Design for the Real World.

I did a (admittedly nasty) experiment: The goal was to write one post which appears on all main social media platforms. I excuse in advance for the spam.

The networks are synced like that:
The original post comes from Quora which pushes it to my Tumblr.
Tumblr itself pushes to Twitter.
Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn pull from Twitter.

I think that this is some kind of social message distribution system. For the future I am looking for a social message aggregation system. I already synced G+ with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Quora. I don´t know if it pushes or pulls though, but I hope to find that out through this post.

Since only twitter spreads into all the big social networks, I can post directly with #tags in twitter and control where messages from there are going. But with posts I think this is not possible for now.

Anyway I hope my networks don´t short themselves.



Post on Quora

Labels are out of date. No one considers it prestigious to walk around with a crocodile on his polo, a bavarian symbol on the big car or a huge Macy´s bag. How to avoid bad feelings by customers who feel like being used for advertising? Brands came up with different solutions:

• The Meta Label: Martin Margiela uses stiches on the shirt as a kind of code to give people who know the meaning a hint on the original label.

• The Alternative Label: Fashion Brand JCrew used an old Liquor Store as their new store in Tribeca. They did not remove the old symbols but didn´t display any of their own logos either. So they created an alternative brand:

• The Secret Label: The bar PDT (short for “Please don´t tell”) uses a telephone cell inside of a hot dog bar as entrance. There is no sign or anything that indicates the presence of a bar there. Once inside or on their website they do have a very cool label and great businesscards but they only show it to those who search for it, or get into the bar

• Basic Labels (mostly used as private labels): Imagine you are in the supermarket and see all these great, emotional brands but you just want to buy Orange Juice - nothing more or less. So the brand Great Value just shows the basic information. For further reading see FastCompany

• Standard Labels: Difference to basic labels is that Standard Labels just tell what the product is, like “blue jeans” or “big brown bag”. Mostly they also use a standard typo like Arial or Times New Roman. See here the medium brown bag by bloomingdales. Nothing more than a medium brown bag.

The common business model is that a Design office provides a service and gets paid in cash or shares. However there are other much more interesting ones in the meantime:

1. Still almost traditional is the idea to produce an additional design / idea for a client and if he wants it to do licensing.
2. Much more risky is Farenheit 212´s businesmodel: Get 2/3 of the payment only if performance factors are met. This reduces risk for the client dramatically.
3. Be a network like “The Designers Accord” which is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact. This could be organized more like an NPO.
4. I also wondered why design offices do not work like art+commerce which is an agency capable of supporting image makers within the realms of both art and commerce. It´s more like a record labels which produces artists. This could become like a mixture between VC and Agency.
5. Provide a marketplace where everyone´s designs are made, can be bought and sold. Shapeways for example is more a co-creation platform where users design and collaborate on new products.
6. Do social product development like Quirky or Kickstarter, which let users submit their ideas, design it for $100 and if enough people bought in, they build the thing.

To sum it up: Innovative Design Agencies work today more like a platform through which they enable others and significantly reduce risks for all three parties: client, user and themselves.

I know some Designers call their best creative technique (even sometimes considered as “business plan”) “Sex, Drugs and Rock´n Roll”. And like everyone I noticed that ideas that come out of brainstorming sessions are more than mediocre. So watch out for this: Luke Williams, Creative Director of frog design in NY taught in a workshop “provocation” as a method since it creates mental instability. He likes to say: “The only way to be right in the end is to be wrong in the middle.”

Yes it seems obvious. And yes it seems cheap. But damn it really works. And it goes like this:

If Brand Strategy is to “be the only one who does what you do” you need to stand out with something. This does not necessarily to be a big thing. The big thing is to find with what to stand out. There are 5 steps to do so: Focus, Assumptions, Provocations, Choose, Ideas

1. Define the focus of your business. Let´s say you sell security cameras.
2. Assumptions about the focus you take for granted:

• Camera is mounted on the roof
• A passive object
• Does look inconspiciously / serious
• Makes people feel safe or being watched
• Is white

     3. Now you reverse the assumptions towards the according provocations:

• Camera is on the floor
• Camera is an active object
• Camera looks fun and obvious
• Makes people laugh and lets them watch others
• Is colourful and looks like a Beetle car

      4. From all the obvious ideas that come out of this like “let´s create a camera where you can put a flower in!” you have to choose the boldest provocation which is for me turning the camera into an active object.

