Wrist Watches – the last of the single function devices

24 06 2009

I was at a lecture recently by Sir Ken Robinson. If you have read my posts before you will know I am a fan but I’d like to make it clear I stop short of stalking him. I did get to meet him this time and he is as enthusiastic and personable one on one as he comes across when speaking and he didn’t put a restraining order on me to boot!

Sir Ken was promoting his new book “The Element” which builds on some of the themes in his last book “Out of our minds” – a review of which you can read in the “what I am reading” section of my blog. (I’ll post a review of The Element when I have read it). During the talk we were asked to put up our hands if we were over 25 and to keep them up if we were wearing a wrist watch. A lot of hands went up and nearly all of them remained up. Next the under 25’s were asked to the same question and although there were fewer of them most of the hands went down when they were asked if they were wearing a watch.

The under 25’s don’t wear watches because they use their mobile phones or other similar digital devices to provide them with accurate information about time. And these devices provide a multitude of other functions that their watch doesn’t. Why carry a compact digital camera and a phone with a decent digital camera built in? You wouldn’t and the same argument, for the young at least, applies to watches.

I have three children under the age of 11 and all of them have been given wrist watches over the years as birthday and Christmas presents but they never wear them. Time at that age, is not important and Mum provides all the scheduling they need. Although I agree with Harwood E. Woodpecker in his blog post “The Wrist Watch and the Digital Age” where he talks about parents using watches and in particular he says Casio Digital watches, to make “our children slaves to time”.

However I think his argument is outdated in device terms. Parents that want to know where their kids are and make sure they come home on time will give them mobile phones and although we are resisting, it is not uncommon at my daughters school for girls as young as nine to carry a mobile phone. There is a dual benefit to this situation. Kids get a device that is cool (like the Casio digital wrist watch once was) and parents make them become slaves not only to time but also to being always available.

The ideas intrigued me and I began to wonder what this could mean for watch manufacturers? As a jewellery item or a statement about our status I should think the watch will have a long life but this is quite a niche market. In 70 years the last of the  mainstream watch wearers will be all but gone and how many people in their autumn years get a new watch other than as a retirement gift?

However if we think about the evolution of the watch it moved from pocket to wrist in the 1920’s and this was for reasons of fashion where women were concerned and the practical demands of war for men. If practical needs drove the humble watch from pocket to wrist could they do the same for the mobile phone? With this in mind I searched for “wrist watch of the future” to learn what developments were taking place.

First item I came across was for the Windows watch of the future which comes complete with Windows CE 5.0, 1.45-inch screen, GPRS, network camera and/or 1.3-megapixel digital camera, Wi-Fi connection, Bluetooth, up to 1 gigabyte of T-flash memory and it also supports Skype, MSN and other applications. And just in case this is actually a joke I also found that HP have a bunch of designers that have actually brainstormed ideas for the watch of the future.

So it looks like the watch may not yet be dead although with the limitations of screen size it will be interesting to see whether what really develops is more an evolution of wearable technology. Thoughts anyone?


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Categories : Customer Experience, Economics, Mobile, Social Networking, User Experience

Mobile internet about to explode!

8 06 2009

Pornography has been behind the rise in adoption of many media forms and is widely attributed with the growth of the Internet. So now, with the launch of iPorn (http://tube.iporn.com/static/iphone/) an iPhone porn site we will probably see an explosion (if I can still use that term) of mobile internet users.

So 2009 will finally be the year of mobile internet and we can all stop predicting each year that it will be this year. What a relief, finally we can get on with some real work. Now where is my iphone….


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Categories : Mobile, Multi channel, New websites, Web

System generated username suggestion

20 03 2009

I love this. We are working with a financial services business (we work with many) and during the registration process you have to select a username. If you choose one that someone else already has the system offers an alternative. Here is what this system suggested:

Not so easy to memorise

Not so easy to memorise

The different name was input buy my colleague.

I thought this type of thing became extinct in 2002!

To me the problem goes beyond the initial feeling fo despair that any customer going through the registration process would feel at this point. What if an absent minded customer actually selects this user name? The support costs for the constant reminders and the damage to brand will go on and on. There can be no winners in this scenario and it is just lazy development.


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Categories : Usability, User Experience

Customer Experience in retail

19 03 2009

This is brilliant! http://producten.hema.nl/ The website is from a Dutch retailer called HEMA. Their first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam and now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands . The link is to HEMA’s product page and although you can’t order anything and it’s in Dutch if you wait a couple of seconds things start to happen.


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Categories : Brands, Customer Experience, User Experience, Web, Websites I admire

Management Today “dis” Customer Experience

18 03 2009

Management Today’s March 09 issue covers Customer Experience in their Master Class column. This is a regular feature that reviews the latest terminology and trends and at the bottom of the piece a ‘Fad Quotient’ is offered. I was disappointed to see that Customer Experience received a 7 out of 10 and so I decided to write to the editor to explain where I think they are misjudging the area.

