Whatever you’re looking for on the Internet—entertainment, a product to purchase, a connection to a community—in most cases, you’re likely to receive an overwhelming amount of results to choose from. These relevant search results are valuable to you… Or are they?

Published on : http://method.com/

More and more commentators are wondering if the tools we create to give us more choices—such as search engines—are delivering less variety, ultimately limiting chance discoveries and exposure to new ideas.

On the BBC’s The Culture Show, Aleks Krotoski recently examined the role of serendipity as an online commodity, questioning whether the Internet is as innovative as we think. She points out that computers have the unique ability to make valuable, unseen connections for us. Instead of maximizing that potential, our search filters keep us focused on only the most relevant information.

Alex explains, “We will never have the opportunity to bump into something truly new, because the machines are predicting our futures based on our past preferences, creating an infinite loop of cultural homogenization.”

The concern over the consequences of homogenized choice is not entirely new. David Byrne noted in his book Bicycle Diaries, that in many urban developments gentrification leads to separation, rather than integration, of different social and cultural groups. This separation leads to less collisions between ideas and the stifling of creativity.

David describes, “I think online communities tend to group like with like, which is fine for some tasks, but sometimes inspiration comes from accidental meetings and encounters with people outside one’s own demographic, and is less likely if you only communicate with your ‘friends’…”

Other commentators also question if recommendations based on a combination of one’s preferences, social profile, and history of consumption really offers new opportunities. In an article for Design Week,Steve Price discussed how the role of media retailers is changing in the age of the “Filter Bubble.”

“Google, as amazing as it is, can only answer the questions you ask it,” he states. “It cannot tell you which questions you should be asking. Search results and news feeds are all now influenced by engines that take as a point of entry all that they know about you and spit back the information they think you’ll want. What is on the screen when you open Spotify? Recommendations on new music based on its knowledge of you. What happens if you visit Rough Trade Records? You often leave with albums and music from artists you’ve never heard of, having heard it played in the store, or from talking to one of the employees who clearly live and breathe music.”

Concerns aside, the tech community seems to be moving in the direction of “smarter” recommendation engines. For example, The Filter founded by Peter Gabriel. These developments suggest we might soon see recommendations for vacuum cleaners based on one’s music tastes. For example, a robotic system called HyperActive Bob has been developed to anticipate customer behaviors in fast food restaurants. This includes correlating a customer’s type of car with what he or she might order, but this particular filter has failed to prove successful so far.

When the self-referential nature of media increases the speed of recycling ideas in film, design, music, fashion and global culture as a whole, what will it take to receive truly original recommendations? What can we design into user experiences that will allow for the unexpected?

Imagine the possibilities of using “dumber” algorithms that will allow us to be pleasantly surprised by serendipity wherever we are…and whenever we “don’t” expect it.

If you liked this article we recommend: http://youtu.be/9ZlBUglE6Hc

Alexander Grünsteidl & Nikki Roddy @ Method

As part of the 10×10 series by Method, we contributed the article “Changing Retail Currency”. It’s a companion piece to The AppLounge.

“Changing Retail Currency” is about the new role of the store, and the opportunities this creates for retailers.

Take a read: http://method.com/

As e-commerce continues to shape the retail experience, new and exciting opportunities for retailers and customers are emerging. The transactional value of the storefront has a different currency than the value that online shopping offers. We are witnessing a transformation in business models for retailers, opening up possibilities for more fluid and convergent retail experiences.

The article is build around 4 insights from different market sectors that have witnessed commoditisation and margin pressure in the recent past, and highlights a few cases that adapted successfully to new customer experience requirements.

01 Think Like an Editor

02 Learn from the Fashion Industry

03 Embrace Hospitality in Your Brand

04 Own Your Community Network

Method has co-published this piece with Fast Company’s Co.Design.

Check it out online here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662269/four-keys-to-surviving-the-future-of-retail

]]> http://digitalwellbeinglabs.com/dwb/changing-retail-currency/feed/ 0 http://digitalwellbeinglabs.com/dwb/the-missing-link/ http://digitalwellbeinglabs.com/dwb/the-missing-link/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:03:28 +0000 agrunsteidl http://digitalwellbeinglabs.com/dwb/?p=281

Products that connect the physical with the social on the web, create innovative opportunities for retail.A new type of product has emerged in recent years, starting with the introduction of Nike+ together with Apple iPods in 2006. These devices link to the accumulated statistics of an activity over time and share these with an online community.

