Here are two videos of iPad users who you would probably not include in the typical group of users for such a device. Nevertheless the experience that this 2 year old kid and the 99 year old grandmother have with the iPad is once-in a lifetime experience. I think it is well worth your time if you invest the 10 minutes and just observe how they interact with the device.

A 2,5 Year-Old Has a First Encounter with An iPad

iPad Helps 99-Year-Old Woman Rediscover Writing

There is also a longer version available with an interview with Virginia.

After watching these clips of “extreme users”, you have observed two humans whose life has just changed:

• A 2 year old child who will never know what a world without tablet computers is like, and
• A 99 year old grandmother that becomes an active, creating part of a digital society.

And the core learning is: Contrary to many industry pundits and technology experts, users don’t care about multitasking or a webcam because the iPad opens up so many new opportunities for them that the device becomes a life-changer. These two videos are also an excellent starting point for a conversation in your organization what this new device category ultimately means for your business.

Nevertheless the question is not what application you could transfer to the iPad in the next 3 months. The ultimate question is: How can you solve your customers problems with this new device category? Which business opportunities will emerge with this new category of devices in the coming 18 to 24 months? How can you trigger new business opportunities and leverage existing ones?

New iPad applications: An opportunity for Customer Co-Design?

I have run several customer co-design workshops and the experiences I have made during these workshops confirmed that this is a useful approach to identify opportunities for product and service improvements.

In a customer co-design workshop you bridge the gap between designer (product management, software development, product design) and the customer by integrating the customer into the actual design process. This has the benefit that you don’t need to “extract” implicit knowledge from your customer but instead give him the tools and method to express his requirements.

The iPad is an an excellent opportunity to integrate customers into the design process and develop new ideas with your customers. And the best of all, you can probably do this by yourself:

1. Buy at few iPads – If you are not in the US you can either wait until they are available in Europe or tap into other sources (eBay, friends, your next business trip) to get a device.
2. Invite a few customers and use the iPads together with your customers, let customers explore the device and imagine how the iPad and applications on the iPad could help them solve their problems, run their business and enjoy life.
3. Brainstorm ideas, sketch prototypes for new applications and imagine different business models that utilize the iPad.

This is not a guarantee that you will indeed find the next breakthrough idea after one event, but it is a big step into that direction. Certainly the selection of customers is important and the workshop itself should not become an “all you can wish for” event but with the right approach it will help you find answers to the biggest question: How will the iPad impact your business?

Bill Buxton

I highly recommend his talk to everyone who is involved in experience design (which are a lot of people even though they are not initially aware of it) because he clarifies once again what experience design is all about and shows practical examples with a focus on developing software applications.

I have summarized some statements of his talk below, the video of his talk is embedded below as well, enjoy it.

On experience design and the current economic situation

You couldn’t be in a better profession in the current economic climate because by getting the experience right you get this return on investment which will not you let survive but drive economic development.

On the novelty of experience design

Is experience just a new name? Same old stuff in new clothes? No, it’s a refocus of attention, it is what successful products always had but we never called it that.

Industrial designers very often talk about the things but when it’s actually the experience that is induced by this thing that is the true product of you. It’s not the screen, it’s not the graphics – it’s what they prompt.

On the focus of experience design

Any product, service, online thing or object you make – you have to know what is the nature of the grin, or the adrenalin or the smile or the love that you are trying to provoke from your users.

For a better viewing experience you can use the full screen feature or watch the talk at the MIX09 website.

With all these different areas that provide opportunities to design remarkable experiences, the ultimate question remains: What are the areas of customer experience design that will have a direct impact on your sales?

Let them touch and they will buy

A recent study has shown that the longer people touch certain products, the higher is the probability that they will actually buy the product. The researchers from Ohio State University and Illinois State University discovered this by asking participants about their willingness to pay for a product in a bidding process depending on the time they have hold the cup in their hands. In case your products are locked away in a glass showcase or – even worse – have a sign that says "don’t touch" you should think if there might be a better solution to present your products and give customer a chance to experience them. You might be missing out significant amount of sales.

Thinking about these findings, I asked myself: What is really the essence of a remarkable shopping experience? What drives people to buy instead of just look around?

The reason why people enter your shop

It is clear that not every potential customer enters a shop to make a purchase. Sometimes people enter your shop just to look around and collect information. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the underlying reason why people enter your shop:

Customers enter your shop because they want to experience your products, not your shop.

The focus of designing retail shopping experiences is therefore on designing opportunities for the customer to experience the product as realistically as possible and not to design the shop so that it creates a better experience.

Customer want to experience what it is like to own your products – your shop should be designed to help create these "product discovery experiences".

Exclusive interior is overrated

Following this approach, it becomes obvious that exclusive and expensive interior does not necessary lead to a better shopping experience. Potential customers will enter your shop because they want to experience your products, not to see a nice shop. Just ask yourself how this exclusive wood boarding will influence the "product discovery experience".

