In the run-up to the event, Randy J. Hunt did a short interview Allan Chochinov of Core77 about the event’s aims, and how designers employ wit, irony—even subversion—in the service of making a connection with their audience.

The biggest issue, in my mind, is that humor is so culture specific and culturally bound. Americans, Italians and Brits have a very different sense of humor, and there are many variations within these countries as well. So it is an extremely complex issue and not at all easy to standardise and implement in design.

Read interview

Abstract

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell–or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering’s (and a company’s) authenticity as much as–if not more than–price, quality, and availability.

In “Authenticity,” James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that to trounce rivals companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, nonprofit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers’ perception of authenticity by:

• recognizing how businesses “fake it”;
• appealing to the five different genres of authenticity;
• charting how to be “true to self” and what you say you are; and
• crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity.

The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers’ intensifying demand for the real deal.

Review in Publishers weekly (copied from here)

This eye-opening but muddled volume tells companies to “remain true to self” or, at least, to appear genuine, arguing that “in a world increasingly filled with deliberately and sensationally staged experiences… consumers choose to buy or not buy based on how real they perceive an offering to be.” Everything that forms a company’s identity—from its name and practices to its product details—affects consumers’ perceptions of its authenticity. Juggling philosophical concepts, in-depth case studies and ad slogans, Gilmore and Pine (The Experience Economy) run into trouble with a chapter called “Fake, Fake, It’s All Fake,” which eviscerates the entire idea of authenticity: “Despite claims of ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ in product packaging, nothing from businesses is really authentic. Everything is artificial, manmade, fake.” The argument is unexpected and perhaps brilliant—yet rather confusing, since most of Authenticity argues that businesses should strive to not only appear authentic but to be so. The book’s bullet points, charts and matrices add to the tangle, as the authors’ early advice (“your business offerings must get real”) becomes a demand for furrowed-brow soul-searching. Still, the prose is snappy and conversational, and the book is densely packed with insights and provocations, and may inspire some executives to consider how consumers see their company. (Nov.)

- Publisher’s page | Amazon page

- Download table of contents and first chapter (pdf, 170 kb, 12 pages)

The 4-minute film illustrates the unique ways that large Danish companies like Bang & Olufsen, Hummel, Novo Nordisk, Jyske Bank and LEGO apply design as a strategic instrument in their activities. The companies view design as a key competitive factor and have made it an essential part of their business strategy. They know that design is the element that makes the difference between a standard product and a competitive product.

View film

The report, called BCN_LDN 2020, explores how London and Barcelona can reflect on their past decades of urban policy-making and the challenges ahead.

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years London and Barcelona have epitomised the story of the ‘resurgent city’. They now face a set of challenges without easy answers – such as on public behaviour and public space, on migration and identity, on governance and collective imagination. The collection BCN_LDN 2020 brings together a range of provocative essays exploring current policy discourses and alternative stories.

The collaboration between Demos and Fundació Ramon Trias started with a Work Party in the Summer of 2006, which explored how London and Barcelona can reflect on their past decades of urban policy-making and the challenges ahead.

The publication, which acknowledges the achievements of recent policy-making, but provides a critical reflection on the success stories that we hear from both cities, includes essays by Antoni Vives (Fundació Ramon Trias Fargas), Dr Fran Tonkiss (London School of Economics), Indy Johar (Zero Zero Architects), Anwar Akhtar (Cultural Industries Development Agency), Chris Murray (Core Cities Group), and Lise Autogena (independent artist / NESTA fellow).

Download publication (pdf, 1.7 mb, 102 pages)

The presentation is all about Nokia’s human approach to technology: i.e. observing first (“the often small, the sometimes big moments of everyday”) and designing later, and turning that int a brand philosophy.

Keith Pardy is strategic vice president of Nokia Strategic Marketing, whereas Alastair Curtis is Nokia’s chief designer.

(via Logic & Emotion)

Juliana Xavier provides some more background on her blog “mind the gap”.

Timo Veikkola is an anthropologist; he studies people into culture. As many anthropologists these days he holds a strategic position inside a global corporation. As senior future specialist at Nokia Design, he looks at society to comprehend how there are going to be shifts in behaviour and culture that can inspire their design team. [...]

According to him, trends are the manifestation of values and attitudes, of people’s behaviour and reaction to what is happening in the world. Therefore, innovation, be it a product innovation or a different way to communicate it, has to be based on a good observation and informed intuition of what is going on in the present.

Read full report

Excerpted from the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies:

Jyske Bank recently fundamentally changed its business concept, so the customer can put together his own banking solution. The bank has focused on the product experience, both “virtually” and in the branch. The bank calls the initiative “Jyske Difference” ["Jyske Forskelle"] and their slogan is “Jyske is the bank that makes a difference.”