You may call them mash-up devices, taking a range of sensors, attaching meaning to the extracted data and linking these to other information and more importantly to various social networks based around shared interests. Some call them social objects.

Interestingly these physical linked devices are initiators for commercial transactions, partly based on social pressure, recommending products and services based on the patterns gained from the user’s activities.

Here are some examples:

 Nike+ and iPod

nikeplus.nike.com

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Ray Riley, one of the driving forces behind the project. What Nike Plus did is to combine insights from early adopters who used for example GPS technology and heart rate monitor, to create their own tracking tools to log distances and speed during excercise. Nike used these insights to develop a low cost accelerometer and paired these with an established and ubiquitous device, the iPod, already used by many athletes, to facilitate data exchange with computers and an online service. It allows users to visualize their progress and set new targets. On the back of it, this application establishes a continuous relationship with the Nike brand. It offers regular updates on products for runners including sports gear and nutritional additives like vitamins depending on your workout requirements. In a few years they established a huge community of runners, encouraging each other and competing in virtual sports events around the globe. 

Snifftag 

www.sniftag.com

So around comes a company that uses a similar accelerometer, attaches it to a dog’s collar and then adds, in their words a low powered active RFIDs with a proprietary radio protocol, to communicate with other Tags. When two dogs wearing SNIF Tags are within close range of one another, the tags automatically swap unique identifying codes, recording the encounter and relaying it to a server when the dogs return to a connected SNIF Base Station.

The company has a great strap line “Tails told, Friends Made” ; “Monitor your dog’s activity while you’re away. Keep in touch with his friends and yours. Share helpful information and pet tips online. And get connected to your community. It’s hi-tech, it’s hi-style, easy to use, and completely customizable.”

You can guess where this is going. Combining the activity level with the pedigree of your do, recommendations will be offered about how much and what to feed your dog. The dog colar becomes a innovative shopping basket in disguise 

This is more sophisticated than the way we currently exchange business cards in the corporate world. Where is the version that clips on to a tie or cufflink or goes well with a ladies handbag?

Actually this has already been applied on a mass scale  …

Clickables: Walt Disney Pixie Hollow, Fairies friendship charms 

disney.go.com/fairies/  Clickables™ technology

Roll over princesses and princes, if you have not noticed it hase been all things fairies for the past few years in the world of Disney. With this new direction came a whole set of technologies linking the virtual and the real together in a continuous social network. Disney extended play in the virtual world of Pixie Hollow.

Connecting Pixie Hollow to the real world are Clickables. Pixie Dust eJewelry Collection includes a magical jewelry box, a charm bracelet and exclusive Disney Fairies charms powered by Clickables™ RFID technology. When a girl touches a charm to the center of her jewelry box, which is connected via a pc to the internet, Pixie Dust sparkles and music plays as the jewelry box comes alive. Each charm unlocks a unique fairy gift at www.PixieHollow.com, including exclusive clothing, and décor for their online avatar. The friendship eCharm bracelet is connected to an online avatar that lives in Pixie Hollow land. A profile of the avatar, messages and gifts can be stored offline on the bracelet and can be shared with others just by touching the bracelets together. They glow, and the transaction is complete. Very magical indeed. 

All this includes a virtual currency, virtual gifts and real jewellery and other merchandise. It comes with a handheld electronic game. Points earned in the offline game can be turned to Tink Points for buying virtual goods or completing quests. It all sumes up to an integrated retail strategy, created by a team selected from marketing, technology, design, even finance and lawyers, coming together to form a holistic vision and unified implementation.

You can expect this technology to roll out across different themes and Disney brands in the near future.

Webkinz

www.webkinz.com

A lower tech predecesor is the popular Webkinz. Using cuddly soft animal toys to represent a link to a virtual world.  Each toy comes with an unique 8 character ID allowing users to access the virtual alter ego of their stuffed pet and start playing in an online world.

