Recently I have been traveling quite a lot, mostly to locations where I haven’t been before. Since I use a BlackBerry Curve with GPS and Google Maps Mobile (GMM) as my main mobile phone, I thought that my mobile companion can definitely help me answer a lot of questions while on the road. I was wrong.

Let’s recap a few situations:

I was in the city center of Brussels and wondering where I could find something to eat. Unfortunately most of the shops were already closed and I didn’t want to go to a restaurant. So I started Google Maps, searched for “McDonalds” and “Subways” and basically the results where mediocre: I found out where the McDonalds Headquarter is in Belgium (some 20 km outside Brussels), I guess there might be a Subway’s restaurant but it was out of walking distance and I was not willing to study public transportation - so at the end I asked around for the next train station and found a small shop there.

Similar situations happened in Milan and Istanbul - even in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, I was trying to use Google Maps Mobile to help me find a dedicated Puma Store. When I finally arrived at the mall it was merely a little Puma shop with a few of the most common shoes - not exactly what I have been looking for (I was looking for the Puma Black Label series of shoes….but that’s a different story).

Overall my impression was that there is a huge potential for Google Maps Mobile and location based services when you are traveling or in locations that you don’t know that well. The only problem: Google Maps Mobile is simply not ready for primetime yet.

I have summarized the areas for improvement in the list and I am the first to upgrade when Google implements a few of these requests:

1. Include a pedestrian mode
   Not everyone is using GPS in a car - I guess that most users of Google Maps Mobile use it for navigation outside their car when they are walking or cycling. If you need GPS navigation regularly in a car I suppose most people would buy a dedicated GPS car navigation system. I want to have the ability to switch to a “pedestrian mode” where the routing is based on each “walkable” street, not just on “drivable” streets as in a car mode. Help me find the shortest way in a city, and not the way next to the main roads.
2. Include support for the most common human activities
   We humans tend to follow the same patterns and we usually perform quite similar activities to reach certain outcomes. There are different situations when we are looking for restaurants, a small shop, a big supermarket, a fast food restaurant, a coffee shop or a toilet. I could imagine a menu with options that resemble common activities and include Eat, Drink, Sleep, Shop, See/Discover. The submenu for Eat would be “Fast Food”, “Average Restaurant”, “Exclusive Restaurant” - and Google Maps provides suggestions based on my current location.
3. A location based search for actual products and services
   When I was in Milan, I was not searching for a restaurant itself, I was searching for typical, traditional Italian pasta; same in California, I was looking for a shop that sells the Puma Black Label series of shoes and wouldn’t mind if I can find them in a store that is not a Puma store. So besides supporting certain activities that most humans perform regularly, location based search should also help me find the location of certain products - whether it is helping me find a certain pair of shoes or a restaurant that sells a certain kind of pasta. While the quality of the search results depends largely on the amount of data that is integrated, the first step might be to integrate Google Product Search into Google Maps.
4. Turn Google Maps Mobile into a travel companion
   Since the biggest use of Google Maps Mobile can be expected from people who are traveling (business and personal) Google Maps Mobile should be able to store all the relevant information for my trip (hotels, meeting points, maybe even appointment schedules - combined with Google Calendar) and be my travel companion that has all information available for me. I prepare it in advance (maybe by mailing it to a dedicated email address) and when I am on the road, I just push next, next, next.
5. Solve the language problem
   When I was in Brussels, I tried to search for the Flemish Parliament, the venue for a workshop that I planned to attend. Unfortunately Google Maps couldn’t help me because the Flemish Parliament can only be found with the correct Dutch term which is “Vlaams Parlement” - unfortunately I haven’t included that word in my Dutch vocabulary before. Even the search for “trainstation, St. Gallen, Switzerland” (my current residence) doesn’t return the expected results, only the search “Bahnhof, St. Gallen, Schweiz” returns the correct address. I understand that it is impossible to incorporate a complete dictionary but at least the most common search terms and locations should be multi-language capable.
6. Include public transportation
   If you are not familiar with the public transportation system in a city you have two choices: (1) spend a lot of time trying to figure out what could be the right mode of transportation or (2) spend a lot of money on taxis. Google Maps Mobile should help me find the right choice of public transportation - not just from one station to the other but from my place of departure to the place of arrival.
7. Integrate, Integrate, Integrate
   The quality of Google Maps Mobile (as well as Google Maps) depends fundamentally on the amount of integrated data. A search for restaurants can only generate useful results, when a sufficient number of restaurants are stored in the database. Otherwise it is still better to “open your eyes and look around”. While most McDonalds restaurants can be found through Google Maps in Switzerland, the data was still missing in Belgium.

