The Work•Play•Experience Blog

The History of the Global Service Jam

2011-12-27T02:18:00.005+01:00

An interview with the Jam Initiators.

Thanks to Sophie Renault of the Université d'Orléans for permission to publish her interview. We spoke to Sophie between the Global Service Jam (March 2011) and the Global

Sustainability Jam (October 2012).

(Questions translated from French, all errors are mine.)

How was the idea of the GSJ born?

Markus is involved in the Global Game Jam movement. We loved the energy of this event and wanted to apply it to our area of interest: service design.

Who is behind the GSJ?

The GSJ was initiated and coordinated by Markus Hormess (who had the initial idea) and Adam Lawrence of WorkPlayExperience, a German-based service design agency.

Markus is German with a background in theoretical physics and process design; Adam is British and has a background in psychology, marketing and theater.

We are a small agency who uses theatrical methods to develop services, mostly for large bluechip customers. One of our basic work philosophies is the theatrical working rule of "doing, not talking" - and this fit well with the idea of the Jam.

For the Jam, we kept our agency in the background and usually appeared simply as "Markus and Adam" - we wanted the Jam to be open, and if it were branded, other agencies would have been less interested in joining. Also, this way was more fun.

What were the steps in the implementation of the GSJ?

The whole Jam was quite spontaneous and was done "between" our other work. A lot of it happened ad hoc.

We had been talking about the Jam idea for a few months, discussing it with a few people (especially EDO, the experience design organisation in Switzerland) , but had no fixed plan except some rules ideas and a vague date. In October 2010 we were at the SDN service design conference in Berlin. In the last few minutes of the Member's Day, we spontaneously wrote up a flipchart with the idea and walked around, asking people to sign up interest.

In the next month, we spoke to several designer friends in several countries who agreed to run jams if it became real. At the ServDes Nordic conference at the start of December 2010, we decided to announce it. We put together a simple website and prepared a Twitter account. We asked the organisers for 5 minutes at the end of the conference and again held up a flipchart, announcing the date and webpage. We simultaneously tweeted the first handful of Jam locations. In the next few weeks and months, Twitter was the main recruiting tool.

What are the strategic challenges of the implementation of such an event?

The Jam was not a strategic project, it was an invitation to play. This is how we usually prefer to work.

So the challenge for the jam was to make it fun, and easy to join. We emphasised the freedom of local groups to shape it as they liked, and the freedom of result formats within the jam. We tried to make it clear that it would be fun, hard work, and a little crazy.

As people joined, we tried to help them communicate their ideas with each other, and just make sure they had space to make them real.

On the practical side, though, the organisation of the upload platform proved a huge technical challenge. Several large-scale professional webhosting companies refused to host it, as they said it was too big for them. Finally, we had to build it ourselves.

Can you explain the choice of "(Super)Heroes" as the Theme?

The theme was chosen by Markus and I after a discussion between the Global Council (five local hosts from Australia, Korea, Turkey, Brazil and USA) and the two of us.

We wanted a theme which would be inspiring to people from any background or field - if they were interested in particular areas of service design, or particular development tools. This meant the theme had to be abstract.

Of our final shortlist of 4 themes, we liked the idea of Heroes with it's overtones of overcoming obstacles, empowerment, doing good, giving, and happy endings. We felt it was important to have a positive, emotional theme for the first Jam.

Some of us were worried about militaristic overtones of "Heroes", so we added the "(Super)-" at the last minute to keep it light, but used brackets "( )" to leave the options open.

What are the strengths of the GSJ? And the weaknesses?

+ People had a lot of fun and worked very hard. We think this was because they felt the freedom, energy and playful atmosphere.

+ The Jam led to a lot of publicity for service design, and gave a lot of people the opportunity to try it out.

+ The Theme was very popular and effective.

+ The Jam gave people the opportunity to work side by side, and led to some permanent contacts - new work groups, friendships, projects. I think that the "doing, not talking" approach made this effect stronger than it would be at a conference, for example.

+ We built a great library of prototyping methods and designs, which is already the subject of academic research.

