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Posts on innovation, user experience, research and design

Innovation and Imaginary Tigers

Like many people around the world, reading Calvin and Hobbes was always the highlight of the Sunday morning paper. The weekly strips were good, but those sprawling comic masterpieces on Sunday were worth every penny of the newspaper by themselves. The strip's creator, Bill Watterson, has always been known for being a legendary recluse so when he stopped writing the strip in 1995 (final comic shown above), Calvin and Hobbes went off the grid. Completely. This was a sad day for me. While the final comic itself was a fittingly poignant end to a wonderful work of art, it didn't dull the harsh reality that Calvin and Hobbes was over. Sort of like watching Jordan's last championship as a Chicago Bull, it was the end of an era. You just couldn't savor enough of the experience. What was I supposed to read next Sunday?

Now, 15 years after the last strip ran, Watterson has emerged for a brief interview with the local press. While the interview is short, there is a great passage in there that speaks to creativity and passion, which is applicable to all innovators and creatives:
I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can't explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don't think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.
There's a lot to glean in that one little passage. Honesty, understanding your audience, meticulous craftsmanship, experimentation. All of these things coalesce in the portfolio of any great brand, artist or innovator. And he's right, even if you have a great product and understand your market better than anyone, sometimes you still need a little luck to go your way. Lucky for us, all the stars aligned for Calvin and Hobbes.
Bonus: There's more in the interview about going out on top of one's game (easier said than done) and life continuing on for all the days after you've had your all-time best seller (reminds me of a fantastic recent TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert). Worth a read.

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Filed under  //   Calvin and Hobbes   creativity   innovation  
Posted February 1, 2010
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Google Adds Wayfinding Inukshuk Everywhere

 

I just continue to be impressed with the development and innovation coming out of Google. Using a combination of crowdsourced content contributed via Google Map Maker, and some good old fashioned data power, Google has been able to transform Indian road-based directions to landmark-based. While the whole post on Google's Blog is worth a read, here are the two juicy research nuggets:

We found that using landmarks in directions helps for two simple reasons: they are easier to see than street signs and they are easier to remember than street names. Spotting a pink building on a corner or remembering to turn after a gas station is much easier than trying to recall an unfamiliar street name. Sometimes there are simply too many signs to look at, and the street sign drowns in the visual noise. A good landmark always stands out.

We also discovered that there are three situations in which people resort to landmarks. The first is when people need to orient themselves — for instance, they just exited a subway station and are not sure which way to go. Google Maps would say: "Head southeast for 0.2 miles." A person would say: "Start walking away from the McDonald's." The second situation is when people use a landmark to describe a turn: "Turn right after the Starbucks." The third use, however, is the most interesting. We discovered that often people simply want to confirm that they are still on the right track and haven't missed their turn.

Why this is great? The obvious reason is that this form of getting and giving directions is instinctual. When I read Google's post I was immediately reminded of some complementary wayfinding insights from Jared Spool of UIE from a few years back. When describing wayfinding on websites he brought up the concept of inukshuk.

Per Wikipedia:
Inukshuk vary in shape and size, with deep roots in the Inuit culture. The word inuksuk means "something which acts for or performs the function of a person." The inuksuk may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for hunting grounds, or as a food cache. Historically the most common type of inuksuit is a single stone positioned in an upright manner.
The concept of using landmarks, in the Inuit's case man-made towers of rocks, (which makes sense considering not much stands out in an icy plain in the dead of winter) goes way back. We all seem to have this directional system baked in. Humanity, via Google, has simply reached the point where we are now able to turn everyday landmarks into inukshuks on a grand scale. That little fruitstand on the side of 104th Street? It's an inukshuk now. So is the fountain across the street. 

Tagging is the new inukshuk building. Google Maps is simply enabling the ability to see these inukshuks in context. Whereas the Inuit assigned meaning to towers of stones that was only understood by the tacit knowledge of their culture, Google is enabling anyone to assign meaning to anything in such a way that everyone can interpret that meaning in any number of different contexts. Google is helping us read and interpret ambient meaning, in real time, as we go about our day. 

It's just in time wayfinding.

