theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

The innovative workout

In our culture today, we tend to leap from problem to solution. We have been rewarded with this approach most of our lives.

But when you are looking for fresh ideas, you will get farther if you change the solution into a lot of questions.

For instance...

I wanted to go to the gym more often. This is a problem many of us have. I had memberships I didn't use. I found it painfully boring. Net result: not working out enough. Common solutions: be more disciplined, book time in my calendar, yada, yada, yada.

What worked

Asking the question,"what would make workouts more fun" took me in a totally different direction.

I got a workout buddy. We've now been going at least once a week for three and a half years.When we miss the workout, I don't just miss the workout, I miss the catch-up.

We could ask a lot more cool questions about workouts that would take us to Catalyzing Questions -- questions that show the way to different solutions.

Such as... how could I make money working out? How could I work out at my desk? How could I make working out as much fun as watching TV? (Hey, I guess that's why there are TV's in the gym now!)

Get unstuck

Asking different questions can get you unstuck in a big way. It's a powerful tool, whether your problem is dirty dishes piling up, or feeding people during space travel.

More on gaming and innovation in social games

This piece on the business of game development has some real gems in it: What Games Are: The Fun Boson Does Not Exist - by Tadhg Kelly - TechCrunch

The gaming industry has the ability to tap into a distribution system that is truly unique, and it is innovating around distribution more than around the games themselves:

The tragedy of social games is that the companies involved discovered the greatest distribution tool in the history of the industry, and yet proved inept at providing great games to go with it. The best things that they’ve come up with so far is Poker, some socialised versions of simple casual games, some super-simple sims and about 100,000 variations of Dungeons and Dragons.

Measurement is a good thing, but can overtake creative in negative ways

Like other industries today, the very ability to measure everything has created a deep bias towards metrics instead of human judgment.

The ultimate fallacy of sticking with “you can only improve what you can measure” is that measurements eventually determine all of your creative decisions. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a designer complain that they need to enact a deep change in their game, but are not allowed to do so by a manager who demands it be proved with numbers first. Both understand that something is not right, but the axiom mandates that the problem must be expressed in numeric terms, or else it does not exist.

Kelly sees electronic games as having the same dynamic that physical games do. So you can explain the rules governing a game, such as tennis, basketball, or croquet, but you don't really get the dynamics until you see the system in motion. Real world games are sensitive to changes, such as changes in the height of the tennis net. Which is no doubt why such changes are contemplated at length by sporting bodies prior to making them.

Fun as emergent property

But in electronic games, he argues, the obsession with measurement can sometimes improve the measured of "fun", without actually making the game more fun.

Games are essentially chaotic systems. In a chaotic system you can look at the initial starting conditions and the topology of a simulation and try to predict the interactions of strange attractors as much as you like, but you generally don’t really get what the hell the simulation is doing until you observe it in motion. The system is too sensitive, the patterns too hard to interpret and the situation too emergent.

Fun is essentially an emergent property of the system, and not subject to the application of process rules in the same way manufacturing is.

Designers of great board games, such as the famous Settlers of Catan by Klaus Teuber, often test and refine with real players for a long time to get things just right, tweaking minor game elements. Catan is one of those board games that inspires such incredible user engagement that you can find many instructions on line for how to build a better playing board.

Kelly argues that social games have yet to find the fun. What do you think?

Top 10 customer experience trends: The future of customer experience

In this post, I talked about where customer experience thinking came from. This one is about where I think we are headed.

1. It's all about the customer. Still

Yes, that seems obvious. But it needs constant repetition. Control is not going to go back into the hands of the marketer. The diversity around us in styles and choices is just mind boggling. Customers are driving that, with the aid of new technology.

Personalization, check. Customization, check. Co-creation, check. None of it is going away.

2. Brands are powerful

Consumers are overwhelmed by choice and information. A brand can help you narrow things down. A brand can help you, as a person, tell your story. Only if the brand HAS a story, of course. See #8 for more on that.

3. Touchpoints will continue to expand

The number of mediums in use just keeps growing. The old stuff is still with us (newspapers, for example), and new channels pop up every day (like apps). As a marketer, you need to try to pull this herd of cats into something that looks like a coherent brand message, customized to deliver what your customer is looking for, and responsive to what they are telling you. Sound difficult? Absolutely.