A summary from wikipedia : Each Webkinz stuffed animal and Webkinz accessory comes with an 8-character code. By registering this secret code on the Webkinz website, the customer “adopts” his pet in the virtual Webkinz World. The Webkinz World is an online play area with its own economy. The user receives money, called KinzCash, by adopting new pets, playing online games, answering general knowledge questions, and through daily activities. With each Webkinz toy purchased, more money, rooms, and items are added to the user’s account. Accounts expire within one year, unless another Webkinz animal is purchased.

Users can spend their KinzCash at what is called the W Shop, where they can purchase food and clothing for their pet, items for their pet’s room or to build additional rooms onto their house, or outdoors areas etc. Users can decorate a room for their pet with pre-made themes, or mix and match their own furniture.

The online world also contains many rare or exclusive items. Some of these items are obtained by registering other Webkinz accessories purchased in the real world. Each type of pet gets a special food available exclusively for them. Also, a Pet of the Month is announced at the beginning of each month. If a person registers the announced pet in that month, they will receive other exclusive items. 

This fascinating approach is the basis for many similar formulas, creating a continuous set of incentives to engage in a virtual economy and linking it back into real world transactions.

Barcode Battlers 

Barcode Battlers wikipedia

It all reminds me vaguely of the pioneers of it all; Barcode Battlers. A Tamagochi type game launched in Japan in the early nineties and was based on in-game strength or energy for each of the battling characters derived from scanning barcodes found on real consumer goods. In fact you battled one barcode against another. The game was so popular that when some barcodes of obscure products were found to be very powerful these products instantly sold out in the supermarkets. Thinking of it,  it makes for an interesting retail strategy ;-)

eco:Drive Fiat 

Using sensors to measure your impact on the environment and helping you to adapt your behaviour according to insights into your usage patterns is another big area for innovation.

www.fiat.com/ecodrive/ 

eco:Drive works using Fiat’s Blue&Me entertainment and communications system. Plugging any USB key into the Blue&Me port allows eco:Drive to record detailed information about the vehicle’s efficiency and your driving style during a journey. The information is tranfered by plugging the USB key into your computer when you’ve finished driving.

Users can analyse fuel consumption and emissions for each journey made, and receive advice on how to drive more efficiently, reducing their impact on the environment. eco:Drive will give you a score out of 100 – your eco:Index – to show how efficiently you have driven, based on your acceleration, deceleration, gear changes and speed.  A series of tutorials will help you to improve your score, showing you how to perfect your driving using detailed information from your own journeys.

Drivers who start eco:Driving can expect to improve their driving efficiency by up to 15 per cent. That means a 15 per cent reduction in CO₂ emissions and in fuel costs. Fiat has also created ecoVille, a unique online community populated by all eco:Drivers from around the world. Users will be able to share tips, watch the community grow, and see just how much CO₂ they are all saving together.

ecoDrive is an evolution of the Blue&Me platform, developed by Fiat Group Automobiles in conjunction with Microsoft and first installed in the Fiat 500 and Grande Punto. The system is open for feedback from users for future improvements. Most importantly it creates a really useful, continuous relationship between the customer and the Fiat brand. More sincere than any customer relationship message received as regular email newsletter ever can do.

Wattson by DIY Kyoto

This same principle can be applied to your home. The Wattson launched by DIY Kyoto in 2006, helps you to investigate your electricity usage in your home down to cost of operating individual appliances.

www.diykyoto.com

DIY Kyoto’s aim was to develop a product that although it fulfills a very technical function, looks and behaves like a stylish interactive piece of furniture that lives well in the surroundings of your domestic environment; very different from the engineered electric meter you would expect. As such it has become one of the first high tech products that is being sold in interior and design shops. It tells a story about being actively engaged with managing your carbon footprint.

When we first showed one of the initial production models of the Wattson as part of the dwb showroom collections, we realized that it not only works to convince people to save energy, but in fact that it could very well serve eco-aware home owners, who already would be applying energy saving strategies, to show-off  their eco-credentials by demonstrating the efficiency of the appliances, solar collectors, double glazing etc they had invested in.