But this is just the start. A quick look at the other tools in Google's arsenal and you can begin to see a more complete picture of what we may be hearing in the not too distant future on our turn-by-turn directions read aloud. Say you're an amateur astronomer, what if Google allows you to sign up for an Google Sky-enabled feed that you can import into your turn-by-turn directions. All of a sudden the crowdsourced inukshuks are there, but so are spatial inukshuks. Your drive to the movie theater just got a lot more interesting:

"You're approaching a Taco Bell. Turn right onto Highway 12 after the Taco Bell. You'll stay on this street for 3 miles. As you finish your turn, you'll see the Atlanta skyline directly ahead of you. Just above the Bank of America Plaza, you'll see the moon rising. It's the first full moon of the year. While you can't see it because of the ambient light, just to the right of the moon, Mars, Jupiter and Venus are aligned with Earth. This is the last time these planets will be aligned with Earth for 14 years..."

History buffs could import historical overlays. "The Walmart you are about to pass by was the site of the first skirmish in the Civil War in Georgia..."

The possibilities are endless.

Understanding where you are, what you're seeing via tagged landmarks opens up a tremendous opportunity to enrich the world around us as we're experiencing it. It's just a fascinating time to be seeing technology being molded to serve humans in richer and more familiar ways than ever before.

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Filed under  //   Google   GPS   innovation   inukshuk   wayfinding  
Posted January 21, 2010
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Apple Sets the Bar for Ford

Core77 had a short but interesting interview with Moray Callum, Ford's executive director of design. An interesting tidbit:

Core77: Stefan Lamm [executive designer, Ford Focus exterior] mentioned earlier today that things like the iPod and iPhone have changed how Ford approaches vehicles, because consumers are now used to these highly designed, really refined products. Do you find that to be the case?

MC: Absolutely, it's the point of entry for us now. Consumers are much more aware of fit and finish, quality.
I've had many conversations with business partners and web service providers concerning customer expectations in which I've mentioned that the bar isn't set at what's expected for industry X, the bar is set by Google and Amazon and eBay - the companies that have defined what the web is supposed to behave like. It's interesting here to see the same disruptive power, this time from Apple, extending far beyond competitors in the iPod's adjacent fields (consumer electronics). 

Great design not only has the ability to disrupt the industry it applies to, but also any number of other seemingly unrelated industries and interfaces. Ten years ago, who would have ever thought that an MP3 player would be a driving factor for design decisions made about Ford's flagship electric vehicle.

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Filed under  //   Apple   design   ergonomics   Ford   human factors   innovation   interface   ui  
Posted January 12, 2010
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The Death of "Late Night"

Hutch Carpenter, VP for Insights as Spigit, dug up this gem from Rashmi Sinha, CEO of SlideShare. In Rashmi's post "Is it time to reimagine your product/service?" she notes:

The problem with being the vintage of your launch year is that the domain gets reimagined. You get left behind even if you are doing everything right. This is the classic problem that so many companies face – they are innovative when they launch. They continue on the path they launch with, which they get traction with initially. At a certain point, they are executing so well, that they get left behind. Their success contains the seeds of their becoming obsolete

This is a great insight I've seen on display in many products throughout my career. Products, that once addressed a glaring value denial gradually fell out of touch with the direction their market was moving. By the time they realized the ground had moved beneath them, it was often too late. With this in mind, I found Jimmy Fallon's comments to NY Mag about the brouhaha surrounding the late night lineup at NBC to be particularly insightful:
The late-shifting at NBC may send Jay Leno back to 11:35 and push Conan to midnight (or another network) but at least Jimmy Fallon isn't [upset] about doing his show a half hour later. "I'll do my show at 3 in the morning," Fallon told New York Times reporter Bill Carter during a talk at the Times' Arts & Leisure Weekend last night. "I'm just happy I have a job." Fallon pointed out that his younger, DVR-loving audience doesn't watch him play beer pong with Betty White in real time anyway. "Time doesn't really matter to me," he said. "We're in a different age. Time is like... I don't even know what time 'Jersey Shore' is on. It doesn't matter - I'll see it." 

I love that comment about Jersey Shore, btw. In any case, as this drama unfolds, NBC, Conan and Jay are the incumbents with years of labor and accomplishments on the line. Fallon's a startup playing with house money. He's like a kid with a dream job he fully expects to lose at any moment but is thrilled to have it while it lasts. He's the guy who has nothing to lose. I love that mentality.