These improvements - if adequately implemented - could render tremendously useful application for everyone who is traveling regularly. The integration of Google Maps into the iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile phones creates a huge user base that could tap into these services. Yet as long as the quality and utility from Google Maps Mobile is still not better than that of “looking and asking around” we won’t see large adoption.

Does this only apply to Google Maps? Not necessarily - the company that is able to provide this functionality combined with a sufficiently large user base will become the leader for location based services.

The picture that is shown with this post is currently uncredited because I couldn’t track back the source. If you know the source of this picture, please drop me an email.

Posted in mobile, user experience | Permalink | 3 Comments »

Delivering differentiated services that lead to remarkable experiences requires a thorough understanding of your customers. While this is a highly complex task that requires an analysis from different perspectives some patterns can help to identify these potential areas. The following is such a pattern that can be used to better understand the roles of your customers.

The initial question is: Who is your customer?. This is not always obvious since there are many actors involved in the purchase and use of a certain product or service. Yet five main roles can be identified that exist in many purchasing situations. Often several, sometimes all of these roles might be conducted by the same individual but recognizing the needs and requirements of each separately leads to potential areas for service design.

The following figure shows the most common roles that customers represent.

Here is a short description of the single roles:

• Initiator: The individual who initiates the search for a solution to the customer’s problem.
• Influencer: Individuals who have some influence on the purchase decision.
• Decider: Taking into consideration the views of the initiator and influencer some individual will make the decision as to which product or service should be purchased.
• Purchaser: The individual who is actually paying for the product or service
• User: The individual who finally consumes the product or service

It is important to understand that in any buying situation various actors can and will influence the buying decision and they will also be – either active or passive – experiencing a product and service and should therefore be considered when designing the overall “brand experience”. If different individuals undertake these roles, it is necessary to develop individual and differentiated services to satisfy the different needs and requirements.

The standard example for this is a visit to a theme park with children. The initiator might be the child that saw an advertising on TV, while the decider and purchaser are the parents. While it is important to design a great experience for children at a theme park, it might be even more important to focus on the experience of parents because ultimately they will decide and pay for the next trip to Disneyland.

The different roles become even more apparent in a business-to-business context. One classic example is the Hilti Fleet Management. Hilti offers differentiated services for the purchaser of the drilling machines and does not focus solely on the user of the drilling machines.

We’ll manage your tools so you can manage your business.
For a fixed monthly fee, Hilti provides you with a new fleet of tools.
During the usage time, there is only one monthly invoice for all your tools that covers absolutely all costs (including repair). Plus — at the end of the usage period — your fleet will be renewed with the latest generation of Hilti tools. Based on your needs, you select the type and quantity of tools.

Your benefits from Hilti Tool Fleet Management:
Full transparency & reliability

• Instant access to your complete tool inventory
• Easy accounting and cost allocation
• All tools labeled with your company logo plus inventory code / job reference possible.
• Exclusive Internet portal to track your tool fleet, order tools and consumables and arrange tool repair pick-ups

Applying this simple pattern can help identify areas for innovative products and services which in the end contribute to a remarkable customer experience.

