Customer Experience

The business value of emotional requirements

  • Monday, 12 June, 2006
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Whilst amazon.co.uk languishes in yesteryear, it’s transatlantic cousin amazon.com has gone all web 2.0. They’ve also introduced some new features, the ability for customers to associate and share their photos with products they have bought. For example for an ipod nano people have uploaded images that graphically illustrate how small the nano really is. Cool stuff. But I have a question. Where is the business value in this feature?

Agile is all about delivering business value. Business value can be crudely decomposed into four reasons why we do things:

  • To reduce cost
  • To increase revenue
  • Because of reguatory or compliance pressures
  • For altruistic reasons (such as giving something back to the community / imrpove emloyee morale etc)

Features that do not address these business objectives (and more often than not just the first two objectives) will be deemed low priority (if ever considered in the first place) and typically fall by the wayside. Which makes me wonder how Amazon get away with it. What is this business case for “Customer Images”? What business metric will they look to that will demonstrate the features success in driving revenue? I’m sure some obscure derrived metric could be arrived at – but I would guess that the key driver for this functionality is an extension of the brand. There is no monetry reason for the feature, it is just a right cultural fit with the overall product. It is about developing an emotional engagement with the customer that is beyond the purely functional (browse – buy).

As agile practitioners we capture stories. During the process we will also capture “non-functional” stories. (some would add “technical” stories to these). I’d argue we need to add a new category of story – the emotional requirement – how do we want our users to feel about our product? Such stories will enable us to build software that goes beyond the strictly functional and begin to engage. They will help us temper the cold business objectives that focus upon getting things done, with the softer intangible / aesthetic quality of the applicaiton that will keep the user coming back again and again. Come to think about it, there’s the business case for “Customer Images”. Building a better relationship with our customers to increase customer purchasing and reduce customer attrition. Now why don’t other businesses think like that.

Is the ThoughtWorks mind the creative mind?

  • Thursday, 8 June, 2006
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The guys over the fence in the media and advertising world are seeing a paradigm shift away from focussing upon the narrow “message” of a campaign to the broader “user experience” that encompasses the whole brand, not just a flashy graphic. This requires the “creative minds” to broaden their horizons. One such creative mind has created a picture that illustrates this.

The creative mind

This is a good way of thinking when attacking an IT problem. Not just focussing upon implementation detail, but the whole user experience. It means broadening the mind beyond the analytical. In addressing IT problems, developing greater “curiousity” and “expressiveness” is not a giant leap. But sesuality? Can developers ever have a sensual mind?

Recent experiences suggest so. Once a Dev has been hypnotised with a bit of web 2.0, emotional design seems to flow through their arteries. They “seek to satisfy all the senses. Aesthetics, beauty and form are driving forces…” That is they get all gradient-fills and curves and funky Ajax gizmos…

Hot air balloon

  • Wednesday, 7 June, 2006
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For a while I’ve been buzzing about Luke Hohmann’s innovation games and am looking forward to his new book coming out. Using games, stories and pictures is a great way to get people engaged in workshops and get to the crux of problems. One problem you often get with people sitting around a table is a small number of vocal people contribute loudly, leaving timid bystanders with good stuff to contribute afraid to get involved. Obviously a good facilitator will look to overcome this, but get people in pairs, give them blank cardboard boxes and coloured pens and ask them to produce the packaging for the product they want to develop and you’ve got a great levelller.

These exercises do take time and can really only be done one at a time. In an attempt to fuse together the “product in a box” identifying customer needs and “speedboat” which identifes the anchors that are holding the project back, I’ve used the analogy of a hot air ballon a couple of times to some success. You draw a huge hot air balloon on the wall with ropes teathering it to the ground. You then get participants to put the features that they’d like to see advertised on the balloon. Participants write these down on post-it notes and they are stuck on the balloon. Clearly if all these features were all written across the balloon they would not all fit if sized so they could be read when the balloon flies in the sky. So just like in Formula One where a logo on side of the car will be larger (and more valuable) than the advertisment on the back of the drivers helmet, you then identify those features that must be visible from the ground (high priority) and those that may only be seen on the ground (low priority). That’s the first part of the exercise. The second part is to get participants (again using the post-it notes) to imagine the ropes are project constraints that will stop the baloon flying. In the space of 40 minutes if all goes well you will have driven out the top-of-mind features the participants want the project to deliver (and priortised them) and identifed the top-of-mind risks and issues that particiapants have. And most importantly you should have everybody engaged; with any luck a bit of laughter will be heard on the way. And that can’t be a bad thing in a corporate meeting room.