More importantly, he represents a younger generation and carries with him a different perspective on media consumption that is native to that generation. Not that Conan and Jay aren't acutely aware of DVR's impact on their viewership, but they and NBC and their affiliates remain fixated on a time-based structure that is in the process of being disrupted. From a near-term business standpoint, it makes perfect sense and I would be loathe to suggest a different tactic to preseve their revenue stream. 

However, this is exactly the point that Rashmi is making: it's hard to innovate when you have such a reason for stasis baked into your business model. NBC's concerns feel more like "but that's the way it works best". What they aren't paying enough attention to is the fact that the need to conform to some artificial time structure is disappearing. Already, "prime time" and "late night" are radically decoupled from their monikers. With Hulu, DVR, and any number of other technologies, "late night" is whenever consumers want it to be. Hence Fallon's point. The key to their success is content.If the content isn't good, it won't be on consumers' screens . . . at any time of the day. And that's where NBC should be focusing its time and efforts. Content. 

Maybe Jay's show isn't all that great and maybe it is killing the affiliate lead-in. But affiliates need to consider that in a few years the concept of a "lead-in" will be utterly archaic. When consumers everywhere are making their own TV playlist, there won't ever be a lead-in. Ever. If you don't have compelling content, you won't be seen by anyone. Affiliates take careful note of this point. Jay's weak show isn't the cause of your struggles. It's a canary in the mine.

Updated (1/12/2009)
 After posting this, the NY Times had a great writeup on the topic. Some remarks that speak to the Rashmi's point and my additional commentary (juicy stuff in bold):
Not since New Coke has a storied brand been so thoroughly maimed. “The Tonight Show,” once a gilded entertainment franchise, is now just one more broken toy in the mistake pile. “You have the combination of expired content, in terms of current public taste, appearing at the wrong time on a medium that has lost its salience, by whatever standards you use,” said Paul Levinson, professor of communication at Fordham University.

The message to the younger talent is one thing — wait for a turn that may never come or may be taken back at any second — but the message to younger audiences is even clearer: a legacy industry will default to legacy assets and ride them down to the bitter end.The network model explains why Ted Koppel is favored over younger talent to serve as interlocutor on “This Week” and why, when networks make what they see as a risky move — hey, let’s put a woman in the anchor chair — it will be someone like Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer, both of whom have been on television for decades.

That's it exactly.

 

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Filed under  //   Conan O'Brian   DVR   Hulu   innovation   Jay Leno   Jimmy Fallon   Late Night   media   NBC   strategy  
Posted January 11, 2010
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Nokia's Coke-Powered Phone

No comment on the feasibility of this (sticky keys? residue?), but I love this idea. Of course Coke isn't the only thing it would run on, but I think there's something to marketing it as the Coke phone, particularly in emerging markets. Why? Coke is everywhere. Almost literally. 

It makes an Atlantan proud that our home company is the most recognized brand in the world and is available in some of the most remote locations in the world. Given its relative ubquity, why not harness it as a fuel? Because it's also the world's #1 brand, what a great way to generate some buzz. Even if you live in impoverished Afghanistan, you still have access to Coke, which if you're using this phone, means you still have access to your phone (and therefore other people). Given Nokia's research into emerging markets (I'm sure Jan Chipchase sees Coke everywhere he goes) this Coke fuel cell mashup isn't entirely surprising though it is thought-provoking.  

Turn one of the world's most commercially available and recognized products into an ad-hoc fuel for your device. I love it. See the full post here at Dezeen.

             
Click here to download:
Nokias_Coke-Powered_Phone_tag_.zip (292 KB)

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Filed under  //   developing   eco   emerging   green   innovation  
Posted January 8, 2010
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Innovation and Business Success

A colleague of mine posited a question to my team this morning after reading a provocative blog post from CFO Magazine entitled "Do Banks Care About Innovation". Here's an excerpt:
"..In a survey on innovation from Accenture that polled vice presidents, directors, and managers at 640 large U.S. and U.K. companies, responses from executives at banks and capital-market firms stood out. More than two-thirds of those execs said their organizations prioritize short-term financial results over investing for the long term. Very few saw innovation playing an important role in efforts to increase operational efficiencies and reduce costs. And more so than executives in any other industry, they characterized their quest for innovation as searching for the next "silver bullet" rather than "a diverse pursuit of new opportunities."