- Making the end results become real was not one of our main priorities. We were mainly interested in promoting service design, increasing contacts, sharing methods and building a library of prototyping methods. We think that putting more emphasis on end results would have "raised the stakes" and made people less likely to take part. But some participants would have liked to see more of the designs become real, and saw this as a weakness of the Jam.

- Many participants were very busy with their own projects and did not have the time or opportunity to follow the jam on a global level, or share ideas and experiences. Fewer Jammers used Twitter than we expected (this was the main channel for inter-Jam communication) so they missed out on interjam contact.

- We had some technical problems with our home-made upload platform.

How do you define a "Jam"? Why did you choose this formula?

We think of a Jam as we know it from music. In a jam session, musicians come together to practice skills, learn new ones, challenge and build on each other's ideas, meet new people, and have fun. Perhaps some of the ideas will be carried forward, but that is not the main focus. Importantly, they do not come to talk about music, they make it. They are open to working with whatever idea comes along. If it goes wrong, it doesn't matter.

This is the feeling we wanted for the Jam - an emphasis on building something together, spontaneously, fast and dirty, with a low risk.

We think jamming is useful, educational, and fun. It is a good alternative to (and expansion on) what happens at conferences.

Tell me about your new project, the Global Sustainability Jam?

The GSusJ is a sister event to the GSJ. Some GSJ Jammers felt they could have moved further towards real implementation of the projects if they could have researched and prepared before jamming.

We thought that choosing a general subject for a Jam (although not a specific theme) might give people this opportunity to prepare, without losing the spontaneous, creative atmosphere. It would also give us the opportunity to reach a new group of people - in this case the sustainability community - and introduce them to a design-based approach to creativity and problem-solving.

Out of this idea, the GSusJ was born. We chose sustainability because it is interesting, challenging, and always relevant.

We plan to have service design jams in March or April each year, and other, focussed jams in October or November. We will continue this cycle for as long as we have fun.

Theatrical Tools - the Director's Cut

2011-10-14T22:14:00.005+01:00

Our session at the Service Design Network Conference

As well as talking about the Global Service Jam and co-presenting a tool developed with Marc Stickdorn, we'll be running our hit workshop at the SDN conference in San Francisco next week.

We'll be talking about the theatrical tools we use in service design. We believe they are unusually effective, insightful, approachable and fun. A customer comments:

"Speaking from experience with WorkPlayExperience - it's just amazing how the theater setting immediately creates a different mind set with the participants and thus makes them play, interact and learn more (and better)!" (full quote here)

If you are thinking of coming, here is what you get for your morning's investment.

DOING, NOT TALKING
First, it will be very, very active. I don't believe that people learn much by listening, reading or being talked at, so in our session you will be up on your feet, trying things out.

PURELY PRACTICAL
We will be sharing tools that we use successfully with our clients. They are real, they work. We hope you will adopt them.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH
We use investigative rehearsal in service design work - and that is not the same thing as "practicing" or "roleplay" (which most participants hate, let's be honest). Rehearsal is an iterative, explorative process which taps both creativity and emotion. We'll be showing you how we lead participants into it, how we run a rehearsal, and how we use concepts like subtext and dramaturgy to take it to a higher level of co-creation.

This is an expanded version of the workshop we gave in Berlin - suitable for people unfamiliar with our work, but with some new thoughts to offer for people who have seen us before. If we've tickled your fancy, sign up early. We'll see you on Friday morning.

And if you have any questions, just get in touch. :)

PS. Obviously, there will be NO Powerpoint.
PPS. But there may be chickens.

You have 48 hours to save the world.

2011-10-14T21:47:00.004+01:00

We're jamming again

After nearly killing ourselves with 68* hours of continuous Jamming at the Global Service Jam back in March, we are coming back for more.

200 "Superhero" designs developed by 1200 jammers in 59 cities within 48 hours was so amazing, we want to try it again. And this time, it will be exactly the same, but different.

The Global Sustainability Jam will take place on the 28, 29 and 30 of October in around 50 locations all over the planet. We have a lot of folks who jammed back in March, as well as a whole bunch of new faces.