4. If anything is going to replace consumption of goods as the thing that defines our culture, it will be consumption of experiences

There is evidence all around us that we value experiences as much as, perhaps more than, stuff. Which could be good for the planet. Stuff is not going away, but it might be dropping in importance. What is social media, after all, but an experience? Sponsorship marketing delivers experiences. Digital media delivers experiences. Great packaging even delivers an experience. If you aren't delivering an experience, you are going to have problems competing. [Yes, I feel your pain, wondering how the heck to do that as a consultant.]

5. The service + experience economy is going to produce a lot of tension. Show a little respect

The person serving you your coffee today is getting served by you on an airplane tomorrow, going in to your bank branch during the extended hours, and calling your support centre tonight after dinner. And vice-versa. Despite growing income inequality, the tolerance for being treated like a nobody -- even when you are buffing a toenail -- is low, and I think, decreasing. The 1% didn't get the memo on this. There's a lot of people out there feeling disrespected.

When you design a service experience, don't assume you will be able to find staff who can be trained to be obsequious. They're not growing those folks any more. [Except in those odd environments where people are highly paid to be obsequious.Your barista is not highly paid, regardless of what you think.]

6. We're going to expect better experiences in places that have never had to bother before

The last bastion of the bad experience will be anything that looks like government. Are petty bureaucrats still wielding power over people -- of course they are. We hate it, but we haven't figured out how to change it yet. We're all working on health care first. But when all of the commercial/consumer world is oriented towards creating a better experience, everything that doesn't try too hard is going to really stick out, and not in a good way.

7. The drive to improve experiences is going to improve efficiency

Oddly, most people think better efficiency and greater productivity comes from taking things away from customers. Not necessarily true. You can take away stuff that no one wants anyway, like delays in service, out of stock inventory, difficult check-out procedures.

It's not all about high-touch -- sometimes it's about just letting me get on with it. Consider self-serve gas. For most of us, doing it yourself is just a lot easier and faster, and therefore a better experience. Cheaper is a bonus. The same thing has largely proved to be true in transactional banking. [Now if we can just bring that to public transit!]

8. Faking authenticity is going to get harder.

There's no place to hide. Even for Apple. Instead, why not go for genuine authenticity? It's cheaper and more fun.

9. The perfect targeting solution won't help you if you don't have a story and an experience to offer

Will big data solve your problems? Maybe somewhat. But more likely it will be to the 2010s what CRM was to the 90s and 00s -- a lot of money spent for a lot of disappointment. Your perfect algorithm will only help you if you have a story to tell and an experience to back it up.  [Surely that's a relief, isn't it? Just hollering "buy, buy, buy" won't work better because of big data.]

10. No one will be paying attention

You think it's hard getting attention today? I think it's going to get harder. All that stuff about localization services that will drive traffic into your store. It will just feel like more spam for most. All those apps? Well, how many apps can you really use? Three? Five? Ten? Certainly not 30 or 40, not 100 or 1,000.

The only solution is to insist on relevance. Relevance might not mean utility in the conventional sense, it might mean amusement or charm [just look at Pinterest].

The bright spot here is that local businesses with some savvy will have an easier time of it, I think. People will be walking by your store anyway, right? 

 

This is what I see, at least today. What do you see?

Everyone is a creator and the new tools keep getting better: 3D printers, DIY apps

3D Printers, which must have seemed like a sci-fi fantasy only a decade ago ("Earl Grey, Hot"), have gone the way of so much technology, and are now no more expensive than a laser printer.

This recent Businessweek story says there are now models available for as little as $1200.

I did a trendwatching report for a client a few years ago and told them this would happen. Not because I am brilliant (I so wish this were the case), but because all things flow down the food chain over time. Something only available in jet planes today will be available in your car in the future. Innovations cascade from the most exclusive markets to retail markets. GPS was a military creation, then it was a commercial thing, and now we all have it.

At a copy shop near you?

I have a prediction for you now -- just like copiers and printers before them, it wont be long before there will be a 3D print shop near you, perhaps in a corner of the Home Depot (that's where I'd put it, anyway) or perhaps in Staples, or in Kinkos. You'll be able to rent time on someone else's 3D printer instead of having to buy your own. You might be able to get help building your 3D digital model to feed to the printer. They might have 3D scanners where you can get a scan of your broken widget to reproduce (say, an broken part for an appliance that you want to repair.)

