It seems every other discussion I enter as of late has something to do with privacy and or the things “they” know about us. Maybe it’s the paranoid circles I travel, or maybe we are seeing the beginning of a significant change in our human paradigm. Digital technology is maturing and enabling us to connect/interact/react in ways we never before imagined. Human nature drives us to interact (you remember that “No man is an island” junk from High School?) and Digital technology is superpowering our ability.
Remember life before Facebook? How many old friends have you lost touch with? How many viable relationships could you maintain before Facebook? How many can you maintain now? (I have 181)
It’s a little overwhelming to think that we are actively crafting a Digital overlay that will enable Digitally enabled beings to interact with other Digitally enabled beings or objects across space (think telekinesis), time (think time-based stitched panoramas made from FLICKR images chronologically navigated), and wordless communication (telepathy?). Imagine being able to see and hear and interact with objects from amazing distances. Imagine wearing a digital outfit. Imagine.
As Augmented Reality, the superimposition of the Datasphere onto reality, becomes more viable we will gain access to vast amounts of real-time data and there are a few issues we need face very soon.
Privacy – The ‘Millenials‘ have already succombed to the collective and have given away the illusion of privacy. Social media products like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have become platforms for their near-narcisistic need to self-proclaim. They communicate outwardly, freely and without fear. The rest of us, especially those who remember the 60’s are going to face challenging times over the next 10 years. Data availability and detail will continue to improve and we will all be faced with a choice: Does data serve or punish me?
What does it mean that marketers know where I live and what products I’m inclined to buy? Is my cellphone constantly broadcasting my location accurate to the meter? Am I being monitored for selfish reasons? Ok, you can sit down and stop shaking…. It’s not as bad as you think. We at Tanagram firmly believe Digital will serve us in powerful and meaningful ways and we spend a great deal of time imagining what those might be.
The truth – You ARE being watched. There, I said it, and nothing exploded. The fact is the Marketing Industry is facing one of the most challenging times since its inception. Gone are the days when they could ‘tell people what to believe.’ Gone are the days where they could produce a single, one-size-fits-all message that compells consumers to purchase products. Digital has made us (consumers) much smarter and because of this, we require much more sophisticated communication and interaction to even begin to consider a product relationship (that’s what it is when you become loyal to a brand). We the consumer have become extremely powerful and marketers are afraid.
So what evil things can they do with their monitoring? Well, that’s where we take an unexpected turn. You see, the only way they can sell is with the truth. They can no longer pay talking heads tell us what to think, lies are posted on Twitter for thousands to view seconds after they are broadcast. The backlash from a malformed or misguiding ad-campaign can cost millions in revenue but even worse it can cast the originator as not reputable and have significant long term effects. Everybody remembers Blackwater, right? Their brand was so destroyed by blunder and lies they had to rename as Xe. So if they can’t lie to us, how can they push their products? They have to connect with us like real people, meaningfully. To do that they grab gobs of data and look for consumers who would actually benefit from and are interested in the products they sell. They then do their best to be helpful and useful so you, the consumer, will learn they are trustworthy and legitimate. They spend fortunes on non-profits and other ‘Cause Marketing’ to be viewed as contributing members of society. Ultimately, they work very hard to maintain a real relationship with you. You see how mild mannered this once arrogant monster has become? Joking aside, they cannot take your free will. You will continue to be a fickle and informed consumer and they cannot afford for you to think that they have any intentions other than serving you the best they can. Also, there is no mind-control chip. They cannot hypnotise you into stupid purchase habits (for me this is a non-issue, I only buy stupidly) and if they could, they wouldn’t because the consumer backlash would destroy them.
So what do we do with these needy, shivering, whelp marketers? We give them our data. Why, because they will serve us better if they know our likes and dislikes. They can’t afford to annoy us anymore and they don’t want to waste money trying to sell to those who are disinclined. Broadcast advertising is going away. Advertising of the future will take place at a personal level in meaningful ways. Here’s an example: Perhaps you are driving home, late from work and you haven’t prepared the family meal. Your local preferred local grocer sends you a text message offering a discount on cooked chicken dinners (or your favorite dish) and saves the day.