It's fantastic to see Jams in regions which were absent or underrepresented at the last Jam - with Russia, India, the Middle East (Tel Aviv & Dubai) stepping up for the first time, and a big jump in the number of Jams in Africa and South America.

Unlike the Global Service Jam, this new event is not exclusively aimed at service designers and their pals. We hope to see 48 hours of jamming giving rise to designs for services, yes, but also objects, initiatives, networks, and things we haven't thought of yet. We'll be mixing the design crowd with the sustainability set - and the results should be gripping.

If you'd like to spend a thrilling 48 hours under our eternal motto of "doing, not talking", we'd love to have you. Find out more here. :)

* 48 hours for the Jammers, but 68 for us because of the time differences between NZ and SFO.

"Doing not Talking" image by Kirsty Joan of Snook.

Newsbite2: Service Design in Information Technology

2011-10-14T21:46:00.001+01:00

(From a WPX press release)

Global Service Jam initiators WorkPlayExperience presented jamming techniques at Informatik 2011, the computer industry's "class reunion" in Berlin.

The workshop "Experience Innovation through Jamming" allowed delegates to experience firsthand the energy and focus of the Jam format.

The session also included the first public presentation of academic research on the Global Service Jam by Michael Römer, Stefan Thallmaier and Hagen Habicht of the Center for Leading Innovation & Cooperation (CLIC), Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL).

Newsbite1 : Educational Services

2011-10-14T21:32:00.006+01:00

(From a WPX press release)

A personal interest in education and learning has blossomed into an important business field for WorkPlayExperience, the service design consultancy with a uniquely theatrical toolset.

"We believe in learning by doing, and in crafting mental and physical creative spaces which allow students to discover their way forward", says Markus Hormess of WPX, who is also busy in the FabLab scene.

His colleague Adam Lawrences adds, "It's great that we have been able to explore this field in several extensive projects with Swisscom and other major players, as well as in the planet-wide creative space of the Global Service Jam. Designing education is exciting, challenging and vitally important."

Theatrical Tools in Service Design

2011-02-27T22:22:00.005+01:00

On Camera

We've posted videos of our working methods before, but in German.

For those of you without German skills, here we are in English giving a (super-accelerated) sample at the Service Design Network Conference in Berlin this summer.

Beyond Roleplay - Theatrical Tools in Service Design from Snook on Vimeo.

Thanks to Snook for filming!

Get hands-on at the Global Service Jam!

2010-12-05T12:09:00.003+01:00

48 hours to design a new service - be there!

On 11, 12 & 13 March, 2011, people interested in service and customer experience will meet all over the globe. In a spirit of experimentation, co-operation and friendly competition, teams will have 48 hours to develop brand new services inspired by a shared theme.

The Friday evening (local times) will see service designers, customer experience folks, students, professors, businesspeople, anthropologists, customers, hackers and actors converge on jam locations all over the world. After meeting up and warming up, they will be given a set of common themes for a brand new service. Based on brainstormed ideas, teams will form. Then it's time to get practical.

The teams will have less than 48 hours to research, ideate, prototype (and iterate) their service using whatever methods they want to explore. A social media thread will make sure that all teams - worldwide - will know what is going on, and who is working on what. Groups will learn together, experiment, and bounce ideas and techniques around the planet.

On Sunday afternoon, each team will upload their ideas in a digital, disseminable form, under a Creative Commons licence. (The idea remains yours, but the world will see how you made it).

Sound like fun?

Perhaps you want to run a local jam? Or perhaps you want to find other people local to you who might be interested? Maybe you just want to enjoy the buzz?

Get on list at www.globalservicejam.org

Follow @GSJam and #GSJ11 on Twitter!

The Global Service Jam is a not-for-profit initiative by
Work•Play•Experience and EDO, the Experience Design Organisation.
Jammy logo by Jase Cooper. http://jasecooper.com/

WorkPlayExperience live on stage

2010-06-03T23:05:00.003+01:00

Tools session at the Service Design Network conference

It's great to hear that our session proposal for the Service Design Network's 2010 conference has been accepted by the organisers.