Customer Experience Master Class

Your customer experience master class was accurate and informative right up to the final section on the direction it is going where I think you missed the point.

Whether consumers or customers are hard up or affluent is irrelevant. They will be interacting with organisations and brands and judging them either consciously or subconsciously based on the quality of those interactions and that in turn will impact their likelihood to recommend or return. Just because an organisation doesn’t embrace customer experience it doesn’t mean their customers won’t have an experience. This is the fundamental difference with CRM.

Customer experience strategy is not only about differentiation it is about consistency with brand perceptions. So taking your example of Travelodge – it is quite acceptable to be an economy brand provided the experience meets or exceeds those expectations. Ryan-air personify this with an awful experience but one that nobody is surprised about.

The reason the Internet accelerated the adoption of customer experience thinking is that to do it well you have to think holistically. Most organisations treated their web presence as a separate business and the level of autonomy that created meant that for the first time someone could genuinely impact most if not all of the contact points in the customer interactions. That knowledge is helping drive the benefits in to other, older channels.

The term ‘Customer Experience’ may warrant a 7/10 for FAD effect, but what it relates to clearly cannot.


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Bob Cialdini and the science of Persuasion

5 03 2009

Last night, 4th March 2009, I was fortunate enough to be invited by the Chatered Institute of Management to attend an “Influence Masterclass” being given by Bob Cialdini at the Royal Society of Physicians and sponsored by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES). To explain why the UKCES had decided to invest tax payers money on a subject with such tenuous connections to its goals, Chris Humphries the current CEO took the podium.

Chris Humphries’ presentation focused on how far the UK is likely to fall behind the rest of the OECD (organisation of economic co-operation and development) over the next 10 or so years in areas such as employment and productivity. He showed how the UK was becoming a nation of haves and have nots with the South East for example having high employment and productivity but the North of England possessing neither. The audience was too polite to point out we were performaning better than his homeland of Australia!

The answer is to train our people more often and more effectively and his hope was that if people with training needs for themselves or their teams could learn how to influence and persuade budget holders better we would be more likely to achieve those goals. A worthy goal but for anyone who had read either one of Cialdini’s books on the subject of persuasion they would have already known there would be little to go on.

Once you get over the fixed facial expression and nasal American accent, Cialdini delivers a good presentation. Whilst there was little different from the research described in his books, he brought the examples to life and his stories and anecdotes meant I left able to share some of the learning with colleagues quite easily.

Cialdini focused the presentation on three of his six principles of “Ethical Influence”. The six are:

  1. Reciprocity – if you do something for someone they will do something for you; but you have to offer up first.
  2. Scarcity – something increases in value if it is shown to be scarce or rare
  3. Authority – people are convinced more easily by people they see as authority figures.
  4. Consistency – if someone publicly commits to something they are more likely to stick with that idea
  5. Consensus – People are more likely to be influenced by similar actions of a group of their peers
  6. Liking – no surprise here, but people are more easily influenced by people they like

We heard a little about each area and in depth about scarcity, authority and consensus. The area of authority was really interesting and the use of the word “but” was revealed as crucial for establishing trust. Cialdini explained that most people in a pitch when trying to get their point of view across, front end the benefits and then, to establish that they are honest, throw in a couple of limitations at the end. For example I might say that Foviance is a world leader in usability and customer experience consulting ‘but’ we don’t do graphic design.

Cialdini argues that people will only hear and retain the information after the ‘but’ and that all we have to do is switch the order  of what we say to be more compelling. So, what I should say is “Foviance doesn’t do graphic design, ‘but’ we are world leaders in usability and customer experience consulting. In order to be an authority that you are likely to believe when I say this, I can improve my chances by having a colleague introduce me and say a little about my credentials. What Cialdini is quick to observe is that his techniques only work where there are genuine arguments and honest benefits, ‘but’ you can’t have everything can you.


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Categories : Customer Experience, Economics, Economy, User Experience

Measurement: everyone’s talking about it

25 02 2009

In the past few weeks there have been numerous items in the on and off-line press about measurement. It seems that when the going gets tough the tough really do start measuring and for so called “New Media” it has never been tougher in its life time. Expect therefore to see a lot more on the subject in coming months as the recession worsens and ahead of that I thought it might be useful to look at one area that commentators are finding most interesting.

Social Media measurement has received some significant attention and in particular recently because of the elevation of Twitter as the new application of the hour. Before Twitter became mainstream organisations were already looking at how social media could be measured and just this week Matthew Yeomans of Custom Communications was interviewed by Econsultancy on the topic.