In the short process (four months) during which the new business concept has been developed and partially implemented, the bank has been especially inspired by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies‘ thoughts on Creative Man and the individualization megatrend. As they write to FO/futureorientation:

“Many consumers see banks and bank products as uniform – and a little boring. At the same time, we see that customers are changing behavior. They want more influence; they are more self-reliant while demanding personal service. The creative consumer, who wishes to create his or her own solution, is the coming thing. Consumers want to tailor their own charter vacations, car, and bank product. With the new initiative, the bank can better meet the modern consumer types of the present. With Jyske Difference, Jyske Bank signals that we are more than a bank. Jyske Bank is a bank, a store, and a modern library. Jyske Bank is the place where customers become smarter, inspired, and experience a straightforward atmosphere.”

See also this concept presentation video (2:49).

At the end of August Frank Pedersen, communication- and marketing director at Jyske Bank, will explain what they did and what the result was one year after, at Motion, the brand new experience economy conference in Norway.

The campaign reflects the airline’s refreshed focus to completely change the customer travel experience, both on the ground and in the air through unique, stylish and entertaining enhancements. [...]

“Delta is doing what no other airline has had the guts to do,” said Lenny Stern, founding partner of Delta’s advertising agency SS+K. “It’s acknowledging the 800-pound gorilla in the room for travelers – that the travel experience can sometimes be frustrating and annoying. Through creative messaging, it’s clearly stating that change is the only acceptable option to respond to customer needs. By being honest about what is at stake, customers can believe Delta is also being honest about how they are changing with a keen focus on making make every moment of the travel experience better.”

Delta’s new web site will ultimately enable travelers to participate in a dialogue about their travels, share ideas, travel tips and provide feedback, in order to help with Delta’s ongoing commitment to change.

Read full press release

This was the key message of Iain Roberts, co-leader of IDEO’s Consumer Experience Design Practice, speaking about “Persuading through Great Industrial Design” to students from marketing, communications, engineering and design as part of the 2006-2007 Yaffe Center for Persuasive Communication speaker series at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

IDEO is a global industrial design firm whose clients include AT&T, Eli Lilly, Intel, Kraft Foods, Motorola and Proctor & Gamble.

“Roberts identified three key elements of industrial design: Aesthetics (how the product looks), ergonomics (how it works) and manufacturing (how it is made). Mass production is what characterizes industrial design.

Aesthetics, ergonomics and manufacturing are combined with the human factors of empathy, experiences and connections, he said. The designer must consider the consumer’s needs (both expressed and unexpressed), desires and self-image.”

- Read full story
- Watch video of presentation – Alternate stream (iTunes)

“Taking pretext from content published online by the UK Design Council, Peter Merholz, one of user-experience most authoritative professionals takes a clarification stand on the key differences between branding and experience design.

Though difficult to grasp at first, experience design is more about the kind of experience users actually have than about controlling the experience you try to give them.”

Read full post

“While the four-semester course, beginning at the institute’s Bangalore campus, is yet to be framed the institute has already conducted an entrance test for the same.”

“The course focuses on retail environment and trends in design of retail spaces including props merchandising and visual merchandising, but a curriculum is yet to be framed. For this specialised course, the institute has consulted various industries and foreign universities. “We are constantly in touch with institutes abroad and are taking their help to understand the trends in retail experiences. With retail being the most common experience, design experience is first tested in retail. Therefore this course will be one of its kind,’’ said Darlie Koshy, director, NID. The institute is also working hard to create a faculty pool to teach close to 15 students in the first batch beginning mid-June.”

“The likes of Grottini Shopsystems, an Italian agency that works towards creating retail brand experiences and developing retail environment, have been approached for framing curriculum. “We are also in touch with the Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada and a few other concerned institutes,’’ Koshy informed.”

Read full story

(thanks, Bob Jacobson)

“The name is not so innovative, mimicking a well known italian soccer related TV program, but the approach is indeed quite new: presenting the ideas, the actual phases of design, drafts, materials, reflections and several considerations about the challenges involved in a 6 week process (for a car this is an extremely fast cycle).”

“Comments are moderated but visitors can still make their points to get answers (and Fiat employees are effectively giving answers) and the blog is well integrated with videos on YouTube and photos from Flickr.”

“The idea is to show the real people that are often hidden behind a product, their faces and their work. Not only strategic analysts or branding managers but also men that assemble the pieces a car is made of.”

Read full story

The site gives much insight on the design process including sections on the design of the screen, durability, icons, battery life, audio and disassembly. It also features short audio profiles of the project designers.