That is where we are going, we just have to make the choice.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on August 14, 2009
NOTE: The goal of this post is not to troll and get attention by posting negative comments about media giant AT&T. Instead this post is intended to help all of us better understand what is happening in the world as we embrace micro-transactive interaction.
At the risk of sounding a little “Hippy”, today our thoughts, beliefs, and consciousness are traversing the digisphere in real-time at the speed of light. Because of this we know things much faster (true or not) and are on the way to becoming a digitally connected meta organism. Patchouli aside, the “Twitter Effect” has been linked to very rapid attendance drop-offs of bad movies (including Bruno), leaving the movie executives stunned and broke. No longer does it take a week or two to hear you really shouldn’t see a movie, it happens instantly. Similar effects have been noticed in politics, and stock trading as well. So what do we do?
We learn!
“The Feed” has the power to share knowledge in a more relevant and timely manner than any other medium that exists today. Try searching Twitter for the answer to a problem instead of Google. I was surprised to find my answer in one search after over an hour working the Google query strings. Even better, The Feed offers responses. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, make a post, ask for a Re-Tweet (RT), or use hashtags (#) to get to individuals who are interested in a specific topic. Connected people are an amazing resource.
So that brings us to the purpose of this post. In addition to being a powerful resource for answers, The Feed is an outstanding tool for gathering insight into customer opinion. The successful companies of today realize that building close, meaningful relationships with customers is the only truly defensible business strategy. In other words, Intellectual Property is easy to steal, but you aren’t going to steal my friends unless I upset them and drive them to you. That’s how social media works. It’s close relationships founded on seemingly insignificant communication transactions that are very similar to those you might have with a friend walking in the park.
When it’s time to address the potential issue of your customer’s viewpoints it’s a good idea to take a long look in the mirror and evaluate how you appear to the public. With the newly available RSS query subscriptions offered by Twitter and Google Blog search it’s relatively easy to set up a series of searches that will provide you a view (a mirror) into the shared opinion of your company (or yourself) by the meta-organism/feed.
We’ve created an example here. It’s an iGoogle page that hosts RSS feeds that are designed to eek out positive and negative views expressed about AT&T. (You’ll need an iGoogle account to subscribe to the tab) but we think it’s worth the price of admission. The story is passionate, dramatic, emotional, and bleak.
In addition to the views into The Feed via RSS windows, we’ve provided a number of links to resources including Hashtags.org, MicroPlaza, Twendz, and TWIST. We would like to invite you to develop your own opinions and discuss them here or on Twitter or FaceBook. What do you think AT&T should do? Do you think these people are all crackpots? Do you think blog posts like this will increase negative comments for companies like AT&T?
We look forward to the discussion.
Screen shot of the iGoogle page.
You can get the shared iGoogle tab here
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on July 20, 2009
Deploying a new or revised application can be a scary process. Are you confident your user-centered inquiry captured all of the needs? Are you certain your customers will like the new system better?
Typically, we’ve found the more expert the user—meaning the greater the amount of time they have invested in understanding your application’s complexities—the more likely they will be averse to change.
We’ve developed application UX for military pilots and there are few people who have spent more time learning an application (think thousands and thousands of hours). The good news is there are ways to insure your new release is a success.
Make sure your updates reflect real user improvements
Changing to a different platform is NOT a good reason to ask the customers to use a new application interface. You must learn how and plan to better serve them. Observation is your best tool: watch your customers work and look for opportunities to improve their workload efficiency (we call this workload assist), their decision-making efficiency (we call this cognitive assist), and provide them tools to forecast and measure the impacts of their decisions (we call this real-time performance assessment). Having used the above techniques with our cranky pilot user groups, we saw very positive results.
Enhancing your site is a marketing event. Be prepared to sell it
For your upcoming deployment plan on having a number of communication channels open to educate and engage your customers. Your goal is to solicit feedback, and develop trust. Nike+’s new “beta” site is a perfect example of the power of conversation.