“But what about exclusive fashion boutiques?” you might ask. “They have nice shops with expensive interior so it must have an impact, right?”. Yes, they have expensive interior but the interior is secondary. The primary experience driver is the interaction with the sales clerk who will "simulate" real world experiences by telling you how great this new suit or dress looks on you. This is a simulation of the real-life effect that you want to achieve with your exclusive clothes, handbag or watch, created by employees in a personalized “product discovery experience”. A pleasant environment plays a role to create a remarkable experience, but it is not the key driver of the experience.

The implications for your business

If you are responsible for designing a retail experience or shop for your business, you should ask yourself the following question: Are you designing a "shop experience" or are you designing a "product discovery experience"? If you approach the design problem from a "product discovery experience" perspective, you should identify the design elements that contribute to a simulation of the effects of owning your products. Let your customers feel what it is like to own your products.

Approaching the retail shopping experience problem from this perspective, I am sure you will come up with countless opportunities to create a truly remarkable customer experience that will not just make shopping more fun, but also influence your bottom-line.

Images courtesy of [silent7seven] and [esp22]

The word experience has gained significant traction over the past 15 years. Beginning with the mainstreaming of the term user experience in the software industry and, later, extended to the work of marketing professionals who began thinking about marketing as being experiential, the idea of experience as a focused professional area of endeavor is alive, well, and growing rapidly. However, the more our space grows, the more confused and chaotic is our collective understanding of the meaning of these terms. To try to help clarify this murkiness, I want to share my definitional model for the fields of experience and provide guidelines for the use of various terms.

This is an important step forward towards better definitions of the various terms in the field of designing experiences. After reading the article you will realize that one term is missing: customer experience. Since my blog is titled “The Customer Experience Labs” I feel obliged to add a definition for this term.

Customer Experience refers to all touchpoints people have from the moment they are aware of a need until they have fulfilled the need or reached a certain goal. While Brand Experience offers an “inside-out” perspective with a scope that is defined through the organization’s boundaries, Customer Experience takes an “outside-in” perspective and recognizes that there are more actors (organizations) involved when a customer is striving to reach a certain outcome.

One example:

Imagine you are planing your next flight and you will realize that there are more than a few different actors involved. You might have booked your ticket on a travel website like Expedia (Actor #1). You will have to arrive by train, bus or taxi (Actor #2). After arriving at the airport you have to find your check-in counter, check-in and kill time in one of the restaurants, bars or shops at the airport (Actor #3). When boarding the plane you have the first interaction with the airline (Actor #4) and after landing you interact with the destination airport (Actor #5) and public transportation to reach your destination (Actor #6).

All these interactions with different actors influence the Customer Experience. Organizations that adopt the customer’s point of view and look beyond the current organizational boundaries are able to create truly remarkable experiences. All these independent organizations can optimize their Brand Experience, but only by understanding the overall context in which customers are interacting them, an organization can become an “synchronized” actor in the system and remarkable Customer Experiences can be created.

Is it different from User Experience? Yes, since it is not just one specific design but all the experiences that a user (or customer) has in order to fulfill a need.

Is it different from Brand Experience? Yes, since it is and “outside-in” perspective from the customer’s point of view.

The study focuses on the special characteristics of services and especially experiential services. In this context, the “customer journey” is the common perspective or metaphor shared by design and consultancy firms and experiential service providers.

In order to design new services they divide the service into five areas that directly or indirectly contribute to a customer’s experience. These areas are (1) physical environment, (2) service employees, (3) service delivery process, (4) fellow customers and (5) back office support. These areas are outlined shortly.

Chapter 3 “The Process of Innovation” is particularly interesting because methods, tools and other common practices like simulation, prototyping and experimentation are introduced. This chapter gives some good ideas for practitioners where to start to develop new and innovative services.

The report is completed with a summary of some other observations in the case studies, namely business model innovation, the role of competition as a driver of innovation and how experiential service innovations were protected from copying by competitors.

All in all a well-grounded report that provides a good overview over most important areas of experiential service design.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Starting with the positive example of the iPod/iTunes bundle he dives into the challenges of designing end-to-end experiences when one company is not in control of the whole experience. IDEO’s approach to redesigning Amtrak’s Acela Express not just by looking at the train interior but by designing the overall travel experience is mentioned but also the challenges of keeping the experience “alive” are portrayed.

He concludes with:

If absolutely top-shelf design organizations like IDEO and Apple are unable to fully encompass the challenges of everyday life in the real world, how will the rest of us fair? Isn’t it better, then, to open these systems up—to provide the APIs and other hooks that would allow people to configure them to their own liking?

This goes beyond William Gibson’s oft-quoted and unimpeachably correct observation that “the street finds its own uses for things,” toward the recognition that designers cannot, even in principle, encompass at design time the full range of uses to which their work will be put. In some respects, too, this is what human-computer interaction guru Don Norman is alluding to, when he argues that the person formerly known to experience design as the “user,” “customer,” or “consumer”; needs to be understood as a human being before designers can do their work properly. Any other approach, he reasons, risks treating this person as an instrumental component, not as someone capable of fully participatory co-creation.

You can read the full article here.

Why do I blog this? Reading articles like this shows me that I am right on track with my research activities to develop a method to understand and model consumers and to use this information for the development of new services.