The conference, entitled "connecting the dots", take place in Berlin on the 13th and 14th of October, with a Member's day on the 15th. Markus and I will be heading a session on theatrical tools in service design - no schedule yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Come and see us there!

PS Great news - Snook ladies will be there too!

Conference graphic from the sdn conference site.

WorkPlayExperience news

2010-06-03T22:27:00.006+01:00

Why the hiatus?

It's been a sleepy time on this blog recently, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that Twitter has taken over as my main channel for sharing news and ideas. If you want to stay up to date, just follow me (@adamstjohn) and Markus (@markusedgar) and you won't miss a thing.

But the main reason is that our service experience consultancy and training business (Work•Play•Experience, named after this blog) has been keeping us very busy indeed.

We've been lucky enough to win some very exciting clients, and have been running sessions and giving keynote presentations over a significant stretch of central Europe. If you'd like to work with us, we'd love to hear from you.

As a sample of what we've been up to, German-speaking readers can check out this little article about a workshop for the Swiss customer experience group CEN-Xchange. Thanks to Zürich service design crew Stimmt AG for the invitation!

And here's the video from the article - showing Markus and I and one of the techniques we use for customer insight work.

(Depending on your settings, you might not see the whole width of the screen. Just doubleclick it to go to YouTube.)

Video by the folks at Stimmt AG.
Men at work image by InsideSouthAfrica at Flickr.

Theatrical tools for service experience - an overview

2010-01-30T00:07:00.006+01:00

Top practical tips
Theater can give you powerful - and long proven - tools for service design and experience work. Our customers at Work•Play•Experience love them, and I've written about them over the years on this blog. Here are links to some of the best...

Rehearsal and service prototyping
Setting up a safe space (forget this, and you can forget the whole thing)
Running the session (why it's important to break the rules)

Powerful rehearsal/prototyping tools
The director's chair
Subtext (top tip!)

Experience structure and timing
Perfect story structure (top tip!)
Starting badly on purpose
Working with contrast
Thinking about timing

Entrances and moving people through them
Stage design lessons for entrances (important for retailers & UX)
When the backstage intrudes

How to guarantee a hit
The Big Three (just for fun?)

Tool pic by Svadilfari at flickr

Different workspaces...

2010-01-04T18:04:00.013+01:00

...how Work•Play•Experience gets down to business

When we are boldly going where no service design agency has gone before, Markus and I find it useful to have different spaces for different tasks.

The Bridge
Adam's loft office - light, airy, equipped with a big table, grand piano and much stuff. Great for big ideas, strategic planning and long term thinking.

Engineering
Markus' basement office - big screens, fast internet, mega printers and lots of toys. The ideal place to get down, dirty and into detail.

Ten Forward
For unstructured work and discussions, and for clearing up the bits and pieces; Ten Forward is any one of a number of cafés and bars with WiFi where we do most of our free form officework.

The Holodeck
As seen in this post, the Holodeck is our outdoor working platform. Under the open skies and with a riverside view, it's unbeatable for creative work and getting into constructive conversations with strangers.

Do you separate your workday? How?

Top 10 Reasons why Powerpoint is like a bra

2009-10-07T23:42:00.021+01:00

Yes, really.

It drives me crazy when people think of their Powerpoint* slides as their "presentation". Really, truly crunchy-monkey-nut crazy. Today, I was so annoyed at this habit that I tweeted:

The tweet rang bells with a few folks, notably Chris Atherton. Well, I do like to ring bells - so, for the list fetishists among you, here are...

The Top 10 Reasons a Powerpoint Slidedeck is Just Like a Bra.

10. It is often used out of habit or insecurity - but there are plenty of situations where it only gets in the way

9. It's possible to send one by mail, but it is empty and lifeless, so why bother?

8. Technical troubles will occur at the most embarassing moments

7. Too much decoration can distract from content

6. It's certainly pretty, but do you really want someone else's design to cover up your uniqueness?

5. People usually try to fit too much inside**

4. People think they need the support, but forget it's a restriction too

3. Given confidence, you will often make a bigger impact without one

2. You can borrow or steal someone else's, but it will never fit like your own

and finally..

