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By rphillippi, March 8, 2010 8:53 am

Keynote originally presented by Nathan Shedroff at the IxDA conference in Savanna, Georgia in February 2010. It is recaptured here from the San Francisco, IxDA Redux.

Nathan Shedroff argues in his keynote address to the IxDA that we can no longer separate business, design, and sustainability. For companies it’s not just about products anymore.

What, then, is the intent behind consumption? We aren’t going to stop consumption. We can be taught not to be wasteful. New York City requires citizens to recycle or their buildings are fined. This requirement meant I needed to get educated about what should and should not be recycled. I found it unfortunate, when I moved away, that other cities in America are not also teaching this.

Meaning is the deepest connection that can be made between people or people & objects. Meaning is a hulu hoop around us that expands out to values, emotions, price, & features. Most buying decisions are based on emotional engagement.

There are 15 core meanings, such as, accomplishment, enlightenment, redemption, beauty, freedom, security, harmony, creation, duty, justice. We need to reframe “Less is More” to “More for Less” for everyone outside the sustainability & design worlds.

Interaction Designers are the most well posed to make meaning happen as we have models, research methods, comfort with ambiguity, are service orientated, and customer focused. Freedom and security can have different expressions based on prioritization & meaning.

Personally, I question that without some sort of business training, can designers speak the language of business so that they can be heard?

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By rphillippi, October 12, 2008 3:31 pm

I am thinking of writing a paper for the IA Summit around change management, customer service, and user experience, “Rethinking customer service through the eyes of user experience”.  In initial research I am finding I am not the only one that’s starting to think about this.  I found Brandon Schauer of Adaptive Path is also talking about it as well many who spoke at MX 2007.

I first got introduced to the idea when I was working on a project for a large broadband provider in the UK. They wanted to update and make some changes to their broadband CD.  Unlike the US, providers in the UK do not send people out to help you set up your broadband, instead you are sent all the tools and expected to sort it out for yourself.  This CD is very successful amongst it’s users so we needed to be careful about how we changed the process.  The business wanted more people to sign up for an account with the company for various business goals. The current process requires the user to watch all the 3D videos which illustrate the entire process and once they get through it all (including some software installs) they then are told they are connected. Then they can sign up for a company account.

Now I don’t know about you but if I were told I was connected I wouldn’t be bothering with a form.  I’d be off to wander the internet. Thus I suggested that the process be changed so that as someone is installing the software then they are also able to sign up for an account. However, I needed to check with tech and with the company to make sure that the infrastructure was in place to support this. The PM felt this would potentially destroy the user experience but as you can see by Jesse James Garrett’s graph below the continuous experience which allows another process to start as you are waiting for another one to finish is a better and happier user experience:

This allows the user to keep working while waiting for something else to finish.  Also, in this case, it keeps the user there at the computer, as a captive audience. If they really were not interested they could also click the “not interested” button and go get a cup of tea.

This case demonstrates how the system / user experience can affect the view of the brand and the experience a user has with said brand. In this case, users love this CD and really like the products of this company.  If we as the designers of the experience create a negative experience for the user than we can also negatively impact the business.

This is what I have been thinking about lately and the reasons for wanting to write the paper and branding my thinking about this as “Customer Experience”.

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By rphillippi, June 11, 2006 10:54 pm

By Pete Babich
Published: December 1992

The business question is how much satisfaction is good enough? (If you had 3 pizza parlors that all opened within the same neighborhood on the same day, and one had 90% satisfaction, another 95%, and the other 98% satisfaction the others (those under 98%) over time would loose thier customers and eventually be put out of business.)

It’s 5X more costly to recruite a new customer…. customers will buy a substitute product if they are dissatified with your produt… (ie If there was only one airline, Terrible Airlines, then they would choose to take the train or a bus.)

This observation would imply that higher satisfaction levels make a company more resistant to competitive moves.

This model proves (to Pete Babich) that continually improving customer satisfaction over time is the best way to go.

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By rphillippi, June 8, 2006 10:43 am

Chapter 1:
Phase 1 – The Search:
Find companies with the following basic pattern:
15 year cumulative stock returns at or below the general market, punctuated by a transistion point, cumulative returns at least 3x the market over the next 15 years. 15 because it exceeded a CEO tenure and 3x because it exceeded typical standards of “great” companies. Data points to Walgreens beating Intel as a “great” company.