      5. Now it´s ideas shoot. If the camera is an active object, then:

• people can take it of the wall and film the store themselves
• its pictures are broadcasted live on the web for others
• it is a communication tool which enables people to connect with each other throughout the store
• the camera displays messages for the visitor
• the camera projects level of danger onto the ceiling via an integrated beamer
• the camera fuses with light to become a sensible light which highlights parts of a shop where people stand and create an adaptive environment like on a stage.

Oh my god. I love this technique!!! I could go on forever!

50 years ago when you wanted to buy salt, you bought salt.

After that people wanted to buy an experience with the product. When you stood infront of the supermarket shelf you were flashed and pleased by those nice graphics in huge amount. That is when brands had strong influence on the purchase decision.

Nowadays people shop online and there changed basically four things:

• Space: The ratio of product to information is about 30/70
• Availability of Information: Nearly all additional information is available through one-click
• Position of Information: Price and other information first, Product second (as opposed to supermarkets, where you see the product first and then look at the price tag)
• Amount of Products: Only one product is displayed (instead of many in the shelf)

All these factors have significant impact on the experience of the consumer. How can brands react to that? How could Space, Availability, Position and Amount be differently used within online environments? How can the brand efficiently connect to consumers online? In my opinion this is a market with unlimited business ideas since very little brands yet have at least thought of this issue.

These are 11 parameters that can contribute to a successful design strategy in the areas of Product, Economic, Social or Environmental.

Product/Quality:

• Enable Strategy: Enter New Markets with filling a business strategy with life. You could think of an abstract strategy like a smoothie-seller imagines a “new way to eat fruit”. You could design the bottle like a fruit or create a shelf with the images of a tree which in return creates a very unique thing to remember.
• Improve Time to Market and Development Process: Simple design guidelines and a design platform approach help people in the company to act independently and quickly by still giving them freedom to be creative but give them some hints which direction to take.
• Enable Product and Service Innovation is simply the added value which design can bring to the consumer. This could result in a redesign of all customer touchpoints of a brand or increase in the company´s bottom line, organic revenue or simply better quality of life.

Economic:

• Purchase Influence: Simply put the newly designed product next to your old one on the shelf and measure how preference/mood of people changes. Then substract design-costs of the change of expected sales.
• Build and Measure Brand Image: First Design Awards like if product design award are the perfect indicator for great design. An increasing number of people is aware of these awards. Second concept products which visualize a new way of doing something could serve as brand builders. This could be e.g. a self-cooling orange juice bottle. And lastly there are brand measurement tools like the “Net Promoter” which is used by IDEO. This is really easy to apply since it is only one single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”
• Design Return on Investment (DROI) / Cost Savings: Expenses for the new design are e.g $100.000 while delivering $500.000 of incremental value. The DROI factor would be then 5. If the incremental contribution margin (=total expected margin - present total margin) for that $500,000 in revenue is 60%, then the margin DROI (the amount of incremental margin for each dollar of design spend is 3.0 (= 5.0 x 60%).
• Design Patents / Unique Ideas: Are your brand names / logos patented? How many unique approaches did you create that solve problems differently?

Social

• Increase Customer Satisfaction / Develop Communities of Consumers: How large is the community of active members involved in your brand-activities? This could be some activities like the towns first winter-bike-riding event in the park or an online community. How valuable are the design changes for the customer (not: management!)?
• Usability: If you are a coffee-machine producer: How much could you reduce the time for brewing coffee while maintaining quality? Which user-errors could you prevent? Other metrics might be: stress, attitude, morale, wayfinding, improved work environment. Maybe this is the most-used indicator for design, but it is dangerous to only use this metric since your brand might suffer.

Environmental

• Sustainability: Reduced parts, weights, materials, time to assemble, package size, …
• Learning: How much can you learn by executing the strategy?

The Framework can easily be developed similarily like balanced scorecards. Here you see where they are located within business context:

My hypothesis is that you can literally force users to remember your brand/product when you apply what I call “humanized interaction punch”.

People who interact with products do normally not expect that a designer thought about every step they perform. To force them to remember your product you can build in one more step which is a “human punch” and it comes right after the user performed the most important step, e.g. when he typed his search into the google toolbar, when he opened your bottle or when he read your businesscard.

Let´s get some examples:

• Google: After you typed in your search request, you can click on “I´m feeling lucky” which is not at all efficient and just a tool for fun and experience of it.

• Snapple: After you opened the bottle you can read a funny text inside the cap what you did not expect.