The Motofone experience site doesn’t say much however about the user interface and people’s interaction with it, traditionally a weak spot in the Motorola experience, nor does it reveal much about how they actually involved mobile phone users in the process. Instead, it puts the emphasis on form factors and mainly positions the phone as a well-crafted object.

Launch Motofone experience website

“Development took place on proprietary software and hardware platforms.”

“With the codesign model, design control must be shared with other organizations, e.g., operator design teams that are more likely to be in marketing groups or third-party application developers. These teams may be as well or better skilled to produce user interface designs but will have different design and commercial objectives.”

“The collaboration of operator, manufacturer, and software developer is the first step in the evolution of codesign. A new and more interesting development (from the point of view of experience-focused rather than technology-focused design) is the entrance of MVNOs [mobile virtual network operators] and consumer brands into the design arena.”

Based on a case study on a codesign project in China involving the operator Anycom, Williams provides a series of guidelines and outlines what he thinks is the future of codesign.

Read full story

Members are British fashion designer Sara Berman, Dr. Peggy J. Fritzsche, a radiology professor in California, Gary Chang, a leading architect in China and MIT’s John Maeda.

“On a practical level, the board is helping Philips rethink what its customers want. For two years, members met for several days every month or two in cities such as Rome, Paris, or New York. Today they no longer meet as a group, but each is on call to help Philips create intuitive, easy-to-use products that meet specific needs.”

Read full story

“Cities have long competed over job growth, struggling to revive their downtowns and improve their image. But the latest population trends have forced them to fight for college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds, a demographic group increasingly viewed as the key to an economic future.”

“Mobile but not flighty, fresh but technologically savvy, ‘the young and restless’, as demographers call them, are at their most desirable age, particularly because their chances of relocating drop precipitously when they turn 35. Cities that do not attract them now will be hurting in a decade.”

“The problem for cities, says Richard Florida, a public policy professor at George Mason University who has written about what he calls ‘the creative class’, is that those cities that already have a significant share of the young and restless are in the best position to attract more.”

Read full story

The e-mail newsletters are without formatting (and therefore impossible to read), the only link in the e-mail body is the unsubscribe link (which I of course innocently clicked hoping that it would take me to a richer version of the newsletter and therefore immediately unsubscribing me), the content is only available in PDF (without graphics or images of course), and when you go on the website you cannot find any of the articles in the newsletters unless you first know the category, topics (not sure what is the difference) or date of submission (who cares?).

In short, the user experience is horrible. Why on earth are people putting up with this? I just don’t understand. Arts managers, wake up!

YET, the newsletter is rich in information about relevant issues. So to make it a bit easier for you, I am attaching the latest newsletter as a download (pdf, 393 kb, 18 pages), a service which is not even available on the Arts Management website (sic).

Because the content deserves it.

Here is a pick from the current issue:

• An interview with Sowon Koo, strategic design division marketer of Designhouse in Korea who talks about “Papertainer”, a trendy exhibition built with
  353 paper tubes and 166 containers, to commemorate the museum’s 30th anniversary.
• An article by two University of Washington Ph.D students who describe two related digital media annotation systems (VideoTraces and ArtTraces) that allow museum visitors to record “traces” of their experiences. Traces are composed of digital visual recordings of the exhibits made or selected by the visitors that are then layered with verbal and gestural annotations.
• A position paper by Max Ross arguing that ‘new museology’ is about the movement towards a more visitor-centred ethos, with museum professionals changing roles from ‘legistators’ to ‘interpreters’ of cultural meaning.
• Dr. Margot Wallace underlines the importance of museum branding, as applied to new museum buildings and museums’ actual survival.
• A UK government paper considers the value of museums. It “recognised and celebrates the importance and achievements of museums in the 21st century while identifying some of the challenges that face them.”

Just dont’ ask me for links to the individual stories.

Mike Spang has the long job title: “Business Research Director, Document Imaging, Corporate Business Research, Eastman Kodak Company”. He spoke about how Kodak went about creating a satisfying global corporate web experience.

To put it in somewhat of a context, about five years ago Kodak had to rapidly reinvent itself as a digital camera company, and so the website had to also change from a portal for photography to a portal for digital imaging, with 80 percent of the web visitors being regular consumers.

The website also had to provide people with an experience beyond just camera purchasing. As one can read in an article in Business Week that was just published, CEO Antonio M. Perez “aims to make Kodak do for photos what Apple does for music: help people to organise and manage their personal libraries of images. He’s developing a slew of new digital photo services for consumers that he expects to yield higher returns.”

Spang described how Kodak through a clever use of user-centred design and a wide range of usability methods, was able to reinvent its web site, make it truly global and incorporate input from users worldwide.

