Archive for February, 2008

Feb 29, 2008

Scott Shamberg

Published by
Scott Shamberg

Topics
Compelling Experiences
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My Amsterdam Experience (no, not that one!)

I saw a post this week on Ad Rants that this is Holocaust Awareness Week . The print ads to accompany the communication shows a copy of the Anne Frank Diary labeled as fiction with the tag line “Millions of Americans don’t believer there was a Holocaust.” On a recent return trip from Switzerland, I met a friend in Amsterdam for a couple of days of R&R. Please keep your minds above the ground and out of the gutter for the purposes of this post. The experience I had while in Amsterdam that moved me to pen (or shall I say type) this prose out was not one I had in a coffee shop or down a dark alley. The Anne Frank House is in Amsterdam and I was able to go there and experience just how real the Holocaust was.

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Feb 28, 2008

David Armano

Published by
David Armano

Topics
Uncategorized
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Pardon Our Beta

So, you’ve probably noticed that we are playing around with some of the design elements here on Experience Matters. In fact, we’re going to be launching a new criticalmass.com site design within the next week that will align with the look and feel of the blog. But the blog design itself will probably continue getting tweaked. For starters, we’re thinking of bringing back some more white space, especially where there is a lot of copy. And we’d like to categorize the blogroll while adding new links.

The interesting thing about blogs is that they’re always in a state of flux—unlike the static Website predecessors. It’s not just blogs actually—when was the last time you noticed a change to your Linked In account, how about You Tube? Life in beta means constant trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

So please pardon our Beta as we continue to make some tweaks over the coming weeks. But it probably won’t stop there. As always, let us know what you think.—we’d love to hear it.

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Feb 20, 2008

Neil Clemmons

Published by
Neil Clemmons

Topics
Customer Insight
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Cross-channel alignment: How good are you?

A recent study by retail consultancy J.C. Williams Group highlights some core insights and strategies for cross-channel success. The study was done under sponsorship by shop.org, the online retail group. The research was presented at NRF. Our friends at J.C. Williams were gracious enough to give us a bit of background on the study.

The study was based on interviews with nearly 30 multi-channel retailers. The research explored organizational structure, compensation, measurement, and degree of integration in strategy, execution and measurement across channels. While the study was focused on retailers, it has relevance across financial services, travel, and other industries where multi-channel success is becoming so integral to the customer experience.

Not surprisingly for those practitioners of Customer Experience Management, the key success factors for multi-channel retailing success include:

  • A retail strategy that encompasses all channels
  • A culture focused on customer loyalty
  • Hard evidence from standardized cross-channel measurements
  • Aligning a technology roadmap with the enterprise’s cross-channel goals and priorities

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Feb 18, 2008

David Armano

Published by
David Armano

Topics
Organizational Implications
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Building a Culture of Innovation. Literally.

reception
In Tom Kelly’s excellent book—The 10 Faces of Innovation, he dedicated chapter 8 to a persona called “The set designer”:

“8. The Set Designer creates a stage on which innovation team members can do their best work, transforming physical environments into powerful tools to influence behavior and attitude. Companies such as Pixar and Industrial Light & Magic recognize that the right office environments can help nourish and sustain a creative culture. When the Cleveland Indians discovered a renewed winning ability in a brand-new stadium, they demonstrated the value of the Set Designer. Organizations that tap into the power of the Set Designer sometimes discover remarkable performance improvements that make all the space changes worthwhile.” (more…)

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Feb 13, 2008

Gabby Hon

Published by
Gabby Hon

Topics
Delivering Results and Methods of Work
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Less Talking, More Doing

The Information Architect/Interaction Design field is awash in web sites and discussion lists, though the former are (unfortunately) significantly more worthwhile than the latter. The lists are constantly filled with requests for ‘best practices’ around the simplest of interface issues (e.g., “Should I put my text above or to the left of a form field?”), seemingly endless debates on ‘what is IA?’ and, most recently, an impressively daft call—based solely on anecdotal evidence—for IAs to pursue accreditation. It is enough to make you ‘want to tear out (your) eyeballs,’ as one of my coworkers recently put it.

On the rare occasions that someone does offer up a solution they created for a project, responses typically range from “It’s not that great” to “How dare you suggest that’s the right answer for all users!” It makes for a nice distraction on a slow work day but the problem is that all the arguing is getting us nowhere. Debates only serve to pull IAs away from the real work to be done: improving customer experience online.

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Feb 12, 2008

Dave Robertson

Published by
Dave Robertson

Topics
Customer Insight
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Pragmatism and the Future of Product Design

I had busy week last week, consumed with customer research for an online commerce project. Part of the focus of the project is to find a new way to help customers research, find and select products online. It’s remarkable the lengths we need to go to help people navigate this “paradox of choice.”

So it seemed timely when I saw Adrian Ho’s recent post at Zeus Jones’ blog about his prediction of a “coming period of pragmatism.” He constructs a sobering picture that we wouldn’t expect to hear from normally optimistic marketers. Adrian suggests that a threatening recession, a generational shift and global warming are conspiring to change our attitudes towards consumption. He describes these things as “a counterweight powerful enough to balance America’s insatiable appetite.” Sounds pretty gloomy, doesn’t it?

What will this potential “age of pragmatism” have on design? It’s easy to predict disaster, but personally, I think it could be the thing that finally separates the wheat from the chaff.

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Feb 11, 2008

Geoff

Published by
Geoff Sowrey

Topics
Emerging Technology and Tools & Technologies
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Wireless Photography: Freedom or Paranoia?

A few months ago, I learned of Eye-Fi. If you’ve never heard of Eye-Fi, that’s understandable — it’s not been widely publicised (though it was mentioned positively in Wired Magazine) and it’s technically not available in Canada. Unless you’re a geek (which I am) and/or a photography hobbyist (guilty as charged), you might never even come across it.

Eye-Fi (which rhymes with “Wi-Fi”) is a 2 GB SD memory card for your digital camera. It allows near-instant uploads from your camera to your online photo sharing service of choice, provided you’re within range of a Wi-Fi service. (Neil — you were right about more wireless ability!) The “how the heck” moment came when I asked how they managed to get a 45 foot range for transmission in an SD card, when my PC often drops signal from within the same room.

Set up on Eye-Fi

It actually seems to make photography more fun — it’s immediate sharing potential is amazing. And frankly, a little bit frightening…

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Feb 1, 2008

David Armano

Published by
David Armano

Topics
Brand Experience and Customer Insight
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From Site Refresh To a Refreshing Brand

Val
The ubiquitous site refresh. It’s one of the most common “tactics” in digital marketing. It goes something like this:

1. Site design goes neglected
2. Issues become obvious to both marketing teams and users
3. “Overhaul” is deemed unrealistic due to tech/other considerations
4. “Site refresh” becomes a temporary solution

Most of us are probably likely to think “isn’t that just putting a band-aid on the problem?—why not go to the root of it?”. Well, if you needed brain surgery—you’d still take aspirin to help get you through it. Fact is that your Web site is a primary touch point to your customers. Thanks to search engines and the digital age—it’s likely to be one of the first. So if your site is hopelessly dated and risks irrelevancy—you have to do something about it quickly.

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