Standing room only

  • Friday, 28 April, 2006
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“The airlines have come up with a new answer to an old question: How many passengers can be squeezed into economy class?  A lot more, it turns out, especially if an idea still in the early stage should catch on: standing-room-only “seats.”” [source]

This is depressing.  It is bad enough standing on a train, I hate to imagine the experience of being crammed in a real cattle class flight, standing all the way.

What is missing in this proposition is the question of the customer experience?  Is there a customer appetite for this?  Have the airlines done market research to understand the demand for standing room only flights?  (And not just run a few focus groups but mocked up the experience  and gathering feedback on it).  It is all to easy to drive a business case based upon the extra sales volume that this shoddy experience will be expected to provide, but when it goes to market, will the demand match that predicted in the business case?

Forget accessibility, think inclusivity

  • Wednesday, 19 April, 2006
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A couple of weeks ago I was at the Ergonomics Society Annual Conference where I presented a paper on Agile User Centred development. One of the themes of the conference was inclusive design. I think this is a concept that should gain greater prominence in software / web design.

We talk a lot about “accessibility”, and this to most organisations generally means adhering to W3C guidelines. It is driven from a fear of the Disability Discrimination Act. Yet from a business perspective there is not much of a business case for this stuff. And from a design perspective it can be a pain in the proverbial. -Being told that you can’t do all that 2.0 stuff because it relies on JavaScript (and therefore isn’t DDA compliant) stifles creativity and is guaranteed to annoy fired up developers.-

So here is where inclusive design makes things exciting. Forget about accessibility and think inclusivity and suddenly your perspective changes. You stop thinking solely about “disabled” users and broaden your horizons to a much wider audience of users. From the age of 40 the functional capability of the eye rapidly decreases; 25% of over 55s have reduced overall sensory / motor / cognitive capability which includes a declining memory. (Check out the work of Roger Coleman at The Helen Hamlyn Research Centre for more on this and inclusive design as a whole). Assumptions of what the younger population find easy in usability tests may not be valid for the over 60s.

Include the aging population into your design considerations and suddenly “accessibility” becomes “inclusivity”, a more compelling business case grows and new design decisions can be made. The “silver surfers” are generally considered to be time rich and cash rich. They are a segment unto themselves. So rather than trying to shoehorn “accessibility” into the design with the final design being compromised, isn’t it better to be inclusive and design for the needs of this different segment.

When a supermarket rolls out its in-town “metro” store format, they are not trying to shoehorn the “superstore” format into it. They design according to the needs of the task, customer and environment. Good interaction design considers these three things, but how often to we overlay “constraints” onto this holy trinity? We create personas, but how often to we create a 65 year old persona with myopia and reduced dextrous ability?

Talking of supermarkets, Tesco do inclusivity well with their website. Their retail website may not be DDA compliant, but they have an accessible alternative; a web format for the different segment. They offer a lightweight version of their site that is inclusive. And by the way, it is also muli-device compliant.

So let’s forget about making DDA compliant web sites, let’s forget about accessibility compromising the design. Let us offer compelling alternatives to the commonly excluded population, let us be inclusive rather than trying to satisfying everybody and delighting nobody.

Security nonsense

  • Monday, 10 April, 2006
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Passing through security at Gatwick airport this morning and there’s a sign showing forbidden items.  It includes razor blades.  By the x-ray machine there’s a bucket where people leave behind their forbidden items – there are plenty of safety razors in there.

Past security, airside and there’s a Boots.  And they sell razor blades.  Making a mockery of the security policy.

When customer experience isn’t joined up…

  • Monday, 3 April, 2006
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The customer experience doesn’t end when the product has been sold.  Yeah, so you’ve got a compelling proposition, your web site is beautiful to look at, is easy to use and would have Jacob Nielsen giving you accolades for its usability.  But how does the off-line fulfilment match your on-line capability?  Sadly with Norwich Union the answer is not much.  Water dripping through the ceiling and no obvious source (I pulled up floor boards hunting the leak, but it was spouting out of a joist under a wall…) I called the insurance company.  The call was answered pretty promptly by a friendly chappy (especially given that he was working late on a Sunday night).  He took my details and informed me of a great service whereby a building services company (Mowlam) would be sent an emergency notification and send someone out first thing in the morning.  Rather bizarrely this company would find the source of the leak but it would be down to me to finds a plumber to fix the leak.  (Norwich Union did not seem to think it worthwhile trying to cross sell me a more comprehensive policy that would cover me for them to sort out plumbing problems – I mean if I’ve got a flood, chances are I’d like someone to fix it…)

Monday morning and I ring the building services company to be told that they had no record of my problem- I should ring NU to confirm the issue had been logged.  I rang NU, unfortunately when I left the house this morning I scribbled down the wrong number – I had the customer services number.  Usual wait to be connected and then was transferred to the claims department.  This was in India, the woman I spoke to seemed clueless, knew nothing of my claim and put me on hold for an age. She told me I should be speaking to the new claims department, took my details again (I’d already given them the previous night, to the guy who initially took my call and again when I first started talking to her.  She put me on hold again.  Five minutes later she informed me that a fax was sent to the company the previous night and I should ring them again to confirm this had happened.