Posted in methods, service design | Permalink | 1 Comment »

Whenever you are working in a large team towards a common goal it is difficult to ensure that all team members are moving in the right direction. Defining a vision (I personally prefer the term "intent") helps a team to stay on track by guiding and supporting the decision making process.

Google’s User Experience Principles are one of these tools that help design teams stay on track and they reflect how most of us expect to experience Google’s services.

The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is "Googley" – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.

The ten principles that drive design decisions and contribute to a "Google User Experience" are:

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

While are the first glance these principles still seem very high level, my impression is that they are valuable because the primary objective of these principles is not to design new user experiences but to facilitate decision making - decisions between different design and implementation alternatives.

But here is what I don’t understand:

Why Google would post them on their website?  Are these guidelines just an "explanation" and "justification" of "Google’s User Experience"?

Do they help to educate user what a "Googley" user experience is and influence their expectations of Google’s products?

How does it affect you when you read "Every millisecond counts" but the performance of your Google Reader is slow? Will it make you think that "at least they tried" and positively impact your user experience?

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The IBM Institute for Business Value published a report titled "Why advocacy matters to retailers" which identifies the key attributes that turn everyday shoppers  into loyal advocates. The main question is of course: What drives advocacy?

Building customer advocacy is harder than simply meeting customer expectations. In our sample, 78 percent of all consumers said their primary retailer meets their expectations, as compared to 21 percent who are Advocates. Understanding the expectations of customers and their reasons for shopping are simply “table stakes” or qualifiers for “getting it right,” but are not sufficient to transform customers into Advocates.

A retailer’s ability to fulfill customers’ expectations and understand their reasons for shopping simply helps get consumers in the door – it does not turn them into Advocates.

But the essential finding on attributes that drive customer advocacy is this:

It is the shopper’s experience with the store that transforms an existing customer into an Advocate of the retailer or, conversely, into an Antagonist. After meeting customers’ basic needs, fulfilling expectations and understanding their reasons to shop, then retailers can develop advocacy.

The report is based on the results of surveys conducted across five retail segments – grocery, large-format apparel, mall-based specialty apparel, drugstore and online.

The following table shows a summary of key initiatives that help to deliver a customer-focused strategy.

 

Download the full report here.

Posted in customer experience, retail | Permalink | No Comments »

"Green" products face the challenge that while they are friendly to the environment they usually lack the aesthetics to attract a wide-group of buyers that are not primarily interested in the green aspects of the product.

The challenge is to make "green", environmentally friendly products attractive by designing them so that customers can develop passion and delight for these products.

IDEO partner Diego Rodriguez, describes this challenge of turning green into red in an article in the NZZ Folio (weekly magazine of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the article asked where the next millionaires will come from).

What I find most dazzling these days are people working to change environmentally-focused products from being merely "green" to being what I like to call "red" as well.

Too many green products, such as the Prius hybrid, are the modern-day equivalent of a hairshirt. While undoubtedly morally and ethically rewarding to own, they lack a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to providing the kind of visceral delights which bring pleasure to our monkey brains. Something red, on the other hand, feels more like a Ferrari, overflowing with wonderful sounds, scents and physical sensations which forge the kind of emotional connections that keep you coming back for more.

[…]

Red is about passion and delight, and we need more of it in our green products if they’re going to pull people away from existing, non-green solutions. Emotional connections will be, and always have been, worth millions.

One great example of "turning green into red" is the Tesla Roadster, a fully electronic sports car produced by Tesla Motors.

Yet a nice picture is not enough to get an understanding if an electronic car can really come up with the expectations that customers put into a sportscar - no matter whether it is powered by gasoline or by electricity.

Taking an actual test drive might be difficult because there are still not that many cars around, still Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., took the Tesla on a test drive and recorded the whole experience. See for yourself:

 

After watching this video I was impressed: because I just saw a real example of turning green into red. The experience about doing something good for the environment is one part, but building an experience that is "green" and improves your status is a totally new experience.

Image courtesy of dreamymo

Posted in green | Permalink | No Comments »