Based on the demographic from the survey, the question should really be refined to: "Do Big Banks Care About Innovation?" But even that's misleading. There's a nuance in here that deals with misconceptions about innovation. Innovation does not necessarily mean "invention" but it sounds as though some of the execs interviewed were thinking about silver bullet/breakthrough innovations. But being innovative is more like the Tour de France. Many people who win the early stages (the actual inventors) are not the ones who develop winning business models around those inventions. As Jim Collins notes in "The Most Creative Product Ever", being inventive or first to market often doesn't necessarily mean all that much. You can be innovative but be very, very late to the game. See MP3 Players/Apple/iPod for a great recent example. Here's how Jim puts it.  

Great companies do not necessarily have innovation as a central part of their vision or strategy. They are just as likely to be followers as they are to be leaders with pioneering products and leading-edge services. IBM, for example, grew from a one-building small business into one of the largest corporations in the world because of its professional sales force, not its product innovation. In fact, when IBM fully launched into computers, in the early 1960s, it already lagged far behind rival companies, such as Burroughs, in innovative computer technology. And it was Diner’s Club, not American Express, that invented the modern credit card. American Express didn’t introduce its card until eight years after the debut of Diner’s Club—hardly leading-edge behavior. Nordstrom, Wal-Mart, McKinsey, Marriott—none of those companies attained success primarily through innovation.

Certainly, some great companies—notably Sony, Johnson & Johnson, W.L. Gore, and 3M—have innovation as a core value or an integral part of their strategy. So, you can be innovative and great. But the fact remains: you do not need to have innovative products, services or technologies, or visionary market ideas, to create a great company.

Jim's article was written in 1997, before the Internet arguably became one of the most compelling and powerful technological AND social innovation in a very long time (Guttenberg’s press maybe is on par). However, his point was clear - innovation isn’t critical to a company being “great”. So this brings me back to Vincent's question: "Do big banks care about innovation?"

Why pick on banks? Why not any company? The question is probably best positioned as "Should anyone care about innovation?" and do some degree the answer is both yes and no. You certainly can't be a luddite and excel in today's world. But putting too much emphasis on forcing breakthrough inventions is also not likely to be a winning strategy for most companies. 

When all is said and done, people don't remember that Edison didn't invent the first lightbulb (22 others came before him), Apple didn't invent the MP3 player (countless others came before them), or Ford the first car (Karl Benz had the patents nearly 30 years before the Model T), we just remember who did these things better than anyone who came before them and generated lasting success.

Breakthrough innovation is great and important, but a company's ability to "innovate" processes and business models that allow them to out-execute their peers/competitors is every bit as important to a company's success.

PS - If you read the Collins article, try not to smile too much over Jim's pseudo-eulogy for Apple. What a difference 12 years can make. Apple has gone from a coulda-been-a-contend/also-ran to the poster child for innovation. In Jim’s defense, the way Apple has roared back to life is by being VERY late to the game in a lot of core areas but very acutely attuned to the social aspects of the technology they developed. Apple came back to life through the very social innovation Jim holds up as critical to greatness.

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Filed under  //   Apple   innovation   Jim Collins   strategy  
Posted December 18, 2009
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Square's Innovation and Ergonomics