Make your own app

Improved coding tools are bringing the act of digital creation into the realm of ordinary folk as well. Take this development, for example: TheAppBuilder (written up by PSFK here)

 

The apps look to me a lot like a personal portal of sorts, where you can track sites, rss content, and similar things that have been built elsewhere. (I can't build a game this way. Not yet, anyway.)

For the creative human -- which is essentially all of us -- times could not be better.

The great brainstorming debate

Tom Fishburne posted one of his great cartoons on the Marketoonist about the challenge of group creativity. Mr. Fishburne makes the case that we should honor different creative thinking styles [YES!] and that we should recognize that most groups have a tendency to negativity [sometimes, and more on that below].

Poor old brainstorming, such a hardworking tool, and so badly beaten up these days. Reading the post, and the comments, made me think a bit about my own experiences with brainstorming, both as a facilitator and a participant.

Here's my comment on the post, hopefully it makes sense even if you don't read the original post.

As both a focus group moderator, and a facilitator of innovation sessions, I see both sides of this issue, the strengths of brainstorming and the weaknesses.

Clients sometimes hope that consumers (e.g. focus group participants) can come up with the answer to some problem (e.g. think up a new product). This is not likely to happen, and not the best use of the insights of consumers.

There are a number of ways in which a good moderator can help a group. One of them is the anchoring technique mentioned by Bill Carlson in his comment above. This approach forces the participant to consider their own reaction first, before engaging in group discussion.

Another important approach, when having participants look at a new idea or concept, is to get well past the “like it, don’t like it” discussion. Better questions for discussion are things like: what does the idea bring to the table, how might someone use it, what would make it better, etc. In recent years, I have found that consumers are so well schooled in the language of marketing that they will tell me all about how the product is “positioned incorrectly”, or “the execution is weak”, or needs “a fresher design aesthetic” etc. As you note in your article, there is a certain amount of negativity as well, as our “slow thinking” analytical processes kick in.

All of this does not mean that you cannot get great insights from consumers in a group, but it does mean you need clever and thoughtful approaches to setting up the discussion and interpreting what you get.

As a facilitator, I do agree that brainstorming all by itself is unlikely to get you where you want to go. Brainstorming is ONE creative thinking method, and it should not have to carry the full load. It is best used within a framework where we might help the team get immersed in the customer experience, look at parallel worlds (e.g. how others address similar challenges), and a multitude of other methods that prime the pump. These approaches take time, and planning – but they do pay off in a huge way if done well.

What does not work well is pulling people from the middle of a busy workday, plunking them in a boardroom for an hour, and asking them to just brainstorm. The only people who are good at this are those who have a lot of experience with creative thinking work, and can effectively self-facilitate.

Creative wardrobe assembly online: Polyvore

While investigating Pinterest, I came across this interesting shopping and style site called Polyvore.

Polyvore lets you browse their collections of gorgeous clothes and assemble outfits. Like my feeble attempt shown below, or seen on Polyvore here.The brilliance of this site is that I can now actually shop on line for this entire outfit (for a couple of thousand). I can see things that other people have assembled, and shop for their stuff, too.

Not only that, but with their clipping widget I can import items from other sites I might be shopping at, to assemble my virtual outfit online. (Just in case I find a non-Burberry trench for less than a grand).

 

 

This site would seem to have solved the challenge of trying to piece together offerings from different places. I'm guessing it also gives people with a recession budget a way to go virtual window shopping. Like everything else now, it does of course have a social element: you can create outfits (with help from templates to make you look good), you can ask questions, you can browse other people's outfits, you can search for clothing.

It's got simple drag and drop functionality, and is so easy to use, I assembled an outfit within about 10 minutes. I then had options to post it to a variety of social media broadcast sites.

I may not be buying Burberry any time soon, but a girl can dream, right?

Webcast on Creativity: Finding Aha moments

I'm headed to the annual QRCA conference in October, and am particularly looking forward to hearing a presentation on creativity from Dr. Joanne Brunn, who studies this sort of thing, and also has a lot of practical, real-world experience.

Fortunately for you, this particular presentation will be webcast (free). Here's the topic description:

Why is it so hard to get to that Aha moment? Creativity is often misunderstood and may seem overwhelming to put into practical use. However, we all naturally follow the creative stages of preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Through understanding these research-based stages of creativity, you will learn how to identify and manage the stages to encourage creativity. The stage that often gets neglected or outright prohibited is incubation – yet that is the major factor in getting to that Aha moment of illumination. Come and learn practical and fun ways to best take advantage of everyone’s natural creative flow.