1. It may look basically similar, but you should NEVER confuse it with the Real Thing

Folks, Powerpoint isn't the presentation. YOU ARE.

Got any more? Add them in the comments... Oh, and you should follow me on Twitter...

Reactions:

Linda Wu at SixMinutes comes back with 32 Reasons a Powerpoint Slidedeck is Nothing Like a Bra. Thanks Linda!
You can also have this list in Chinese, courtesy of ExcelPro.
STOP PRESS! There is now even a Chinese illustrated version, I kid you not!

* Or Keynote, or whatever. I don't care. Slideware. You know.
** Oprah said 8 out of 10 ladies wear the wrong size, usually too small. And what Oprah says...

Customer experience, the jazz way

2009-10-02T19:20:00.009+01:00

Lessons for customer experience from a master of voice

Over the last couple of days, I have spent a little time with three exceptional musicians: New York's Refuge Trio, made up of Theo Bleckmann, Gary Versace and John Hollenbeck. I was able to take part in a masterclass vocal workshop with Bleckmann, and several of his statements on singing - like so many showbiz ideas - offer excellent insight for customer experience practitioners.

(We spoke in German, and all this is based on my brief notes, so all quotes are no more than "my best attempt" at capturing the meaning.)

The Master on backstage and frontstage
TB: "When you perform, it can feel like a flat film set. It's like behind me is nothing. But that's not true: the music and the energy is all around me."

In experience design, we often think about frontstage and backstage processes - which is a useful distinction. But the interplay between backstage and frontstage is more complex than just boxes arriving from the storeroom.

Theo's words reminded me that the spaces behind the scenes and in front of the scenes share a common energy - one which customers can sense, and staff can be motivated (or demotivated) by. Remember, the frontstage/backstage boundary is real, but it is permeable to more than just product.

The Master on keeping on track
In one musical exercise, Theo had us hold one note while he played other notes. With notes that were further away, this was easy. But when he played the semitones - the closest possible notes - above and below our note, many of us found ourselves sliding off line.

This common singer's exercise offered parallels to the world of motivation, as is being discussed on Wenovski. Wildly different notes were easy to ignore, but the nearly-the-same notes were pure seduction. Similarly, it's not the grouch in the corner who will demotivate you - he's easy to ignore. Instead, it's the people who do pretty much the right things, but with a little less fire and passion for the customer. Their path - the slightly easier path that looks oh so similar - is the dangerous one, as it tempts us to do just a little less.

It's the same with service design. "All the other companies all do it this way - which is nearly the same. Why don't we?"

Answer: because you need to be exceptional.

The Master on intent
TB: "Know what note you are going to sing before you sing it. Intention is important - otherwise things happen out of fear or habit."

I can think of no greater enemies to good customer experience than fear and habit. Fear can be fear of trying something new, or fear of looking the customer in the eye and making human contact; habit is the innovation-killer of "we always do it this way". And fear and habit together are stagnation and boring or bad service.

Theo's advice here is that intention - knowing what we want to "sing" in advance - is the best weapon against these two.

What "song" do you intend to "sing" to your customers?

Photo by Amanda Stockwell from theobleckmann.com

Customer interactions and rubber chickens

2009-09-22T14:53:00.006+01:00

Why we use theatrical rehearsal techniques in service experience design

If you have ever been to a Work•Play•Experience experience workshop or service design session, you will have noticed that it doesn't look like a normal training day, or even like a normal design space.

It looks a lot like a theater rehearsal - just crazier.

Starting with a bang

The first thing you will notice is that the room is full of odd things, from rubber chickens to toy catapults, from wind-up flipping dogs to Bugs Bunny DVDs. And lots and lots of chocolate. Immediately after you notice this (and just after your first chocolate rush), we will throw you into a high energy warm-up which soon has you laughing and sweating. Today will not be like a normal workday, that is clear. And the usual rules will not apply.

This is a big heap of fun - but that is not why we do it. Our first goal is to clearly break the rules you know, creating a “safe space” which promotes creativity and encourages risk taking. This break with everyday routine is crucial to the success of our work, as it guarantees more innovation, faster learning, more confidence and a willingness to try new personal behaviour patterns.

