2007 October Archive at ExperienceCurve

Monthly Archive for October, 2007

The Experience Is The Product

Published

on October 29, 2007

in Customer-Experience, Marketing and Strategy

. 4 Comments

Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path has just posted a presentation on the topic “The Experience Is The Product” on slideshare, even better he has synced the recording of him presenting this in the UK. In this presentation Peter does a great job of explaining that the experience is everything, it’s the branding, it’s the marketing, and how often our approaches to design screw this up.

Peter will hate me for doing it because he tried to do the whole presentation without mentioning the ipod, but of course he had to, because it’s the best example of experienced centered design out there.

One thing I’ll add is that when people say “experience design” or “experienced focused design” a lot of people think “sensory orgy” or the “wow”. But it’s not about the wow, it’s actually about focusing on the broader experience beyond the product, beyond the use of the product, the system if you like. The experience is the system is probably another way of saying it. Way back in 2003 I wrote a post that is somewhat related called “Thinking Outside the Product”

You might also find this presentation interesting from Marc Rettig on the history of interaction design which illustrates the transition from task focused design to design that takes into account the broader experience.

We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes

Published

Karl

on October 26, 2007

in Viral-Persuasion

. 5 Comments

We Didnt Start The Viral - Watch more free videos

Todd linked to this excellent viral homage to some of the notable viral videos of the last few years. Believe me they list a hell of a lot, but what I found interesting was the number of deliberate commercial “virals” for want of a better word. These are the companies/people that managed to achieve what I believe is quite a feat, to launch a deliberate campaign that “goes viral”.

Company/commercial
The Dark Knight (batman)
VW - Unpimp your ride
Burger King (creepy king and subservient chicken related)
Saturday Night Live (mostly Lonely Island stuff which of course is all coming off youtube because NBC thinks everyone is going to go to Hulu.com)
Borat
Snakes On A Plane
Sony Bravia
Will It Blend - Blend Tek
John West Salmon
Halo 2 - I love bees ARG by

Indie:
Ask a ninja
Lonely Girl

I may have missed some, feel free to add in the comments and I’ll update.

California College of Arts - MBA in Design Strategy

Published

Karl

on October 25, 2007

in Strategy

. 0 Comments

This is very exciting news, the CCA is launching a new program, an MBA in Design Strategy. This is another Big D MBA, which are of course few and far between, I have a pretty rare MBA in Design Management from the University of Westminster in the UK. Stanford of course has been promoting it’s D School but the MBA qualification or focus on business strategy is very rare.

Big congratulations to Nathan Shedroff who has been appointed chair of the program, Nathan of course wrote the book on experience design I’m particularly interested in his new book that he has written with Cheskin called Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences.

I’ll be very keen to check out the content and approach of this program.

Guinness has hidden an ad online

Published

Karl

on October 24, 2007

in Advertising, Co-Creation, Marketing and Viral-Persuasion

. 3 Comments

Guinness has added a little twist to its latest advertising campaign and have hidden it online somewhere for someone to find. In good old ARG (alternate reality game) tradition they have started this game off with a couple of clues, in this case a fictional Mayor called Juan Ramon has put a video on youtube and created a pdf letter to share.

The pdf seems to have some writing hidden in it that alludes to some dates and times, who knows maybe there is even clues as to a prize or something, you would hope

Here’s a link to the pdf

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, I’m also interested in if they actually hired an ARG type agency as well as the ad agency.

Some more posts on ARG’s as marketing tools:
Nine Inch Nails ARG
Beyond Viral Marketing, engagement, narrative and passion
More on ARG’s

Radiohead update, set your own price experiment sells 1.2 Million albums at $8 each

Published

Karl

on October 19, 2007

in Co-Creation

. 0 Comments

So in the first week Radiohead’s album, In Rainbows, which they allowed customer to set their own prices sells 1.2 million downloads and gets an average of $8 each. Next time I’ll just ask them to up the bitrate a little bit.

Funny to think of this in co-creation terms but guess what, it is. Radiohead just put their customers in charge of pricing, just like Ikea puts you in charge of logistics and assembly. Guess what, putting your customers in charge of pricing of goods where you have close to zero marginal costs is a very good idea. If saves you from making big errors in pricing, and as long as you sell enough to cover your sunk costs you will never lose money. And think of all the money you save through not having over-engineered DRM, not suing your customers, not spending money on anti piracy ads.

Oh, and when you don’t DRM your stuff, and don’t sue your customers they make amazing things for you like this 1 million key frame animation to Radiohead’s song Creep, it’s amazing (thanks Ze)

How about it Ze, set your own price for downloads of theshow2.0?

Via

Facebook vs. the Web

Published

Karl

on October 19, 2007

in Marketing

. 3 Comments

Eric Schonfeld at TechCrunch recently wrote about a presentation given at the Web2.0 summit by Jeff Huber, Google’s vice president of engineering, the upshot being “the web is the platform”

A lot that you have heard here is about platforms and who is going to win. That is Paleolithic thinking. The Web has already won. The web is the Platform. So let’s go build the programmable Web.