Here is a shot of their existing site (not authenticated):
Notice the strong “hero” content talking about the value propositions of the new beta version. They even provide a link to the new version immediately below. It’s important to convey to your customers what they will be getting in this change and how it will impact them. Nike+ has done an excellent job with this.
Here is a shot of the new Nike+ beta site (also not authenticated):
The new site picks up where the old site left off explaining value and benefit for users. We won’t go into the specific benefits of the new site; suffice it to say they spent the time and learned what the users needed.
Teach the value to authenticated users
Once your customers authenticate into your system, you have enough data to be able to show them how your new system will better serve them. Take this opportunity seriously: Show them.
Here is a screen of the old Nike+ interface (authenticated):
Note the link-callout stating “see your runs in the new Nike+ beta.” This link provides a direct comparison of the dashboard pages and exposes the customer to a real-time comparison of the applications. It is also a “vote” button.
This is a good time to mention one of the strongest tenants in this approach: NEVER TAKE AWAY THE OLD SYSTEM. You have to wait like an observant parent for the child to discard the item before you can make it disappear. This is because the old system is their safety net. The really exciting part of this approach is that we can measure the users who have opted to use the new interface moving forward and those are SOLID conversion rates. If, after you deploy a new app using this technique and you don’t get many people willingly converting to the new application (voting that it’s better for them), call us. You more than likely missed a real need in your redesign or aren’t clearly communicating the improvements to your customers.
Provide feedback mechanism
The following three images really just show various views throughout the site, but notice two elements that remain consistent. The “feedback” tab on the right of every page (the last image shows an expanded view of the features) and the “Beta” flag in the upper right corner. Feedback is extremely powerful. Enable it, respond rapidly to the feedback and build trust that you are serving the customers’ best interest. Also, don’t disqualify this input channel just because it’s qualitative in nature. While accuracy of submissions will vary, bug notifications tend to be pretty accurate (something they can react to) and feature requests tend to be lofty but always worth validation. Our favorite part of this approach is the customers’ ability to send congratulations to those who developed the site. As developers/designers/strategists/etc, we need to realize we are part of the application ecosystem too. Kudos go a long way for both parties in building trust and respect.
Note the “return to classic” link on this page. Always provide an escape hatch for those who aren’t quite ready to convert.
This image illustrates the feedback toolset. It’s a third party app and very well done.
Measure measure measure
You can see at the bottom of each screenshot that my browser is reporting NO CP for all of the pages. This may be because Nike+ is using a beacon free traffic analysis tool, or more likely have forgotten to add analytics to their ecology. It’s important that the systems we design capture as much data about the use of the system (and its data) as it does capturing its core data (the data it was designed to share/collect). What we’re saying is the movement between data points by users is as valuable if not even more than the datapoint itself. These measurements can be formed into insights that can help you build a stronger relationship with your customer. That’s something the competition cannot steal.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on July 8, 2009
GOOD.IS “a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 we’ve been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn. This website is an ongoing exploration of what GOOD is and what it can be.”
While we’ve just met GOOD.IS, we’re big fans. They’ve recently release a series of transparencies from their magazine as a Flickr pool. Some really wonderful stuff.
Thank you Good for the inspiration on so many fronts. We are now members (free for startsies) and look forward to growing our relationship together. Oh.. and we think your site is quite good too!
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on June 4, 2009
A month or so Microsoft introduced their brand-new BizSpark program that is designed to “pay it forward” for startup companies that are looking for that big break to become successful, much like Microsoft got itself.
- Free Software – The list of apps is long and exciting
- Free Support – Help you get your app off the ground
- Free Visibility – Microsoft promotes your startup with their huge network
We’ve seen some interesting cultural shifts (and this) at Microsoft recently and with our many recent partnerships have grown to believe that it can reinvent itself and make the world a better place in doing it.
Tanagram has enjoyed a strong relationship with the startup community and because of this has become a Network Partner for the Microsoft BizSpark program. That means in partnership with Microsoft we can get you and your great idea free all of the free stuff mentioned above for 3 years ($100 at the end). We’ve already got a few clients set up and it’s going quite well.
Thank you Microsoft for investing in great ideas!
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on December 15, 2008
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