map of the “body” of music. It ignores lyrical content, band members, lifestyles, etc., which one could argue drains the passion. Kind of the opposite of what music stirs in us. But the idea is so intriguing I had to check it out.

Pandora has developed code to allow consumers to select a favorite artist, composer or song and set up radio stations on their web site. Pandora then plays music, one song at at time (like radio) that matches what you selected; all driven by the Genome Project. If you hear a song you don’t have but want, a simple click will allow you to buy it from iTunes or on CD from Amazon (as available).

The User Interface is very clean and simple. As songs are played, the album cover art, song title, album and artist glide into view. You can get around the site easily within minutes.

I must say I was a bit skeptical about what would would be played, but I was quickly hooked. The gene thing works amazingly well. All throughout my stations they mange to play songs that are familiar as well as some things I have never heard. Great way to learn about new artists. You guide them as you go along by voting on each song (not mandatory) like this.

This helps the Pandora engine refine the playlist so it delivers more of what you want to hear. There are a number of controls that allows you to customize by bookmarking songs and artists, launching other music, or opening windows that give details about the artists album and song. When you add a station Pandora politely provides a brief summary of the attributes established by the Genome Project for the artist you selected, like this.

Lately they have been spending a significant amount of time building community. Within the main interface you can click on Fans and see other Pandora users who also like what’s playing, as well the stations they have created. You can click into their stations, add them to your list, learn where they live, drill down to other Pandora listeners in that city, even an individual company. Nicely done.

You can take Pandora with you on your mobile phone if you have AT&T or Sprint as your provider. For the home, it’s available for Sonos, and Slim Devices (Squeezebox and Transporter). There are some frustrations. When you hear a song you can’t go back to listen again. You can only skip a set number of songs within any given hour. Pandora claims this is do to music licensing limitations. You get it all free as long as you are willing to put up with annoying ads. The ads go away when you subscribe. Sonos users must pay once the trial period ends; no free option.

There are so many ways to experience music in this highly converging world, that it’s hard to believe there will be a clear winner. But the Music Genome Project makes this one unique and worth checking out.

Kindle Makes Electronic Books A Reality, Without the Web

A colleague of mine who is an avid reader of books (the analog paper kind) is very excited about her new Kindle from Amazon. She was kind enough to bring it in for me to play with over lunch last week; here are my observations.

The Kindle is Amazon’s first foray into launching a big time consumer electronics product. They describe it as a “Wireless Reading Device” as it gets its content from a satellite vs. over the Internet. It means there is no need to configure it with your router, or commit to a contract like you must with a cell phone package. This feature is extremely important in appealing to hardcores who love to read and aren’t necessarily technical optimists. The Kindle is only one step removed from the book vs. living at the other end of the spectrum in the computer world. Amazon has really nailed the description and positioning of this product.

You are always connected to Amazon’s server where you can purchase books, newspapers and magazines effortlessly. The Kindle will hold about 200 books before running out of memory. No need to seek out a hot spot. But the real reason the long predicted electronic book growth may have finally arrived, is the advancements in E Ink technology. The problem has always been how to make a screen as crisp and satisfying to the eye as printed type on paper. The visceral experience books provide holds tremendous appeal, particularly as publishers have evolved their materials and technology over the years. Paper books have had roughly a 500 year head start over electronic books. That momentum will make it hard for the E Book to gain a foothold.

As I clicked through, the device was quite a nice experience. The screen is of course the main event, and reading was satisfying. The font was clean and appropriately spaced. Navigating back and forth sets off a fade out/in transition that is a little jarring at first, but something I’m sure you would get used to quickly. The user interface was intuitive and relied mainly on a small roller located at the bottom right. It is equivalent to an iPod or Blackberry track wheel. Several times I accidentally hit the large click bars found on the right and left sides of the Kindle that caused the page to change before I was ready. The letter buttons at the bottom (not quite worthy of calling them a keyboard) were arched, making thumb access easier.