Eric’s summation “take that facebook”. Now i’m no facebook fanboy, i’ve called them the AOL of web 2.0 and agreed with Robert Scoble’s evaluation of Facebooks data strategy as one of a Roach Motel. That being said, Facebook has got a couple of core things right that enable its platform to grow and that is identity and trust, both things that are sorely lacking on the platform (ie the web) that Jeff Huber is talking about. When the internet sorts out it’s problems with identity and trust then potentially Facebook can be worried, but in the meantime, it could take years for that to happen.

Facebook essentially started it’s business around mediating connections between people, people who went to the same school. You actually needed to have a .edu address to be in Facebook, and even the email address from the specific school who’s network you were going to join. Facebook is of course doing the same things for companies now, I’m in the Nokia network, which required a Nokia email address. It’s not a perfect system, but my experience is that I rarely come across “anonymous cowards” on Facebook, and spam is virtually non existent, and easy to remedy, remove any friend that spams. The internet? Not so much.

Along with this focus on mediating identity comes a sort of built in trust. I must have installed 20 or 30 applications on my profile, they all get access to the information and connections on my profile, and I didn’t think twice about it. The couple of apps that sucked I removed. I can’t say this about apps on the web, I have a much more stringent criteria as to the apps I use on the web, or widgets I install on my blog (and most of those are mediated by the wordpress community so again not really the web).

So anyway, I totally agree with Jeff Huber, the web is the platform, but until the standards for handling identity and trust are figured out Facebook will continue to grow, and grow fast.

Three Traits of Successful Blogs - Focus, Passion, and Originality

Published

Karl

on October 18, 2007

in Branding

. 12 Comments

Someone on LinkedIn just posed this question “How can one make Blogs more enjoyable or What is that you do to maintain the popularity/readership of your blog?“. Here are my thoughts on this, this may not be all that leads to a successful blog, but these are for me pretty essential ingredients: Focus, Passion, and Originality.

Focus - I think one of the most important choices a blogger makes when they start their blog is what their focus is. Think about a first time visitor getting dropped on your blog from a search engine or stumbleupon, are they going to understand in 2 seconds exactly what your blog is about? If the answer is yes you will have a much better chance of building a readership quickly and you will have a successful blog. If not, you may well build a successful blog but it will take years as opposed to months.

Passion - This is the only possible way that you will be able to sustain regular posting of a high enough quality over the course of years. If you don’t have the passion your blog will become a ghost town very quickly. People talk about the passion in the writing, and how important it is for readers, but IMHO the passion is all about the ability to sustain you through the emotional roller coaster ride of writing a blog. Sure your passion will come through in your writing, but it is your passion that will keep you plugging away when no one is coming back, no one is commenting, and no one is linking to you. Passion may not be the only thing that will drag you along, but it is the most enjoyable so unless you are a masochist you better love what your talking about.

Originality - In branding terms, what differentiates you from the crowded playing field of blogs all talking about the same thing. They don’t call the blogosphere an echo chamber for nothing, because most of the time everyone is reflecting and amplifying what else is happening around the blogosphere. Original content and original ideas in the blogosphere stand out like beacons in the night, and not to labor the metaphor but they also attract other bloggers like moths to a flame

Beyond blogging I actually think these are often the ingredients for great brands as well, which begs the question is good blogging good branding?

Poptech - The Conference That Is Out 2.0′ing the Web 2.0 Summit

Published

Karl

on October 18, 2007

in Co-Creation

. 2 Comments

While the Web 2.0 Summit is going on another conference is going on called PopTech, think of it as a bit more of a liberal Arts conference as opposed to the tech driven Web 2.0 summit.

Interestingly though Poptech is being a bit more web 2.0 about their conference and broadcasting the whole thing live at poptech.org/live/. Check it out, they’ve got some extraordinary speakers, and it’s going on NOW! The only way they could make this better is if they archived it so you could go back and watch specific speakers (ooops, they already do that right here at poptech popcasts), just like TED, if you want to make yourself smarter today check out their archived “talks”. BTW BoingBoing is liveblogging poptech as well.