• 12poll business cards: After you read details about the person you normally flip the card to see what is there. You read a catching question on the back of the card what you did not expect.

After every main interaction a user has with your brand he should get a feedback that represents an attitude of your company which catches him and makes him smile. This will ultimately force him to remember this interaction because he had a very positive emotion at the very last end he used your product. Or as I call it: You tattoo your brand onto the brain of your users.

I wondered about what comes after Experience Design and I must admit the “Customer Network Strategy” is not a bad start. When I sat in Brite Conference about one week ago, I heard David Rogers speaking about his new theory (You can download a free sample here). It goes like this:

According to objectives and the positioning you can select one of the five strategies:

1) Access: Be faster, Be easier, Always on like Virgin Atlantic

2) Engage: Become a source of valued content, Create OWN content, son´t sell, create something useful

3) Customize: Make your offering adaptable like Nike ID or Pandora

4) Connect: Become a part of your customers communication like My Starbucks Idea

5) Collaborate: Invite your customers to build your enterprise like Apple did with the App Store.

The problem I see in this methodology is that it act on two different levels:

First there is the Product/Service/Process Level while on the other side there is the Brand Image Level. While improvements in the Product Level contribute to Corporate Image, Improvements in Brand Image do not necessarily improve the Products.

Applied to Rogers methodology this means:

1) Access: Be faster, Be easier, Always on
Product / Service based: Virgin Atlantic having Wireless onboard, Amazon 1click

2) Engage: Become a source of valued content, Create OWN content, son´t sell, create something useful
Corporate Image based: Blog, own Magazine

3) Customize: Make your offering adaptable
Product / Service based: Customized buy-phrase at amazon, Nike ID

4) Connect: Become a part of your customers communication like My Starbucks Idea
Organization / Brand based: My Starbucks Idea

5) Collaborate: Invite your customers to build your enterprise like Apple did with the App Store.
Product / Service based: App Store

In this blog post I would like to introduce you how to shift your online business from an “I-just-sell-something-business” to a more open and social business within digital media, which in the end can create more revenue than just the ordinary sale.

The question you may ask yourself:

How do I sell my product best in the digital world?

The Short Answer

Don´t.

The Long Answer

As you may know many companies that sell things try to IP their product in any way, because this has been the way to make money for a long time. This is ok, but the problem is that most of the people try to directly translate their business model from the physical to the virtual world: For example, the music Industry once sold CDs in stores and then they tried to sell mp3 on the internet. As a result very few pay for downloading the songs and instead get them illegally (you might know this phenomenon ;). Well they realized that it´s not that easy. Other industries face the same problems: Big newspapers are afraid of people copying the news online. Publishing houses are concerned because Google scans the books.

They all have a problem, because they forgot to build a creative, scalable and profitable online business model. What they understood well, though, is the mechanisms for protection of the physical world, of which generally are three: Trademark, Patent and Copyright:

• Trademark: trademark law is designed to make it clear who makes a good or a service. It’s a mark we put on something we create to show the source of the thing, not the inventor of a word or even a symbol. They didn’t invent trademark law to prevent me from putting a picture of your cricket team’s logo on my blog. They invented it to make it clear who was selling you something (a mark for trade = trademark).
• Patents: are an option except they’re really expensive and do nothing but give you the right to sue. And they’re best when used to protect a particular physical manifestation of an idea. It’s a real crapshoot to spend tens of thousands of dollars to patent an idea you thought up in the shower one day.
• Copyright: protects expressions of ideas, the particular arrangement of words or sounds or images. Bob Marley’s estate can’t sue anyone who records a reggae song… only the people who use his precise expression of words or music. Sure, get very good at expressing yourself (like Dylan or Sarah Jones) and then no one can copy your expression. But your ideas? They’re up for grabs, and its a good thing too.

So mostly this is the stuff they, you and we all know. What the Industry did is taking this thinking to the Internet, which resulted in things like Digital Rights Management (DRM). They want to control what they put online and they want to get money for that. One of these systems uses e.g. watermark-like digital sign which should hinder people to do certain things with the document, which the company does not support. Sony, Apple, Microsoft, and the like used this widely.

Why does this approach fail?

All of these mechanisms essentially say that “THIS IS MINE!”. People who think like this are wasting their time on the Internet by searching for “pirates” and then penalizing them. Frankly, this is like small children’s behaviour and their ego´s may just be too big. They just refute any other options completely. BIG MISTAKE!

What can companies do?