This device delivers on the Wireless Reading promise. Certainly more work on the design will be necessary, but this is the first generation. There are some pretty big missed opportunities; the cover is one. The Kindle nestles nicely into a black leather book binding cover. But it is plain. No opportunity to engrave your initials into the leather, no fancy stitching, and no branding whatsoever. Also, if you have the Kindle in a briefcase (and you will) the cover presses against the interface and causes unintentional clicks.

All in all, it’s a great first generation; congratulations Amazon. But will it succeed as a consumer electronics product? It’s $399, which buys a lot of analog books. Right now it is out of stock, so if you really, really want one you can’t get one. And since Amazon has no bricks and mortar locations, consumers can’t try it out before deciding to fork over the cash. Sure the iPhone was $400 to $600, but if you wanted one it was available. and you could try it in the Apple stores. This points to an overall weakness in Amazon. Their marketing and advertising needs some shoring up. I view them as a research and development stock and they have proven innovation with their web platform and recommendation engine that is best-in-class. This launch is in natural keeping to that core.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s visionary was quoted at the Macworld Expo as saying, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” I think Mr. Jobs has missed the point. Book sales definitely fluctuate, but the publishing business is in no danger of collapse. It did not stumble the way the music industry has done, and their physical destinations get better and better. Readers read. Gen X and Y will likely welcome a digital reading device.

The big question is can Amazon do it alone? Partnerships with publishers and/or bookstores may be necessary for Amazon to succeed. But why would publishing houses or the big book chains want to partner? Isn’t this cutting into their business? The answer is, not now, and not for a long time. I see the Kindle and other copycat devices that will surely be launched, as complimenting the book for many, many years. The Kindle is great for travelers, commuters, vacations and those that are heavy newspaper readers, but only occasionally read a book.

I used to run a small, regional bookstore chain in the ’80s, and as a result have a love of the book. Every time I move it takes weeks to pack up my collection. But I am also keen on technology. As such, both electronic and analog books could easily occupy a space in my life. Another example of convergence in action.

There are probably a lot of people in my category. So as the design improvements are made and the price becomes reasonable, I predict this type of device, will find a place in the market. Amazon got their first.

Netgear Fails to Connect on First Impression

In a previous post I wrote about a great out-of-the box customer experience I had with an Olympus E-510 SLR digital camera. Of course for every great experience there is likely to be one not so great. I think you know what’s coming. Very recently I opened up a new wireless router, the Netgear RangeMax WPN824, all eager and ready to install it. Here’s what happened.

One day a few weeks ago, none of my 5 computers or Sonos boxes could access the Internet. OH MY GOD! WE CAN’T GET ONLINE! My oldest son felt violated. Apparantly losing Internet access is comparable to having a plague on your house. This is red alert time, so I sprung into action. After all we do EVERYTHING online, even order groceries, so that means no food. I checked all the cable connections and rebooted the modem and router, and still nothing, despite all lights flashing green. A call to Comcast told me that my connection was live and strong, and my modem was working, so it must mean a dead router. My first router was also a Netgear (RP614) purchased back in 2000, when you could only get hardwired models. It cost me $50 about 8 years ago, so it seemed fair enough to me that I would need to replace it.

Did some online research, then headed for the local Best Buy. Lots to choose from, but since I have Macs as well as PCs in my home, my choices were narrowed. Netgear had treated me well, so I picked up the WPN824 and came home to install it.The out-of-the-box experience was not what I had expected it to be. Here’s the post describing the Olympus digital camera experience. Netgear’s box was well designed and informative, but the magic stopped there. The CD had some quick start instructions that told me to insert the CD and click on the index.htm icon. But it was repeated in 7 other languages. Hate that. I reviewed the Getting Started sheet and followed the Apple Mac instructions to the letter. It promised me a Smart Wizard Configuration Assistant would be conjured up to lead me seamlessly through the process. After about 5 minutes of rubbing the lamp, and using up my 3 wishes, no one appeared to help me, and I wasn’t online. Here’s the CD sleeve.