I wanted to capture a few more thoughts from Square's demo at Le Web a few days ago (embedded below). While the demo itself was a veritable disaster for Jack Dorsey, there's a lot of interesting information you can glean from it. If you're following along at home, the demo starts at about the 7:30 mark in the video below. First the good stuff . . .
  • Square is listening to the card swipe - I'm not a hardware geek so the fact that Square was designed to plug into the headphone jack of a smartphone just seemed like a very commonsense thing to do. In fact, I wondered why it hadn't been done before. It's just another input device, right? Well, yes, but it is still designed to be an audio input device. What I guess I didn't realize until this video is that Square didn't hack this input for card data, rather their device is actually "listening" to the translated card swipe. As Dorey says of the self-powered swiper: "It's powered by the magnetic resistance of the swipe itself. It translates the swipe into to an audio signal and the phone picks it up and software interprets it." This may be pretty commonplace for the more technical among us, but for a simple mind like mine, this is very impressive; illustrating a powerful blend of innovation and strategic cross-platform design.
  • "No receipt" is an option - I didn't catch this the first time I wrote about Square's interaction, so I wanted to make sure I set the record straight. I had previously expressed concern with requiring a user to enter their email address for a receipt and stated that No Receipt should be an option for the sake of efficiency and stage frightened users. Not surprisingly "No receipt" is already an option. Another counterbalance to my concern about the retail line-killing capabilities of inputing an email address is that the device remembers emails. Still a pain for the first time you have to enter your email address, but a nice remedy for repeat business. 
  • Quickbooks, inventory management and other open API ecosystem opportunities - While open APIs are sort of the standard protocol for new web services, what I really liked about Jack's comments is the thought that's already going into the API ecosystem (Quickbooks integration and inventory management systems are explicitly mentioned). When I first wrote about Square, I was most interested in the ability of Square to provide an out-of-the box loyalty program for business owners. The more I think about this the more it becomes clear that loyalty programs are just one layer of the power this system can provide small business owners. The open API will really enable this system to thrive.
  • Contract- and merchant account-Free - Riffing off Hutch Carpenter and TechCrunch, I think this business model innovation could literally be a game changer for merchant services providers. While Square is very new, it would seem wise not to discredit their opportunity. The parallel between the bone-rattling fear emanating from the mobile and telecommunications industry at the existence of a Google Phone (which could pave the way for free, ad-subsidized phones calling and no contracts - i.e. no need for AT&T, Verizon or anyone else) is stunning. Sure, Square has an nascent technology compared to the full installed base of Verifone et al, but for the right price (free card reader + no contract, etc), merchants could flock en masse to Square. This has tremendous, tremendous potential.
  • "Friction points" - This isn't really an observation of the UX, but just a term I noticed in Jack's presentation. I love how he refers to difficulties in card acceptance flow as "friction points". I'm probably drawn to the phrase because I mentally refer to breaks in user experience as "sand in the gears". If you've got friction or sand in the wheels, processes run less smoothly and eventually the process breaks from user fatigue/wear and tear. It's death by a thousand cuts (or long, irritating abrasion). It's also a reminder of how attuned Jack and his team are to user experience, making me believe that the concerns that follow have all been considered and are either in their implementation plans or have been otherwise dismissed as unimportant. Nevertheless . . . 
So I've covered a lot of Square's awesomeness above. But one thing that's still bugging me: swiping the card. This demo is a great example of how this device could be annoying to use, which may cripple long-term adoption. While the cool factor and the business model are compelling reasons for merchants to switch initially, the device can't be annoying or they won't stay. In the video, the device fails for about 4 minutes. I lost count of how many swipes it took and I'm not sure what caused the malfunction here but you have to assume that this isn't the first time this has happened. This is a brand new device. What happens in a year of steady use? This is as good as this experience will ever be. In any case, if you watch the demo, you see a couple of things happening. 1) The swipe looks a little awkward 2) the Square moves in the jack a little after the swipe.

So let's take these in order: 
  • The swipe looks awkward - I really can't put my finger on it, but it just looks odd to me. Maybe it's the square-ness or smallness of the device.Maybe it's the card and the device moving independently of one another, sort of like how you would try to spin a penny or a sharpen a knife. I don't know. All I can say is that it reminds me of the time my leaf blower broke. I used to start my leaf blower by holding it in one hand and pulling the starter cord with the other, i.e. both hands moving in opposite directions. It normally took about five cranks to get it to start. One day, the starter coil inside the blower broke. When I took it in to get it repaired the technician told me what the problem was. He said "How do you start it" I said that I started it as described above. He responded: "You shouldn't do that. You should always have it on the ground - put your foot on it to hold it down, then pull the cord." While holding it in one hand and pulling with the other seemed to give me more pull speed (two forces moving in opposite directions) the deal is that your energy is not as focused if you don't have the blower grounded/stable. When I took my repaired blower home, I tried it again using the mechanic's advice - it started with two pulls every time and has ever since. The grounding helped. My gut tells me this has a lot to do with the issues Jack had during his demo. Sure it had never happened before, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Square wouldn't benefit from some grounding. Keep the device stable - make the card swipe the only moving action. Along those lines . . .
  • The Square moves - In all of the failed attempts to swipe the card, the Square moved around several times. Getting to the design of the Square, it would seem like it might be more grounded if it clipped onto the iPhone somehow to prevent that from happening. With it swiveling around like that it sort of seems flimsy or unstable. Now of course providing a clipping mechanism might make it un-usable on all smartphones. So I know the device has to be somewhat agnostic here, but I still think it needs some grounding.
Docking station remedy
Add these two together + the possible perils of handing an iPod back and forth in a busy retail checkout environment + the challenge of signing a small screen while holding the smartphone along with other goods you just purchased and I'm convinced that a docking station is absolutely critical to widespread adoption of Square. All you need is a simple device that seats the smartphone, secures the Square (providing it the grounding needed to make the swipes more consistent), and is angled so that consumers can easily sign with their finger. Put a swivel on the base so merchants can turn it around after entering a transaction amount etc and you've solved all of these problems. No dropped phones, a secured swiping Square, a hard surface to sign your name against and type your email address against. Win.