UPDATE: Web 2.0 Summit are releasing some of their videos on blip.tv

sharing

Victoria Hale, founder of the world’s first non-profit drug company, will share her work on fighting malaria and other illnesses.
Nina Jablonski, the renowned anthropologist, will share her work studying the biology and meaning of human skin.
Jessica Jackley Flannery, Internet microfinance pioneer, will discuss the future of ‘bottom up’ solutions to poverty.
Van Jones, inner-city eco-activist, will speak about his work on a new “green collar” revolution in America’s inner cities.
Chris Jordan, the celebrated photographer, will share his breathtaking photographs which document of the human impact.
Sarah Joseph, the founder of Emel magazine, Britain’s leading Muslim lifestyle publication, will discuss emerging dialogues within the Islamic community.
Steven Pinker, the preeminent cognitive scientist and New York Times-best-selling author will speak on the nature and essence of human thought.
Paul Polak, founding father of market-based solutions to poverty and development, will speak about his efforts to built ultra-low-cost products for the bottom of the global pyramid.
Jay Keasling, one of the founding fathers of synthetic biology, will share his path-breaking work on new health and energy technologies.
Jonathan Harris, the mind-blowing interactive design star, will share his breathtaking work.
Ted Ames, the Macarthur-Award-Winning ecologist and Maine lobsterman, will share his work creating sustainable approaches to our management of the oceans.
Tom Barnett, the geopolitical and military strategist and best-selling author, who will explore America’s strategic challenges in the next 25 years.
Sam Barondes, the renowned neuropsychiatrist who will discuss the essence of human personality — what it is, where it comes from, and how it makes us who we are.
Robert Boroffice, head of Nigeria’s space agency, NASRDA, who will speak about how satellite technology can connect Africa.
Adrian Bowyer, creator of low-cost, open-source fabrication technologies will speak about how this breakthrough technology can be used to empower ordinary citizens around the world.
Louann Brizendine, neuropsychiatrist and expert on gender differences in the brain, will share her provocative work on how men and women truly do think differently.
Mustapha Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia and leading Islamic thinker, will speak about global peace.
Caleb Chung, legendary toy designer and inventor of the Furby, will share his latest “artificially alive,” animatronic creation.
Cary Fowler, the world’s seed banker and director of the Global Seed Diversity Trust, will share his efforts to create a “global seed vault” deep in a mountain in Norway.
Vanessa German, the urban slam poet will inspire us.
Dan Gilbert, the psychologist and best-selling author, will discuss human happiness and why we rarely hold on to it.
Krista Dong, MD, a front-lines AIDS worker in South Africa, will speak about an inspiring new initiative to help HIV+ people in the poorest communities.
John Legend, the Grammy Award-winning R&B artist, will perform and share his work on global poverty alleviation.
Joe McCarthy, global mobility researcher, will share his insights into how mobile devices are empowering people around the world.
Christian Nold, a technology artist, will demonstrate his work on “emotional mapping” technologies that show how people react to places.
Claire Nouvian, the noted deep-sea conservationist, will share some of her breathtaking work documents the deepest layers of the biosphere.
Alan Dugatkin, an expert in animal behavior will share his insights into the biological underpinnings of human goodness.
Nathan Eagle, the mobility expert from the MIT Media Lab, will share his research on the use of mobiles as a tool for social development.
John Esposito, the preeminent Islamic-studies scholar, will lead a discussion on the history and future of Islam.
Jeff Fisher, the healthcare psychologist will share his work on a promising new software tool in the fight in the fight against HIV.
Jessica Hagy, superbly comic blogger will share her hilarious illustrations.
Carl Honoré, celebrated journalist and chronicler of the Slow Food movement, will speak about the new dynamics of human culture.
Zainab Salbi, the founder of Women for Women International, will share lessons from her efforts helping women in post-conflict regions.
Bill Shannon, the indescribably talented street dancer will speak and perform.
John Shearer, technology entrepreneur, will share his potentially breakthrough ways of distributing electricity.
Paul Shuper, psychologist and HIV behavioral researcher, will share his work on a promising new software tool in the fight in the fight against HIV.
Elizabeth Streb, the award-winning choreographer will share her visions.
Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer charged with defending terrorists at Guantanamo, will share lessons on balancing human rights with security in the post 9/11 world.
Zinhle Thabethe, the front-line AIDS worker from KwaZulu Natal province, South Africa, will return to Pop!Tech to announce a significant new initiative to fight the epidemic in her home country.
Katrin Verclas, mobile activism researcher, will share her research on the many ways mobiles are being used a tool for social change.
Zoë Keating, the mesmerizing techno-cellist, will perform for us.
Sheila Kennedy, the architect and product designer, will relate her work on breakthrough new lighting technologies designed for the developing world.
Daoud Kuttab, the pioneering Palestinian journalist and new media expert, will share his thoughts on the impact of new media in the Middle East.
Kelly Joe Phelps, the mesmerizing blues guitarist, will perform.
Dan Pink, the noted journalist will share his thoughts on the rise of the creative economy.
Davy Rothbart, the founder of Found magazine, will share some his hilarious findings.
Enric Sala, the rising star of marine ecology, will share his work documenting the human impact on the oceans.

Nokia Evolving The User Interface With Touch Screens and Haptics

Published

Karl

on October 16, 2007

in Marketing

. 0 Comments

Techmeme picked this up today, apparently Nokia has announced an update to its S60 (the operating system in Nokia smart phones) that introduces various UI enhancements including of course the touch screen. Well ok who didn’t see that coming, but what I find very interesting is the inclusion of a thing called “haptics” or actual physical feedback from the touch screen.

S60 touch user interface comes with support for tactile feedback, which means that there is a physical pulse and feedback when the user taps on the screen. This provides better awareness of the device’s response improving the user experience.

The ability to provide physical feedback from a touch screen IMHO is the most important part of this announcement. Most touch screens fail on complex interaction because the person using it only has visual feedback on whether they were successful at an operation.