EasyBloom 

Put together a temperature, light and humidity sensor, combine it with a data analyzing algorithm first used on a Mars mission, package it in the suggestive form of a flower and you get easyBloom. Place the device for a few days in the soil in your garden, in a location where you would like to grow some plants, and once connected back to the internet with its integrated usb plug, it will inform you about the type of plants recommended for the conditions found at that spot. 

www.easybloom.com

This is seriously clever design. Not only does this little appliance help you to remove anxiety about what plants to choose, but it actually links you directly to websites of garden centres and at a later stage even supplies you with information about fertilizers and where to order them. Now this is what we mean with innovative retail solutions; it’s a contemporary update to the Gillette model: give away the handle almost for free and people will come back to purchase the razor blades. It is a high tech product that lives easily in the surroundings of a garden center or a flower shop. It’s design makes a perfect lifestyle gift. 

There are many more examples appearing each week. For me these type of products represent real opportunities for design and will lead to new design languages.

So where is this leading in the future, it’s easy to start brainstorming:

… Musical instruments that sense skill and style and link you to similarly skilled musicians within your locality and offer music lessons or instrument upgrades.

… Houses that compete on their eco-credentials with others within the community, based on a  handicap level, similar to a handicap levels applied to sports like  Golf or Sailing. The handicap could be calculated on the type of building, the amount of rooms, the volume, type and amount or surface area of windows, type of heating etc.

… Mobile devices that sense your location and activity and link you to … (there are many of these)

… Soon we are likely to see all kind of iPhone accessoires emerge, similar to the current iPhone App for Nike+. This will be sensors and devices that send all kinds of messages to be displayed in a lifestyle management type dashboard app on your iPhone.

So why not try something yourself. Some tools to get you started are available at …

Pachube

 Usman Haque   started an online project that encourages people to make their data from all kinds of sensors, spread around the world, publicly available and stimulate all kinds of mesh-ups and he hopes will lead to new applications and services.

www.pachube.com  

Pachube is a service that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world. The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.

Both landline and mobile networks have already been carrying for the past decennia, invisible to the public eye, an enormous amount of data from commercial sensors and controllers like security and farming applications. Only now they become affordable and accessible and we start experiencing these on a personal and consumer level. These are exciting times and I am looking forward to be surprised by new types of products and services to emerge.

Why do some kiosks appeal, whilst others are frankly just repulsive? I have this weird relationship with kiosks in public places. As a classically trained interaction designer I am compulsively attracted and start poking them to see how they react to my avances. Some kiosk types such as ticket dispensers and ATMs are utilitarian and are aimed to speed up purely functional transactions. Other types aim to guide the public to their destinations or attract passerby’s to engage with one or another dynamic brand.
It’s incredible what kind of mess there is out there. Sometimes to the point of being hilariously tragic. Many kiosk variations are present in public spaces. After more than two decades of various types of displays one would expect that engaging and usable versions are commonplace. Take for example the ticket kiosks for the Heathrow express and how many iterations and changes of language it took to achieve a reasonably usable system … and it’s still not quite there. Quite often it is not about the overall idea of placing a kiosk in a particular environment, but it comes down to small details in the implementation and the successive management of the set-up that determines acceptance and success.

It’s about time we create a Michelin-Star type rating for public services with a special section dedicated to kiosks and websites.

Mind you these systems are rather expensive to implement. In the professional press and in marketing blurbs most of these systems are praised as the ultimate in customer service and brand representation. But, if you look underneath the hood it is consistently a ragbag of off-the-shelf components, clumsily assembled and arranged according to limited space into a custom made shell. So why is it, that quite often the implementation of the interaction is left to someone who has been playing around in Powerpoint, or these days, an intern in his second term using Flash? I am regularly baffled by the logic of navigating the menu on most kiosks. It seems that few ever applied serious user testing. And with user testing I don’t mean just being able to perform a given task, but actually taking into account the whole environment, the role it fulfills in the complete user experience, in which the kiosk is placed. I will get back to this with various examples in future posts. I will also discuss in another post how things go seriously wrong when the UI on kiosks is laid out in such a way, that value added services are pushed to the top and the actual purpose of the kiosk is hardly to discover.

An excellent recent example of the good and the bad are the information kiosks placed at the new international train terminal of the Eurostar at St Pancras in London and the kiosks found spread around the new Westfield Shopping Mall in White City, West London.