I rang Mowlam again and was again told that no emergency had been logged.

Back on the phone to NU.  A bit more savvy I ask to be put through to the new claims department.  I get put through to new motor insurance claims.  I ask to be put through to home insurance, wait a couple of minutes and the line goes dead.

I try again.  Once again I get routed to India, explain my situation and get routed back to the UK where I once again give my details (can’t they follow be round the telephony system?) and am informed that yes, a fax was sent to Mowlam, but maybe they didn’t receive it so she’ll send another fax just to make sure.

An hour later I ring Mowlam to find out when the plumber is coming.  “Sorry Sir” I am told, we have no record of a emergency at your postcode.

Back on the phone to NU.  More time spent getting pushed around departments.  This time the lady I speak to tells me she’ll phone Mowlam and verbally inform them of the job.  She puts me on hold.  And the battery on my phone runs flat.  I immediately find a charger and plug it in.  I wait for the customer service agent to ring me back (she has my number) with the outcome of the call but she never gets back to me.  I assume the call has been made.  Half an hour later I ring Mowlam.  Still no notification.  I’m wasting time here.

Back on the phone to NU.  Finally I’m told that a third fax has been sent to Mowlam.

An hour later another company calls me informing me they are about to send a plumber out.  But I don’t want a plumber.  I want someone to find the rout cause of my problem (because NU don’t fix plumbing problems) and besides, I’ve already contacted my mate who is a plumber who says he will fix the problem once it’s source has been identified.  I get transferred to someone else who tells me that the insurance will cover temporarily fixing the problem.  Which leaves me wondering what the meaning of the word “temporarily” is, a bit of tape around the pipe?

Eventually the plumber comes round and finds the problem (it was a shower pump hidden beneath a staircase).  He fixes it and switches the heating back on, but it’s been a day of distraction and stress that a joined up approach to customer service at NU (and it’s suppliers) could have avoided.

Is good corporate software design too much to ask?

  • Wednesday, 25 January, 2006
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January 25, 2006, 1:45 pm

Someone left a copy of Computing on the train this morning. Thumbing through it there was an interesting comment around how “users” are becoming more demanding in their expectations.

Why should you be able to go home and see your 13 year old son playing with a Sony PSP, with awesome graphics, great design and compelling experience, but when you get to work the brand new Enterprise Application looks like it was designed by amateurs, is difficult to use and is yet another cumbersome product that IT have rolled out with apparently little input from the people who are actually going to use it (“No-one asked my opinion…”.)

Why should you be able to have a google mail account with more than 2 gigabytes of storage space and a whopping 10 meg filesize you can send or recieve. Yet in your corporate mail box everytime you try to send an important and timely mail you get a warning message preventing you from sending it until you free up some space. (And what happens to your level of productivity when that happens? ) And the creative agency who want to send you the new creative treatments can’t email them to you because they are too big. What do you look like?

Users are beginning to expect more. Giving them functionality is no longer enough, you have to ensure the application is engaging and compelling. (Why? Because happy users start to like IT, and a loved IT function will have less difficulty securing budget for the really sexy projects that everyone wants to do).

Carpark experience, learned behaviour betrays innovation

  • Monday, 9 January, 2006
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January 9, 2006, 6:09 pm

I’ve never really considered car parks as places for innovative ideas, yet such innovation exists in the Bentalls car park in Kingston. Every parking bay has a light indicating if it is rmpty or taken. As you drive along the floors you can see the vacant spaces before you get to them courtesy of the green light above the space. in addition, on each floor there is a sign notifying drivers of how many free spaces are available on this floor and the next floors. Excellent stuff!

The immediate question that comes to mind is “what would the business case have been for this?” This innovation can’t have come cheap. I presume there were two overiding factors – firstly to increase the throughput of cars. If drivers can see free spaces they won’t need to sit waiting for the driver of a car in a space to reverse out and eliminate the consequent hold up of traffic. The technology also should provide an improved customer experience – it should make drivers feel better about using this carpark and become repeat users (is there such as thing as carpark loyalty). Problem is, the reality is slightly different to what is intended.

The new technology fails to accomodate existing behaviours. So whilst drivers can see there are spaces available further down the level, when they see reverse lights come on, they still stop and wait for the car to reverse and take that space. There are still hold-ups, still hill starts on the ramps. And we had to wait 20 minutes before we found a space. Bottom line, the technology may be great, but how ingrained are user behaviours that it is designed to replace? Does your business case cover users un-learning those bad habits it is based upon?

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