The techniques used included open ended site surveys, heuristic evaluation, focus groups, cognitive walkthroughs, card sorting, usability testing (in lab, remote, web-based), visitor satisfaction assessments, multivariate design testing, and web traffic analysis.

Since there are more than 50 different national versions of the site, the research took place in the UK, Germany, France, China, South Korea and the United States.

Download presentation (pdf, 2.8 mb, 44 slides)

Emmi Kuussikko, Sulake Corporation

Emmi Kuussikko is a research manager with particular responsibilities for market and user insight at the Sulake Corporation, an interactive entertainment company based in Finland. Sulake is responsible for Habbo Hotel.

Habbo is one of the largest teen online communities in 29 different countries. It is a virtual world for young people, a massively multiplayer online game where teenagers create their own personalised virtual characters and interact with other characters in the community. It has 7 million unique users monthly, mainly in the 13 to 16 year old age range, and over 60 million characters have been created globally.

Since it is the community that creates a truly unique gaming environment and a great deal of the changing content is created by the users themselves, they strongly feel they own the brand and the Sulake Corporation just manages it with them.

Research in this online environment is of course also done online. The user base is very loyal and they are very eager to participate in surveys. So actual data collection is very fast. A survey can collect over 40,000 answers in just a few days.

Here are some of the results from a recent survey done globally.

Most teens spend more time on the internet (>90%) than TV (~60 %). Mobile usage is mainly used for text messages, followed by camera use and game playing. One third listen to music on the mobile phone, especially in the UK and Italy. Teens mostly use the web to stay in contact with their friends: IM and email. Then come games. The research provides also a more detailed insight into youth characteristics regarding life style and values:

• No 1 value: having warm social relationships with friends and family; no 2 value was having fun, and no 3 was security
• Many are rather conservative in their values
• Fame, wealth and influence are important to about half
• They generally have a very positive self-image
• They endorse a socially responsible world-view
• Even thought most claim to be tolerant, many have negative attitudes toward minorities. But they would like to have friends from other countries.

Kuusikko’s presentation started to become really interesting when she presented user segments, and the spread of these segments by country.

The user segmentation was based on a cluster-factor analysis. Trying to create maximum divergence between groups and minimum within, provided an accurate and reliable method for identifying groups with similar characteristics. The variables examined were personality, values, attitudes, subculture membership, areas of interest.

Five user types were found: achievers, traditionals, creatives, rebels and loners.

Sulake also uses a more selective community of 200 users to generate, co-create and test new ideas in a continuous and open dialogue.

I hope to be able to add a download to Kuusikko’s presentation shortly.

Mehmood Khan, Unilever

Mehmood Khan is the eccentric thinker who is the Global Leader of Innovation Process Development at Unilever.

Unilever‘s mission is to “add vitality to life”. It manages 400 brands spanning 14 categories of home, personal care and foods products “that help people look good, feel good and get more out of life”.

Khan has been with Unilever since 1982 and has worked in wide areas of the business: marketing, exports, procurement, business development and innovation. He has been pioneering new business for Unilever in places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and North Korea, along with developing new portfolios in China and other countries in East Asia.

In his presentation, entitled “A holistic approach to innovation”, Khan described the key features of Unilever innovation.

According to Khan, innovation is about turning creativity in a successful enterprise. At Unilever innovation is customer-focused which allows the company to keep its brands connected to people’s lives. The innovation learnings and in particular the customer focus have also shaped the vitality brand strategy.

Download presentation (pdf, 136 kb, 17 slides)

“At the futuristic 1,750-square-meter store, the largest Adidas store in the world, shoppers can browse the latest trends (Stella McCartney-designed skiwear and faux fur vests from rapper Missy Elliot) while immersing themselves in interactive technologies.”

“The focal point of the innovation center is a large, sleek black cube. Customers simply point at images on the cube and laser and infrared technologies interpret their gestures, converting them to commands. Radio frequency identification (RFID)-activated monitors give detailed information on Adidas product at the pointing of a finger.”

“Heinrich Paravicini, the director of Mutabor, the German communication design agency that contributed to the design of the cube, says that technology alone won’t draw in shoppers. It’s all about the interactive experience. ‘When people are shopping they don’t want to learn,’ he says. ‘They want to be entertained.’”

Read full story

It contains a long feature story about Philips Research’s new light-emitting ‘Lumalive’ fabrics, with some nicely illustrated examples of how they could be meaningfully applied in daily life conditions.

The magazine also includes an interview with Kenneth Morse of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Center on how an entrepreneurial and sales culture can coax research and technologies to the global market place, as well as a background piece on some of the internal challenges of implementing a full end-user commitment within Philips, in order to be able to deliver on its Sense & Simplicity brand promise and to develop this into exciting Next Simplicity events.

Download Password (pdf, 1.9 mb, pages)