You shall be able to give something away for free. Not everything but just right enough to motivate and show people how important they are for you. Well, for a company this does not really result in cash at the first sight. Your “consumers” automatically become “co-owners” of your brand. This is the booster of the myth of your brand. It becomes social. You build up a reputation as someone who creates or builds great ideas better than someone else. You could use these ideas to set up a relationship with people who matter and can speed up your business (see blog-post of DoshDosh). People get to know you as THE brand, where the good stuff comes from and not like the one who sues his users.

Why Brand Reputation?

Brand Reputation in terms of the “social booster” is powerful, because your users will feel responsible for your brand and thus become Multiplicators. In the end, your customers own the brand and they will not only consume, but also contribute. This is the essence of value creation - and in the end you will be able to sell more stuff for a more targeted audience and even stuff you did not make yourself. If your users co-own the brand they will love and spread your idea and in the end automatically consume and generate a critical mass for your business. And also big brands like Starbucks do it. In this particular case they created a site for people to share ideas and discuss about them. As a result they became featured in the social media smartest brands.

What do the Marketing Gurus think about this?

Seth Godin, one of the most renowned marketers, states:

Ultimately, the future and essence of the brand rest on those who actually use, regard the brand positively, build a strong relationship with it, clamor for it, stand by it, love it.

Successful brands today must build a participation model for people to engage. What else would be the difference between MINI and Mercedes A-Class? Between Ferrari and Lamborghini? The first ones are brands owned by the people. The last ones are mostly show-off facade. I heard this interesting speech by Domenico Vitale just some days ago here in Manhattan, who pushes exactly this thinking: He has some really good videos on this website: The one about Participation vs. Persuasion and one about “Egos” I like most! When watched them you may think.

Nice advice, but what I am a start-up without money. So what can I do?

If you consider the advice carefully, you will see many possibilities to shift your business into a social brand. You may end up not only with a social brand attitude and - behaviour. You should end up shifting the core of your business towards social: Your business model. A popular one is the “Freemium” business-model which VC´s like Fred Wilson love. You know that already from Skype, Flickr or LinkedIn. It says that you should give away your service for free, so that it spreads via word of mouth, social networks, search engines, or the like. To earn money a they offer a premium service which adds value. Thus the core idea of your product may often be free and people take part but for critical details you may charge money. Well, here are some examples that illustrate the thinking:

• Imagine you are a tiny book publisher: You start to publish short stories for e-book readers, because fiction books are too long to read in the subway anyway. You only feature writings from new young authors, you trust in. To get featured by your house, every writer has to send three short stories, which are free on your store. If people like one author, they can give until the amount for a new short story is accumulated. Then you hire him for writing the new one.

• Imagine you are a little regional newspaper going to the web: You could let the users read your content for free, because they could read it anywhere else, too. Instead you build a reputation as a quality house that always has the best and most decent graphics / charts according to the article. You let users see the current stuff from the week, but for the pictures in the archive users will pay.

• Imagine you are a no-name movie maker. You tease online with some good quality short films, which people love (like Alex Roman). Maybe outtakes from your main movie or maybe just some fun stuff. You let people vote if they want to see your big movie and let them subscribe to pay 5$ when you finished the project. When you have enough spread, you go ahead to publish your big movie on the same platform. When it goes out, people have already paid and you have your movie financed.

What we learnt so far

Most companies copied their analog business model to digital media which ended up in restrictions and barriers where the true power lies in connectivity, participation and collaboration. Brands have to socially open them up especially in an online context where they can not anymore label and protect their products to sell them. The thinking must shift to statements like: “Our brand is owned by our customers and we must stimulate what is in their head”.

Seth Godin just talked at a conference one week ago here in Manhattan and he made it very clear:

“What you must do is [create] generous art, gifts that change people, connect with people, lead with people, make change that matters.”

When you have stopped calling your customers “target groups” and start cheer for your “pals” you may end up in the 100 most social brands of 2010. Welcome.

If you liked that, read:

Apple´s Mistake (Blog by Paul Graham)

Tribes by Seth Godin

FREE by Chris Anderson

This part is the fourth step in the Customer Experience Design Process as proposed by Bernd Schmitt. It deals with “Structuring the Interface of the Company”.

Because there is dynamic exchange of information and service that occurs between the customer and a company in any way, we need to establish an Interface that is reliable and well thought.

What is the Interface of the company?