Both fulfill similar functions; find a store or service around you, locate the toilets, highlight any events and push some advertisements etc. Both are located in very dense, high footfall environments.

I’ve spent some time observing the use by the public of these kiosks and one thing is immediately evident. Whilst the kiosks in St Pancras attract the occasional passerby, the kiosks at Westfield are in constant use.

So here is my thinking, purely empirical and subjective:

• Placement of the kiosks

St Pancras – Nowhere near any main entrances and always just out of the way of high footfall areas like escalators. One actually has to almost search for them even when they are highly visible standing throughout the environment. On the other hand, there is little incentive to use them as most of the few shops and services are located along a linear path from the various entrances to the platforms and you will eventually bump into what you may or may not be looking for.

Westfield – The kiosks are exactly where you expect them, at dominant locations in the center of entrance areas and on major crossways. One reason for the popularity of the way finding kiosks may be that design specifications of the rest of the environment did not allow to easily find shops whilst scanning the alleys. There are no signs protruding into the corridors, so one needs to stand almost in front of the stores before being able to identify them.

• Physical design

St Pancras – The kiosk totems reflect an early nineties design sensibility. Large vertical units trying to fullfil multiple way-finding and information tasks. There are two screens mounted above each other. On top, a general information streaming display, with time, weather and departure info, arranged in portrait format. Below, a touch screen in landscape format, suggesting some kind of relationship between the two screens where there is none. On multiple visits I noticed that some of the displays were out of order. In case you are not aware where you are, the designers ensured to splash the St Pancras name/logo in a prominent position on the totem, instead of using this space for meaningful labels to identify, for example, different meeting location throughout the station.

Westfield – This is seriously clever design. The light, almost fragile modern look. The two sides of the kiosk at different angles and slightly different heights to accomodate different user requirements. The table-like setting allows the users to maintain awareness of the environment without having their views blocked. The angle of the displays actually invites to linger and try different options. I am not sure about glare and reflections on the screen but it didn’t seem to bother users too much. I believe the units have been supplied by the BF group but I can’t figure out who designed the units or who actually provided the user interface other than that the original signage for the mall was designed by the Portland Group. The materials used in the Kiosks seems to be the Corian-like LG Hi-Macs which is used all-over the mall. Unfortunately we’ve spotted on some repeat visits some tension chipping around the displays on a few kiosks.

• User interface design

St Pancras – Why do designers always try to re-invent the world just when about everyone has got used to one or another interface navigation standard? The main navigation menu button is situated at the bottom right, at about hip-hight, nicely out of sight for most users. More annoyingly each time you press the menu on the touch display a short animation shows a set of button choices stumbling to arrange themselves into a list. If I am in a hurry to reach my train and I have to wait again and again for a 3 second transition to pass by whilst I am navigating the menu, I will soon abandon the kiosk. And what does this animation say about the St Pancras terminal brand? Apart from the placement of the Menu button did the designers actually consider it to be good practice to hide the most common menu options from view, so that the users have no clue what options are available at a glance at any time during interaction with the kiosks. I fully support simple looking interfaces but in this case, out of sight is out of mind .It seems that the content and some of the navigation is provided by completely different agencies not working to the same style spec.

Westfield – Even if the touch displays seem not to be as responsive as they used to be shortly after opening, you generally get what you are looking for. Not that it will be any easier to find the actual physical location afterwards. The interface to send a way-finding message to your mobile is probably one of the best implementations I’ve seen so far. Sure one can disagree with the level of menu options in the menu bar at the top that includes of al things “jobs”, or the wording of the bread crumbs underneath the menu, but overall this is a very decent job. I still don’t know who designed the UI but whilst browsing I came across terabyte from New Zealand who did an at least great looking UI for Westfield kiosks in NZ.

There can much more be said on a heuristic level of these two similar, but yet again very different kiosk experiences, but this sums up some of the key issues with current kiosks or info-pods, or whatever you want to name these in public spaces.

links :

http://www.bfgroup.co.uk

http://www.stpancras.com/

http://uk.westfield.com/london/

http://www.portland-design.com/

http://www.terabyte.co.nz/our-work/westfield-navigator-kiosks.aspx

http://www.himacs.eu/