On measurement, Yeomans identifies three areas that combine to provide ROI data about social media effectiveness in a campaign context. These are: Reach, captured from how many people are talking about a brand post campaign; Sentiment, from people during the campaign; and Competitor Analysis to identify how the brand compared to peers. It would seem that sentiment presents the most measurement issues when talking with clients.

That measuring sentiment creates the most debate is not a huge surprise.  Methods range from software solutions that track words such as ‘like’ and ‘hate’, alongside mentions of brands, to detailed manual evaluation of comments made by identified influencers. The differences between qualitative versus quantitative methods and hybrid solutions leave marketeers no clearer about what is the right approach. Even within the social media industry there is widespread concern that when talking about social media measurment, too many people are talking different languages and that no concrete answers exist – yet.

Adding to the conversation and to the education is some research carried out late last year by Marketing Sherpa. The US study looked at social media measurement, what worked and where problems existed. It concluded that too many Marketers were hung up on quantitative measures when in fact qualitative measures added the most value. The survey found that the easiest things to measure (advertising for example) were the least effective and the hardest things to measure (user reviews & ratings and relationships with bloggers) were the most effective.

Working in a research organisation such as Foviance, it is easy to understand why qualitative measurement is so important. 60% of the work we do is qualitative but a great deal of that  qualitative work is supported by quantitative findings from parallel research in complimentary areas (i.e. using web analytic traffic data to enrich findings from lab observation studies). In our view both are needed to provide a complete picture but there are cost benefit arguments with every research project.

One thing is certain; that there is a lot more to learn and marketeers are going to have to work through the noise to develop a clear understanding of how measurement should work for them. Establishing a measurement framework and strategy is work that can and should be done before even getting involved with evaluating solutions and should start far higher than at just the social media level. Providing your organisation with a measurement strategy is the gift that keeps on giving as it makes sure any decision making is firmly grounded in the business.

Returning toTwitter offers a good example of where a strategy should be established as measuring the effectiveness of Twitter is extremely challenging. Trawling through pages of “Tweets” to establish which referred to your campaign or website is not only time consuming but also very difficult to get right. Twitter’s use of Tiny URL means that you cannot quickly see your campaign url and have to actually clicking through to see which one works. Knowing what to look for first can only help.

Today, organisations are trying Twitter out and the investment can be written off as innovation. Fairly soon someone senior is going to ask about ROI and when they do expect a range of measurement solutions to hit that market very soon afterwards. By which time of course, Twitter will have been superceded by the next big thing. Do try and keep up!


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Categories : Customer Experience, Economics, Multi channel, Social Networking, User Experience, web analytics

Google Latitude

4 02 2009

There are quite a few blog posts popping up on Google’s Latitude service (http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html) and so I thought I would comment on the user experience aspects.

First thing to say is it isn’t exactly new. There is precious little difference with existing services such as Brightkite or Loopt. It is only that Google is the enemy of the hour which has made everyone go crazy about it. As a result it, like the others, doesn’t work unless your browser is open. For many people that is not very often at all and so this is not an application that is going to change the world overnight. It’s time may come, but not until mobile devices use the browser to access more services as a matter of course.

The blog hype has all been about big brother and stalking, which is a little wide of the mark. Google is so paranoid about its public image they have even supplied a video to show how the privacy settings work. In essence you chose who can see your location on a person by person basis and when a contact requests your location information you can accept or deny each individual request.

The main advantage Google has over its rivals is the integration of other Google services like Gmail that allow you not only to see where contacts are but also communicate with them. A concern is the impact this will have on battery life.

Of all I have read my favourite comment about Latitude was from a momoLondon member. He was concerned about how he was going to explain to his girlfriend that he didn’t want her to know where he was. Not a problem that can be solved with technology but as it happened he then revealed that he didn’t actually have a girlfriend anyway. I wonder why!


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Categories : Mobile, Multi channel, Social Networking, User Experience

Nine inches but not quite performing for me

9 01 2009

I am now the proud owner of a Dell mini. I have been hankering after one of these beauties for some time and when Dell announced they were launching their own I waited eagerly to get my hands on one. I have been using it for about three months now having bought it in October (brilliant purchase experience see my post on the Foviance website)  and so here are my initial impressions.

You complete me mini-me

You complete me mini-me

In a previous blog post on mini-laptops (31st August) I suggested they would change the world but now I am not so sure. At least they won’t change it yet, nor for the reasons I initially thought. They may however for different reasons.

I wanted to buy the Dell mini with the Ubuntu operating system that Dell offer which is Open Source Software (OSS). One of my original thoughts was that due to the price point of the overall package and the anticipated use of the device people would be prepared to try an OSS operating system and this in turn would alter their purchase behaviour when buying their “main” PC/Laptop. However, the purchase options pushed me toward the XP machine because it had more solid state storage (16Gb vs. 8Gb) and minimal price differentiation (£30 difference) and so I ended up with the XP.