• Face-to-Face: e.g. sale in store

• Personal-but-Distant: e.g. via phone or writing

• Electronic: E-Commerce, Blogs

When considering the Interface, the Designer should think of the following six key questions:
- “Moment of truth”: What are cusomer´s needs, expectations and wants at a particular touchpoint? How does this vary by customer segment?
- What is the ideal service interaction? What are the service delivery imperatives? How to we deliver great anticipatory service?
- How do we personalize the interaction and use the critical touchpoint to foster relationship building? How does this vary by customer segment?
- How do we use interaction at each touchpoint to bring brand´s values to life? How do we make the brand more distinct and much more relevant to targeted customer and travel occasion segments?
- How do we create differentiated service signals that can be owned by the brand? How do we create barriers in switching?
- What knowledge, analytics, and technology are required to make all this happen?

Potential Goals to reach with the efforts are:
- Increase Customer Satisfaction about X%
- Increase Share-of-Wallet of Top-Tier customers and key accounts
- Increase retention of first-time, at-trial users by X%
- Increase cross-brand stays at X%
- Increase percentage of Internet-Enabled bookings X%
- Reduce cost of Internet enabled bookings X%

When this is set, the Structuring of the Interface can start within the three key Issues:

Essence and Flexibility
Find out essence first: How to greet, What should happen during the contact
Then: Flexibility. It brings playfulness and humanity. It makes freshness and up-to-date.

Style and Substance
Style means the manner of expressing the essence/flexibility. Substance refers to tangibles associated with it.
Often: Too much Style (Fake, Hype) and too little Substance.

Time and Relationship
How should the contact be initiated? How long should the contact last? What are key transition points?

Finally we entered the Design Stage in Schmitt´s Customer Experience Design Process. Have fun. (note: This post is part of a series of which each one give insight to one of the five steps)

Within the Design Process there are three key aspects, which are Product Experience, Look&Feel and Experiential Communication

The Brand Experience manifests in all three of them. Here it is the details:

Product Experience: Everyone knows that cars can drive, fridges can cool and mobile phones can do calls. That does not sell. The functional features are not anymore what the user buys. That is why we need to have experiential features. Schmitt recalls features like Aesthetics, Simplicity, Uniqueness, Intricacy. Things we as Designers would call the actual “Product Design”, but from a user´s point of view. This is the reason what makes 90% of Apple: Standing out in Design, User-Friendliness and being Creative.

Look&Feel includes Visual Identity (Name, Logo & Signage), Packaging, Store Design and the Website. In each of these elements Designers can create an experiential twist like Schmitt names it. This could be colloquial statements on the packaging like e.g. VitaminWater does in a humorous and cool way. Important is that - like the Product - these ideas for these elements all stem from the Product Experience as such.

Experiential Communication means that you transform what was formerly known as USP (Unique Selling Propostion) into a ESP (No, not the one for the cars! Experiential Selling Paradigm). Why do this? Because the USP is very product-centered and outcome-focused to create benefits. People hate this. There has to be Entertainment and/or Information so people accept the Advertising as useful for them. So how can Advertising be used to implement the Brand Experience? Basis for the Experiential Communication stems from the experiential platform which has been established in step 2 and consists of three elements:

• Experiential Positioning defines the overall tone of the ad. It describes the way you adress the customer: Agressive / Soft, Intellectual / Emotional?
• Experiential Value Promise What experience does the advertising sell? What do consumers get from the product through Look and Feel? What benefits do they have from the community which they belong to, when owning the product?
• Overall Implementation Theme sets basic conditions for selecting the most effective media plan. Which role has advertising / media in the project?

The result could be a little boldfaced, if it fits. A little self-mockery at least is a plus.

Watch out for Pt.4!

Old boxing gloves did not have cushions inside. Instead it have been leather gloves like those from Everlast with the difference that a metal rod is sewed into the inner side of the glove for providing something to grab when you do a fist.

Normally you would not need this for glove you wear every day. This is why I love it. And I wear them! Like my Casio Watch from 1980´s which has schedule function. I do not use it, but I love it!

So instead of just dividing into technical features and emotional attributes (to be simple), I proclaim a third category which lies between these. Fused Features are the ones that have a function but are there just for fun, or because of history, or because of stupid. Of course it is dangerous to add stuff that you do not really need and maybe some people would think what the hell this was. But why has Google a “I´m felling lucky” button? Because it makes it´s technological search engine more human.

You could start creating features by asking questions such as: What would I need at this product if I was angry? What would I need if I want to waste time? What was in history included in the product that did not make sense? Go stupid!