To find out more and register for this Q-Cast, click here. These sessions are archived and can be viewed later if you miss the live session.

This event is unusual in that we don't allow a lot of veiled "pitching" -- presentations are usually excellent. So if you can't be in Vegas at the conference having a great time, you can take in some of the cool learning, and it's even free.

I'll be speaking as well, so will have to contain my partying. [I have a 9 am slot on a Friday, so wish me luck!]

The Age of Creativity: Fashion Co-creation

Infographics are a great way to communicate ideas -- they give you a snapshot of something really quickly. The one below is about fashion co-creation.

I've written on co-creation and customization before -- in transit design, maker communities, fashion and design, online sites like Google maps, more products and designs. It's a trend that continues to build in so many ways -- so I was intrigued by this fashion co-creation infographic sent to me via MyFashionSales.  It has some great examples, a few I hadn't seen before.

Even better, it meant I discovered the charming writing of the MyFashionSales blog. And I also checked out a site which you simply must investigate -- submitinfographics -- which has a lot of terrific infographics -- including many user-generated graphics. Another veritable hub of creativity.

We are just surrounded by creativity everywhere -- new ways to communicate, new ways to share ideas, new chances for everyone to participate. Someday the era we are now living in will be called the Age of Creativity [unless someone thinks of a better name. Maybe you?]

And aren't we lucky to be living in this time? The Age of Creativity.

 

Creativity exercises really do work to generate better ideas: new research into construal theory

Approaches to creativity and innovation have mostly come from individual hypothesis and craft -- people studying what they think works based on personal observation. Now, scientific research is starting to validate many of these approaches.

When working with a team trying to come up with new ideas, one very useful method involves taking the problem into another framework. (There are many ways to do this -- one example: ask people to imagine Steve Jobs or Bill Gates solving the problem instead of themselves.)

Scientists Evan Polman and Kyle Emich found students who were asked to solve problems requiring creative thinking did better when they were solving the problem for someone else, instead of themselves. One example: they were more likely to solve a "tower escape" puzzle, and created better aliens for a story when they were solving these challenges for another person, not for themselves.

The practical implications of our findings are striking in the extent of their reach...That decisions for others are more creative than decisions for the self is not only valuable information for researchers in social psychology, decision making, marketing, and management but also should prove of considerable interest to negotiators, managers, product designers, marketers, and advertisers, among many others.

The theory, called construal theory, is still being developed.

Resources:

Polman E, and Emich KJ (2011). Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the Self. Personality and social psychology bulletin PMID: 21317316

Via the British Psychological Society Newsletter: http://www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog 

Construal theory on Psycholopedia: http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=79

 

Customization and personalization trend just keeps growing!

Looking around online to see what I might buy as a new carry-on luggage bag, I came across this gem from Heys.  It's called DOTS, and the case is designed to let you put your own design on it.

Consumers do not want boring black in anything anymore. They want color, design, style and personal statements.

If you love all things personalized, you can get a regular feed from MilkorSugar, the blog of all things customizable.

Marketing in a recession: Indigo MBA

During difficult economic times, lots of people take the opportunity to "reboot" by going back to school. Of course now, you need serious dough to do that.

Book retailer Indigo is positioning to tap into that trend by offering "the 12 month MBA" featuring  "24 books, 12 months. $0 student loans."  The additional pitch is an opportunity to discuss the books on the Indigo Community.

Very clever idea. And not a bad selection of books, either. (With the exception of Who Moved My Cheese, which surely must be added by way of contrast.)

Who else do you see that is doing some clever recession marketing?

Clever things to make customers happy: what's yours?

When I saw the way my cold beer arrived on a very hot day, I actually squealed in delight.

Now what clever thing can you do that doesn't require new technology or big expense and will show your customers you are actually thinking about them?

What's your clever thing?

[Extra credit if you observed that this was another Marriott, surely among the best managed front-end experiences in the hotel biz. I blogged on these guys once or twice before. Here's one, and here's another]

Co-creation watch: Hackerlabs and the democratization of creation

Human beings are by nature creators and builders. The evidence of this surrounds us. We have created many, many tools to support this enduring enterprise, ranging from oil paints and violins to concrete and laser-cutters.

In the not-too-distant past, the act of creation was highly stratified. There were fine artists, or those striving to be. There were craftspeople, like Gepetto the shoemaker (aka Pinocchio's father, who dreamed of having a real son). There may have been many stonemasons, but there were few Berninis, and they lived in an elite place.