In any case, given all of the fantastic attributes of Square, the grounding issue isn't a deal breaker, but it would seem to greatly improve the experience and ergonomics of the system. I'm not sure this is something that Square would provide as part of their core business but accessories like the docking station would seem like a great way to diversify their transaction-fee based revenue stream and improve the overall experience of their platform.

Video of Jack's Demo at Le Web:

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Filed under  //   card   ergonomics   human factors   innovation   merchant   retail   Square   ui   ux  
Posted December 15, 2009
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Coke Freestyle: Great Innovation, Broken Experience

There's a Willy's Mexicana Grill close to where I live here in Atlanta that was, to my knowledge, the first restaurant to pilot the Coke Freestyle. It's been in that store for several months now but I only recently went in to try it out. Like most folks, I first read about the Freestyle in a BusinessWeek article on the topic. It's a pretty amazing device that tells a fantastic story about innovation:

  • 30 patents for Coke all bound up into an aesthetically pleasing design 
  • Wireless data transmission of usage trends
  • Cartridges for easier shipping
  • Dean Kamen, who worked on the project, is repurposing the technology for water purification in developing countries
So on the surface, this is nothing short of a huge win for Coke and Kamen. That is, of course until you try to use the Freestyle during rush hour at your local Willy's. Some background and then some observations: 

Setting the scene: I went into Willy's for lunch but also to try out the Freestyle. I got my food, checked out, took my tray to my table and then went to get my drink. In front of me was a business man. In front of him was a 7 year old. In a normal situation, this means I'm about 22 seconds or less away from enjoying a frosty Coke. If you don't know much about the machine, it basically lets you order up anything from Coke's menu. And that menu is pretty deep. So now, some observations:
 
Observation #1 - Novices and Kids are Absurdly Slow
So  this 7 year old is looking at *all* of her options. She's going through all the screens. And I do mean all of them. This is taking some time. She goes into the Sprite category then backs out, looks at the Fruitopia catalog (yes they still make that), backs back out, takes a gander at the Coke options, then backs out, then over to the Powerade selections. I think she's probably seen over 40 selections. And contrary to a recent report, this is not entertaining. This is frustrating. Meanwhile the line is now stacking up and it's been at least a minute. I'm being patient. The guy in front of me . . . he's getting antsy. After a few more exploratory screens, the girl chooses a Fruitopia option. I'm excited because I know she's about to wrap up so I'm getting closer to my Coke. She fills up her glass, sips it - pauses, and then dumps the whole glass out. Now kids are prone to do this with any drink. That's just their way. I did it when I was a kid. I don't blame her. The problem here is that it took this kid a LONG time to go through this experiment. In fast food, playful experimentation like this is not your friend. So she goes back to searching screens. At this point, the line is 5 people long now and it's interfering with the checkout process. The guy in front of me loses it and tells the girl she needs to move it along. And she does.

Observation #2 - Even Pros Are Slow
I'm now about two minutes into my wait but the businessman in front of me steps up and I know I'm close now because we've got an expert stepping up to the plate. He won't be surfing options. He's probably a Coke/Diet Coke guy. Sure enough, he knows what he wants. Diet Coke. But you know watching him go through the screens it seems painfully slow. Again, this is not entertaining - particularly for a UI guy like me. I just keep thinking of how unnecessarily long this process is. I just keep thinking that with the old dispensers, getting a Diet Coke is an 8 second affair. Ice. Diet Coke. Done. Even if you top it off a little. This guy is getting his Diet Coke now, but it's probably taken him twice as long. 