Phase 2 – Compared to What?:
The crucial question being what did the “good to great” companies share in common that distinguishes them from the comparison companies. (ie What would distinguish a gold medal winner from one who had not won gold?) Companies selected fell into “good comparisions” or companies that had the same opportunities in the same industries as the “good to great companies” but had failed to make the leap, unsustained compairions, which are companies who showed for s time great results but had failed to sustain it, and finally those that managed to make the leap thus becoming “good to great”. There were 28 companies in total.

Phase 3 – Inside the Black Box:
Deep analysis of each case consisting of articles dating back more than 50 yrs. Coded all the info to strategy, technology, leadership, etc. Interviewed key execs who had key roles during the time of transistion. While also doing quantitative and qualitative research analysis looking at everything from acquisitions to exec compensation, from business strategy to corporate culture, from layoffs to leadership style, from financial ratios to management turnover. And then debated the meaning of all the data on a week to week schedule. Finding that the dogs that didn’t bark (ie Sherlock Holmes discovered a dog that didn’t bark meant that the intruder must have been someone who was well known by the dog.) was the key to what made a company great:
- Celebrity CEO’s actually have an adverse effect on the company as opposed to the believed reverse.
- The data doesn’t support executive compensation as a key driver to results.
- Strategy didn’t make a difference in the data either.
- Companies looked at over all strategy not one key concept of good to do.
- Technology can accelerate change but cannot cause transformation. (ie It’s a tool.)
- Mergers and Aquitions play no role in the good to great transformation.
- Good to great companies paid little attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment. Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away.
- They were not aware at the time of the transformation that they were getting the results only in retrospect could they see it.
- In the end, greatness was not a function of cirsumstance. Rather, greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of concious choice.

Phase 4 – Chaos to Concept:
It’s an iterative process of looping back and forth, developing ideas, and testing them against data, revisiting the ideas, buiilding a framework, seeing it break under the weight of evidence, and rebuilding it yet again. The process was repeated over and over again until everything hung together in a coherant framework of concepts. (similar to the design process) Set against a rigorous constraint the following framework was developed:
Level 5 Leadership:
Personal humility and professional will is at the core of the level 5 leader. Thus they are more like Socrates and Lincoln than Patton or Ceasar.
First Who… Then What:
The right people are the key to driving the vision. Get the right people on the bus then set the direction.
Confront Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith):
Must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end no matter the difficulties and at the same time have the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reatlity.
The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity in 3 Circles):
A simple concept that reflects deep understanding of 3 intersecting circles (more to come).
A Culture of Discipline:
Disciplined people means you don’t need hierarchy. Disciplined thought, means you don’t need beauracracy. Disciplined action, means you don’t need excessive controls. Thus when you combine this culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.
Technology Accelerators:
Pioneers in the application of technology…
Flywheel and Doom Loop:
No single concept made the change rather the procss resembled relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond.
From Good to Great to Built to Last:
Good to Great concepts to Sustained Great Results to Built to Last Concepts to Enduring Great Company

Timelessness of Good to Great:
(What can be learned from “Good to Great” and Six Sigma that can be applied to design to create a seamless process where business needs are met and value is added back to the consumer? How can this be applied to business systems, consulting, interactive systems, etc? The design process as well as the other two have very similar concepts where is the weaknesses? And how can they benefit each other? Emphasis on timeless nature.)

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By rphillippi, October 20, 2005 1:21 pm

Many outfits have the wrong priorities when innovating. The right focus — and the key to sales — is products that create meaning for buyers

We all hear that successful innovation depends on creating value for customers. Repeatedly, we see that the key to creating value lies in designing meaningful experiences. But what does this jargon really mean? And more important, how does it impact us as innovators in business?

Companies innovate for two basic reasons. For those with established products or services, innovation is the Darwinian response to competition. We devote resources to improving and evolving our products because we have to so as to sustain and grow our core business. For new companies or initiatives, innovation is about creating entirely new ways of addressing human needs and inventing “what’s next.” Often this means generating new business models.

LIP SERVICE. While these two types of innovation might require different approaches, the point of all innovation remains the same: To create value for customers. Continue reading “Understanding Why People Buy” »