This segregation of high and low creation has been pervasive throughout the world of work and in recent times too. I recall being told in no uncertain terms by a senior executive that I was not a creative person, only some people were creative, and that when creativity was needed, it would be hired, thank you very much. I doubt that was an isolated conversation. Even in creative industries, the true creatives were housed in special cages.

This is all changing. 

Crafts used to be denigrated as "low art", somehow a lesser act of creation. The same was true of graphic design -- if it was produced for commercial reasons, it shouldn't be framed an hung on a wall. There is a shrinking community of people who actually care about these distinctions now. Case in point: Etsy, an online craft market and community. Yes, some of this stuff is perfectly hideous. But much of it is charming. Anyone can get in on the act here, including children.

Although many strive to make a living with their shops, I suspect that many more just want to share their creations with the world. This motive is surely part of what drives Instructables, a place where you can share your approach to making Lego shaped gummy candies.

 

In fact, these communities have their own ideas about what makes something wonderful.

Customized manufacturing is another sign on this creation highway. You can go questing for amazing sneakers in your local hip neighborhood, or you can quest for them online, or you can design your own. And it's not just sneakers anymore.  (Levi's tried to pull off something like this more than a decade ago, but they didn't quite get it right, or perhaps were also a bit too soon. It was custom fit, not custom design, for one thing.)  If you are an actual designer in the sneaker world, keeping your job may depend on being at least as good as the free stuff coming in.

And it's not just sneakers. The tools of big-time industrial creativity are fast becoming available to people. 3D scanners and printers -- and the aforementioned laser cutters -- are now within the range of affordability, just as desktop printers became affordable. And they are going to get more affordable. The real question is whether you'll buy these things in the tool corral at Home Depot, or in the electronics section at Best Buy.

Today, I discovered another wonderful sign of these times in Hackerspace. 

 

Here's how my local Hackerspace describes itself -- "a community space with a diverse membership, including artists, computer programmers, web designers, and hardware hackers. It is inspired by the philosophies of the global hackerspaces movement which encourages people to socialize, share knowledge, and work together on their projects."

 

Hackerspaces reminds me of the unconferences that have sprung up all over the place -- loosely organized groups of people getting things done.

New communications technologies is what has made all of this possible, in many ways, but it is as much a servant as a driver of the change we are seeing. Tools, access to people, and now access to physical space, are all becoming liberated from their place in the stratification.

The change is the great democratization of creation.

Resources

3D Printing and scanning: Wikipedia has a good overview here, Jay Leno wrote for Popular Mechanics on this topic, and there is a delightful YouTube with a demonstration.

Related posts

Creation and customization: here to stay and growing. Susan Abbott on CustomerCrossroads blog, Sept 29, 2009

Where customization is going. Susan Abbott on CustomerCrossroads blog, Oct 30, 2008

Get your own car logo, make your own stickers. Co-creation is everywhere. Susan Abbott on CustomerCrossroads blog, Mar 31, 2008

how to be more creative: get out, get some experiences, then get some sleep

I love a weekend when it is not jam-packed with activity. For me, that is a pleasure in itself -- having the space and time for exploration without a pre-set plan. But it also means that there will be a fresh surge of ideas by Sunday morning.

On a recent weekend, I took in The Madonna Painter at Factory Theatre. This warrants comment on it's own, as it is the kind of play you can't honestly say you "enjoyed". It's more of an experience that has value, but the creation of joy is not really part of the value.  Reminded me of ancient Greek philosophers trying to figure out why tragedy works. [You see, already the creative connections were flowing!]

The play prompted conversation into the small hours of the next day. 

Even better, I'm just back from a well-deserved holiday paddling my heart out in the warm waters of Baja. An experience pretty-much guaranteed to clean the cobwebs from the mind.

And then the joy of Sunday morning. Waking up with ideas bubbling. Ideas for client projects. Ideas for blog articles. E-mails I wanted to send. Enquiries to make. Things to read.

This kind of state has a very joyful feeling associated with it. It is the joy of a mind at play.

How to be an idea person

People tell me all the time that I am a good idea person. But whatever you feel your natural talents are, you too can become an idea person. You have to cultivate that space for your subconscious talents to have room to play. And give that subconscious some thing to work with - like a few new ideas and new experiences. 

How do you help free up your creative thinking?