The box promised 24/7 technical support, so I reached for the phone. In short order I was speaking to a pleasant gentleman (probably in an offshore call center). He was excellent. Asking specific questions to understand what was going on, and giving me extremely good direction. I asked him why the Smart Wizard didn’t show up, and he informed me that the CD does operate on a Mac.

“Why does Netgear pack Quick Start documentation in the box that gives me instructions for installing on a Mac when you know it doesn’t work?”

He deflected the comment and focused on trying to solve my problem. When I threw him another curve ball he said, “That’s no problem, we can work around that.” In less than 10 minutes he had the router configured from my Mac G5 and insisted on staying with me until I had accessed the Internet with all my computers. So kudos to Netgear for having a well trained and available staff.

However, I am not a nascent when it comes to technology, and fully expected to get up and running with the new router on my own. So while Netgear has done a good job training their most expensive customer service channel, they failed at helping their customers in the much less expensive self-serve channel. Most of what was provided to me in the box was either wrong, or would not work with my operating system, despite claiming compatibility on the box. They should trade in their so called Smart Wizard for one that is more effective at conjuring. By paying closer attention to their out-of-the-box experience they will can deliver a better customer experience for less money.

Obviously I am back online (having averted yet another crisis) and fully expect my Netgear router to serve me for years to come, just as the last one did.

Disney’s DVD Fast Play Technology Isn’t Fast

If you have kids you know what I’m about to describe. You have wiped the fingerprint smudges from a Disney DVD, loaded it in the player all while your kids are screaming to see it. On comes the FBI warning, then the Interpol warning (sometimes in French, that’s really helpful), then comes Disney’s extra special patent pending technology, Fast Play.

While you are trying to decide whether to be sucked in or not, a friendly voice says the following:

This Disney DVD is enhanced with Disney’s Fast Play. Your movie and a selection of bonus features will begin automatically. To bypass Fast Play, select the Main Menu button at any time. Fast Play will begin in a moment…

Here is where it breaks down for me. Shouldn’t Fast Play actually start the movie fast? But if you make that selection it actually just starts the parade of trailers; one mind-numbing preview after another. All the while your kids are losing it and demanding to see Bambi. But if you select Main Menu instead, you bypass the trailers and can start the film much more quickly. One additional tip here, you can actually speed up getting to the feature by going to Scene Selection after arriving at the Main Menu and selecting a chapter, usually chapter 1. That little trick can reduce screams by as much as 15%.

I know Disney wants to promote their other products, and they have a right to do so, but don’t mislead and frustrate parents and their children with this kind of labeling bait and switch. You can read Disney’s FAQ on Fast Play here. I get a kick out of how they spin it as if they are helping families. One other thing, Don’t you love it when someone gives you one of their old Disney titles and it shows a preview for a film, then proudly announces that it’s coming Fall 2002?

I bought the movie on DVD, and I should be able to use my remote control to start watching it immediately. It’s fine to put promotional material on the disc, but give the customer real choice, not a corporate contrived choice. Just wait till I blog about the experience we are now made to endure when we pay for a first run film in the theater.

Apple’s Site Search Drives Brand Consideration Through Prospect Experience

Apple has always been one of my favorite brands as well as my first choice in computers. I have long admired their web site for how on brand it is, the clean look, crisp copy and easy navigation. My one criticism is that it doesn’t even try to remember me. They never present a home page informed by where I have gone on their site or what I may have purchased from them (and it has been a lot over the years). The same can be said for their email marketing programs. Not a premium placed on targeting the content to me. Great emails to look at, but rarely do I click through and browse or buy. However, their site search capability has caused me to think about overlooking those shortcomings. If you visit the Apple site they have the normal search box in the upper right hand section of the page. Looks like what you see everywhere. But when you start typing everything is different.

I started typing in iPhone. As I was typing a flyout appeared immediately below the box, populated with real time search results that changed with each letter typed. But these search results look more like a web page or a software window. They are categorized, contain descriptions and images, and in some cases prices are displayed. You can always link to a full results page, which is also improved over a normal search results page.

