Author Archives: Neil Clemmons
By Neil Clemmons | Critical Mass Chicago
There’s a lot being written about the iPad – reviews, new applications, the ongoing debate on Flash, what the device does and what it doesn’t do.
Beyond the device, however, there are some implications and the longer-term impact it will have as we create digital experiences. New devices and interfaces have a profound impact on consumer expectations, competitive moves, and the evolution of digital interfaces. The Wii ushered in new interface concepts and ideas. Same with xBox and xBox Live. The iPad will do the same in its influence on the conventions and expectations of our industry.
We have several of the Wifi iPads in our offices and have had a number of discussions with our team about its implications. Some see immediate opportunities for the iPad to ‘fit in’ to their lifestyles. Others are still debating if it replaces something or is a supplemental access and consumption device. It’s bigger than a phone with no ability to do more than SKYPE calls. But it’s not quite a notebook with all the file access and productivity tools – so the iPad makes compromises in both directions. The limitations will change in time as new applications, new peripherals, an updated OS, and improved connectivity come.
One thing the smartphone and iPad do is to force a focus on ‘what’s important’ versus ‘what’s possible.’ As sites or applications evolve, they become more bloated, more confusing, and lose the punch they can have. Redesigns of a site or an application can be liberating, in removing the old conventions. But invariably we worry about ‘moving the cheese’ of the habituated consumer and thus add rather than subtract in making experience design tradeoffs. This is where Apple and the developers of iPad apps demonstrated tremendous courage in leaving behind the conventional interfaces and tools. We need more courage to advance the customer experience.
What’s the take away after a week of using the iPad from an experience standpoint?
Here are the 7 Areas of Implications for digital marketers:
#1 – Fragmentation.
Josh Bernoff (Forrester) wrote about the Splinternet earlier this year. That theme is in full force on the iPad. Media and content fragmentation continue as new devices enable content consumption in new and different formats. Information ubiquity that started with the smartphone is further exacerbated with a new form factor. iPhone apps that are played on the iPad look OK, but you’re much more engaged by an iPad native app. The need for liquid experiences that adapt to the screen become even more important as we look at alternative form factors.
#2 – Development Challenges.
We have to think differently about how content and experiences are created, disseminated and maintained. Monolithic frameworks start to break down when there are hundreds of thousands of developers creating new experiences. And with Apple changing their developer terms and conditions, it looks like Apple will expect you to use their tools and frameworks, rather than many of the cross-platform frameworks. We have several clients working with Android, iPhone, Blackberry and other instances for applications. The iPad and follow-on products from other vendors based on Windows 7, Chrome, or Android tablets will further exacerbate the challenge of consistency and maintainability.
#3 – Personalization.
We’re at the early stages of more personal (and relevant) consumption of media – that means the customer is even more in control of the experience. Most will seek out an application rather than a web browser to consume their content where possible. Android, the iPhone OS, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry are all targeting what Mary Meeker with Morgan Stanley says will be a bigger market than the desktop PC market by 2014. The browser lives on at the desktop, but many of these new devices will take a very different approach to content and experience access. Remixing content from feeds, apps, alerts, and personalized experiences will become even more important. Add in the intersection of social to these experiences and you quickly see that use cases with these new devices will become even more personal.
We were talking the other day about guiding principles that form the foundation of a great experience. David Armano surfaced this excellent list from Google. What’s interesting is that it is in their corporate information. They hold these guiding principles close to their core. And it shows.
When these principles work in an experience they call them getting “Googley.” The principles are simple but powerful ideas that show why Google is so strong in delivering customer value. It’s a well-known fact that Google’s customer value has delivered a lot of business value to their shareholders. Who says business, brand and customer cannot be aligned in an experience?
Engagement is the mantra in marketing. Impressions are passé. And word of mouth is an emerging aspect in marketing that we’re only beginning to understand. But engagement – how actively a customer uses and engages with a program or site component – is something we embrace as a key measure of success. The challenge in the past was that between client stakeholders, customer research, competitive assessments, and our own team insight and ideation process, we had a laundry list of features and function that could be implemented. Which were the top priorities? And how could we determine “tie-breakers” on the features and functionality as well as the likely timing to implement?
About three years back, we began to apply more discipline to the application of design personas. Interestingly, that regimen can apply to measures of engagement as well. We now regularly use simple scoring methodologies to prioritize the features, functions, and program elements that are most likely to connect with the highest value customers. It’s a relatively straight forward process once design personas are developed. And the process ensures that customer needs are kept front-and-center when making feature / function decisions. Finally the scoring methodology meets with high client and team buy-in.
(more…)
Often during initial kickoff of projects, clients will ask us about the process and steps we take to deliver customer experiences. While there are dozens of methods we use to gather requirements, prioritize investments, explore new technologies, and synchronize experience components, the key centering point we’ve found for the best work is a simple one: alignment.
With alignment comes clarity. But getting to alignment often takes time, even though we look for alignment on three relatively straight-forward dimensions:
- What is the business trying to accomplish?
- What are the needs and insights of the customer?
- How do we deliver on the brand promise within the experience?
Amazon rolled out their mobile shopping service yesterday for US consumers, enabled by SMS short codes. Consumers can text to AMAZON (262966) with the name, model number or ISBN number of a product to determine if Amazon offers the product, it’s price, and a summary. Short-code responses offer the option for more details, a direct URL link to the product details page, or the option to buy with a 1 character response.
The buying process is enabled with a voice call to your cell phone to walk you through a voice-response confirmation of the buying process using your registered email and zip code to tie the purchase to your Amazon profile.
This morning I was walking at 5th and 52rd Street in New York on my way to a meeting. Traffic was at a standstill, people frustrated, horns blowing, due to President Bush being in town with his motorcade. As I’m walking up 5th Avenue, I encounter a blind man also walking with his cane. He looked a little flustered. With New York at a standstill, and no sense of movement, he had lost his “signal” for deciphering what was going on. Traffic was gridlocked. Congestion was outrageous. We struck up a chat and he asked what was happening and I filled him in. We chatted for maybe 3 minutes over two blocks. As the cross town motorcade passed at 55th and traffic started to move, I was amazed at his instinctive ability to regain his navigational sense – he once again found the signal within the noise as we walked. Not only could he carry on a conversation, he navigated by sound at the same time. He didn’t need an iPhone with Google maps. He didn’t need eyes, because he had internal vision. An intuitive sense based on deciphering the signal. And an amazing sense of processing that signal in real time.
It’s yet another example of separating the signal from the noise. Its easy to be distracted with the technology and tools, the emerging trends, the mountains of data, the noise around us. Our customer experience “traffic sense” can sometimes seem at a standstill. Often it’s about listening, internalizing, and understanding intuitively what’s going on. Close your eyes, regain the signal and you’ll be on your way.