Observation #3 - Stage Fright
But he finished and I finally make it up there and all of a sudden I've got stage fright. I know I just want a Coke, but the line is ridiculous now. I go through the interface but it takes me a second or two to figure it out as well. Again, this should be an 8 second transaction and it's taking me at least twice that long. Plus the experience is cruddy because I'm feeling pressured because I know everyone in the long line behind me is ready to get their drinks too. It's not an enjoyable experience at all. I want to explore the options but I just can't. There's not enough time. On top of all that, I now people are watching me order because they are mentally practicing their routines so they can avoid being a bottleneck when they get there. The worst part. After I finished my Coke (maybe 3 minutes later - I love Coke and drink it quickly) I get up to get a refill and the line is still long. So I have to wait in line for about 2 more minutes, when I know from many years of experience it would have been half that long with the old fountains.

Some of my buddies who have been to this Willy's confirmed all three of my observations. To quote my friend Brian, whose response was completely unsolicited (we were just talking about lunch at Willys - not the machine in particular): "Yea, lunch was good, but I gotta tell you - that new drink machine is a total bottleneck at lunch." 

Something is broken about this experience. How might it be fixed?  A couple of thoughts come to mind:
  • Add more dispensers. The problem with this is real estate. This machine is slightly more compact than the old fountains, but you'd probably need to triple up at least. Unfortunately, tripling the footprint would be much worse for restaurateur, both cost-wise and space-wise. For a business with heavy foot traffic, you need a better solution than "more machines".
  • Provide fewer choices. You could write up an entire post on this (I may). As Barry Schwartz covers in the Paradox of Choice, people have a real problem making decisions when they are confronted with a lot of choices. Add in an interface that encourages exploration and that becomes much more noticeable. Reducing the choices speeds decision-making and makes consumers feel more satisfied with their decisions. Given that this machine is designed to increase options, I doubt this enhancement will be considered.
  • Address your long neck better. So the Freestyle is all about providing access to Coke's long-tail products, but Gerry McGovern tells us we can't focus on the long-tail at the expense of the long neck. This is nowhere more evident than in a time-intensive setting like fast food. So improving the selection and pouring of Coke's long-neck products is probably the route I would go in the near term. In a nutshell, the Freestyle should be speed tested against the old fountain machines. It should be just as easy and fast to order Coke's most popular 5 drinks on the Freestyle as it is on the old machines. These 5  should be extremely easy to order. Maybe these five and the ice button aren't on the touchscreen at all. Don't make pouring a Coke a custom request.
Sure this post sounds ranty, but anyone who knows me knows that there are few things in life that I like more than Coke. I'm just a huge fan. So I'm predisposed to like this innovation. I want it to work. I want it to be a great experience and I think it's close, I'm just not sure it's there yet. Hopefully the beta testing will give Coke some guidance on improving the design of the experience.

I'm curious though. Has your experience been better? How else could it be improved?

   
Click here to download:
Coke_Freestyle_Great_Innovatio.zip (20 KB)

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Filed under  //   coke   fast food   freestyle   innovation   usability   user experience  
Posted December 6, 2009
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Data-Driven Innovation - Google DNS

I came across a rare blog post yesterday evening. It's rare because it stitches together data from a couple of places to help solve a conundrum. In this case, it also illustrated some fantastic vignettes on usability testing, data-driven strategy and innovation. What was the conundrum? Yesterday, Google launched its DNS service but it hasn't been exactly clear why. Google's official response effectively states that "It's good if the Internet is fast because people can be more productive." Sounds altruistic, just like another recent comment from Google about not stealing all of the talent in the world, but Jason Kottke (@kottke) has a different thought on why Google would be interested in accelerating page load speed.

From his post:

Google VP Marissa Mayer told the audience at the Web 2.0 conference that slowing a user's search experience down even a fraction of a second results in fewer searches and less customer satisfaction. Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it? After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds. Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.

Some lessons here:

  • Users say one thing and mean another so you have to understand latent/unspoken needs
  • Data is required to make strategic changes
  • Usability testing is fundamental to product success
  • Google's pretty smart (and so is Amazon, which is mentioned in the post as well)

There's a lot to like in such a short post. Full text can be found here.

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Filed under  //   datamining   Google   innovation   strategy   usability  
Posted December 4, 2009
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