Here is what I got when I typed in iTunes. If you key in something that is not on the site it says “no shortcut was found” and directs you to another page where you might get a “did you mean” suggestion. This is similar to how the Spotlight feature built into their software works.

This experience enhancement gives consumers yet another glimpse into what it is like to own a Mac before owning one. Apple understands how important it is to manage the customer experience (or perhaps prospect experience, as their market share is still small) at every interaction. This is particularly important online, as consumers have a short attention span and are jaded quickly if something doesn’t work or live up to their expectations. Obviously this is much easier to accomplish when you are searching your own site and products vs. the open Internet. But Apple has executed with elegance in design. Apple is now the third largest manufacturer of computers behind HP and Dell. In their stores they have all but eliminated the cash register, as the advisers on the floor can use a hand held device to ring your purchase and email you a receipt. Seems they are always about bringing innovation to someone else’s expertise.

Extra, Extra, Click All About It

Subscriptions to newspapers are down. Newsstand sales are down. Most people get their news from the web (or Jon Stewart). This what we are hearing. But I would posit that we need both the analog paper and the online interactive edition found on the web. I have been a regular reader of The New York Times for over 20 years, and still to this day I get the real paper (yes that’s right actual paper printed with ink) delivered to my driveway every day. I try to get through it the same day, but many times I have other priorities. On those days the paper is carefully stacked in a small basket in the kitchen. No paper is recycled before I read it. I think the record is 3 weeks piled up at once. I carve out a day on the weekend and start a marathon session to catch up.

Until recently I would have said that the paper is superior to its web counterpart. But with the evolution of Web 2.0, a newspaper online can be an elegant thing to behold. The craft of using this new technology is advancing quickly. Doing it right requires a team of artisans, more akin to making a film than anything else I can think of. It is the confluence of writing, graphics, speech, video and web usability principles.

I am taking this week off of work, so I am up to date; today’s paper read today. Nice feeling. But I digress, so let’s get back on track. The NYT multimedia skills are being put to great use online. They have put a lot of money, resources and talent into the effort of publishing the news on the web. In the analog paper you get word and image type set on the page. Online you feel like you are inside the paper as well as the people that have produced it. I often read something in the paper and then go online to get more information and texture about a topic or story. Here’s a great example.

In the spring the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened their newly renovated Greek and Roman galleries. Reading the article by chief Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, was wonderfully fulfilling. I have been in that museum many times and in those exact galleries prior to the make over, so his words got me looking forward to the time when I would visit next. But then I went online and saw this.

An interactive tour through the new galleries that can be easily navigated. When you mouse over the arrows you get a small window describing what you will see. Click and you are presented with panoramic views easily controlled with a slide of your mouse.

Dive a little deeper and you can find accompanying audio by Mr. Kimmelman himself. Now I am really excited to go there, not just looking forward to it. I can also share this with my kids and get them interested in exploring something significant related to the advancement of our culture (not Transformers). And if you live many states away and don’t have the means to visit NY, you can use this to learn and have a much deeper experience than if you just read about it. Try it yourself here.

So you are probably saying, yeah Steve great. But haven’t you heard about TV or video? Yes, but it’s much more difficult to get kids to sit in front of a screen and watch an “educational” video than it is to have them interact with this cool stuff on the web. I must admit it is even tougher for me to do that when I can get such a rich experience online. Add to that the ability to blog it, tag it and share it, and you have life lived in Web 2.0.

Their brand has been positively extended and they have transformed journalism craft beyond the analog into digital cyberspace. The paper is still the best way to see what’s in the day’s edition and the web is the best way to experience what the writer is thinking as well as seeing. We need them both, at least for now.

I’m a PC and I’m a Mac: Enough Said

They do a lot of things right in Cupertino. In Redmond, well let’s just say they do a lot of things. Size does matter, but design ultimately wins the day.