What I have discovered after three or so months of using a mini is that my ideal or dream of what mobile working would be like is far from the reality. The device in itself is very good – if a little slow at times. I loaded Skype on to it and initially when the configuration had it launching at start-up I could literally go away and make a decent lunch (and probably eat some of it) before it was ready to be used. First lesson: load as little software on to it as you can get away with it is not designed for that.

The mini is designed for accessing the Internet. In the US, Dell promote a relationship with Box.net, an online storage company, and bundle 2Gb of internet storage with the mini through a special deal. And Internet connectivity is where my problems start.

I can’t fault the mini as in itself it is fast, has good graphics, acceptable keyboard size (it’s small but so is the laptop) lots of USB ports, an integrated SD card slot (I have an 8GB card on mine bought from Amazon for £9.99 and interchange them for music and movies) and high quality web-cam. The problem is what is between my mini and the Internet.

I commute in to London every day and so anticipated using the mini on the train to blog and work online. I have a Vodafone USB Internet dongle to make the connection and here is a bit of ethnographic research for you about my trip home trying to get online.

  • Get on to train at 19.13 ready for the departure time of 19.18
  • Power-up laptop (which I keep on standby and it take a few seconds only to come to life) and plug in USB dongle (to be clear I have already installed it)
  • Train is now on the move
  • 19.20: see connection box appear and press connect
  • 19.22: connection is made so launch browser
  • 19.24: browser home page appears so select WordPress to access my blog
  • 19.25: start writing.
  • 19.26: connection is lost, WordPress tries to autosave and hangs
  • 19.28: I can start writing again but continue to get connection problems throughout the journey and give up after managing just 150 words

My dream of connectivity is ruined. I naively believed that using the Internet effectively on the train would be possible and it simply isn’t. I add to my dissapointment using Skype on the wireless network in my office for a call with the US. We had to resort to the landline, partly driven by the unexpected launch of video that brought everything to a halt. I hadn’t expected the video to launch – having a built in web-cam means this is possible but the internet speed meant it was in fact impossible.

None of this is a huge surprise, the UK’s Internet speed has been the butt of jokes the world over and late last year Ofcom, an independent organisation which regulates the UK’s broadcasting, telecommunications and wireless communications sectors, carried out research to identify the actual vs. advertised broadband speed. The results, covered by independent broadband analyst “thinkbroadband.com” illustrate that UK broadband users are not even getting the speeds they are paying for; the average UK consumer broadband speed is 3.6Mbps. I raise the issue because it is hard to separate the connectivity performance of a device designed with connectivity in mind, from the device itself.

If I had written a review of my mini after just a few weeks of ownership I would have likened it to a glorified iPaq – great for movies, music and a bit of work stuff around the edges.This would have been entirely unfair but is an important area for device manufacturers to be aware of. I observed identical behaviour to my own in China recently where Foviance conducted research into mobile phone usage. Users complained bitterly about their devices when what they were actually unhappy about was the connectivity. If users cannot separate one from the other – and in the future that will be increasingly difficult, device and software manufacturers need to consider how they sign-post performance lags to consumers.

Now I have learned to work around the frailties of the Internet connection I am much happier. I have installed OpenOffice, which means I can work offline and then copy work up when I have a better connection. Openoffice is surprisingly good. It looks and acts like MSOffice and my positive experience of using it has resulted in me loading it on to other PC’s around the home – most notably my kids laptop. I would seriously consider using it at work; unthinkable only months ago.

So perhaps my mini laptop will change the world a bit by driving the adoption of OSS applications at the desktop level. In some ways I hope it doesn’t and that my dream of connecting “any time, any place, any where” is delivered within my commuting lifetime.


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Categories : Brands, Customer Experience, Mobile, Social Networking, User Experience

Coremetrics redundancy news

8 01 2009

Word on the street is that Coremetrics has made a bunch or people redundant. Redundancies include sales, sales management and senior management. The reasons given relate to the Board’s desire to stop the company burning the cash (it raised $60m last year) and achieve run rate profitability.

As a web analytics software provider that relies heavily on the retail sector this is perhaps no big surprise. They have been trying to break in to other sectors but success has been limited. Enterprise software sales is a long game and the recession could not have come at a worse time for them I would think. Combine that with Omniture’s move in to the retail space and they could be facing more tough times ahead.

Talking recently to colleagues in the US they don’t seem to have the impact from the recession that the UK has but they are waiting and watching. This is certainly reflected in Coremetrics press release yesterday that the market is unpredictable. They had huge growth in Europe last year and a couple of non-retail wins including BBC Worldwide and Alliance & Leicester. Not sure it will be enough. I feel some M&A activity is ahead!


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Categories : Economy, web analytics

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