Once more from the top...

As the day progresses, we keep you on your feet - you will see very few chairs, and the ones you see will seldom be in use. “Doing, not talking” is one of our guiding principles, so there's almost no frontal presentation (we hate Powerpoint anyway) and very little bookwork. Instead, you will find yourself “playing” through “scenes” again and again. And again. And again...

We are exploring alternatives in an iterative innovation structure just like the one used in the most successful software houses. Now and again, we will step in to draw your attention to details of body language, blocking, storyline, microexpressions, subtext and other verbal- and non-verbal aspects. You'll soon be sensitised to your unconscious effect on the customer - and the effect of your service process design - and will see it with new eyes.

Remember, a theater rehearsal is not just "practice". It is a way to actively and accurately model and develop any kind of human interaction. And it works best in a lively, fun-filled environment which gives plentiful opportunity to try new strategies, experience success or failure in a concrete, tactile form, and learn by doing.

No smart answers, just good questions

It feels like play, but "Play" is only 33.3% of our name. We keep the energy level high, and laughter is never far away - most participants never notice that they are working very, very hard indeed. And the rich crop of ideas they develop are their own.

This is crucial. We cannot be experts on every business, so we don't try to be. Instead, we use theatrical tools to get great ideas out of your people - ideas that have been developed and framed by the participants themselves - not by “headquarters” or some unknown “expert”.

How it works

As the day moves towards the final high-energy "BOOM!", you probably won't notice that the design of entire day was based on critical principles of psychology and dramaturgy. The playful atmosphere has promoted creativity and innovation. The deeply satisfying structure of the day gave periods of high energy, periods of reflection and a stream of new experiences. Participants have pooled their expertise and experience, guaranteeing realistic and practical solutions. Their Buy-In is of course much greater, and the ideas have been prototyped and rehearsed already... so they are realistic, practiced, closer-to-home and YOURS!

We really like this way of working, and we think you will too. At the very least, you are pretty certain to enjoy all the chocolate.

Rubber chickens by zoomar at flickr
Sweeties by Amarand Agasi at Flickr

How to rehearse (or not) a presentation

2009-09-10T11:24:00.009+01:00

Best of both worlds

How a stand-up comedian rehearses for both flexibility and confidence.

An over-rehearsed presentation - like an over-rehearsed show - can really stink. It can be so automatic that it loses touch with the audience. It becomes a polished set of actions and words and ceases to be two-way communication, a persuasive dialogue.

On stage, we know that the comic aside - the gag improvised when the scenery collapses or a cellphone in the audience rings - is usually the biggest laugh of the evening. It's because the audience knows it was one-off, one-time, authentic creativity. So should we always improvise?

Usually, no. Bluffing your way through Shakespeare (or a complex presentation) on a wing and a teleprompter will not get you far. You need the confidence to know what happens next, the experience to get you through the technically challenging parts. And that only comes from practice. Lots of practice.

Hmm. So - we are in a quandary. Authentic, spontaneous flexibility, or calm rehearsed confidence? What to do?

The answer is this: you should not rehearse your presentation, you should rehearse your presentations. Plural.

When I'm developing a stand-up routine. I have many of my gag ideas on little index cards which I can add notes to, reshuffle, tear in half, or even eat in frustration. I will stand in a room away from the world (this is embarrassing) and rant my way through the cards. I'll try every line ten different ways. I'll try ten different orders. I'll throw cards away, and dig them out of the bin. I'll try missing out this part, and go off on a stream-of-consciousness tangent expanding that section. I'll even try running the cards backwards - seriously, it can teach you a lot.

After a while, I don't need the cards much, and I can play with my material while jogging, driving, or screaming at the top of my lungs while zooming down the Autobahn on my motorcycle. (If you've ever seen a lunatic doing this, now you know it was me. It feels as mad as a brush, but it's very effective.)*

At the end, I have not just rehearsed one routine - I have rehearsed dozens of routines based on basically the same material.

This stand-up rehearsal technique works for presentations too. Play with the pieces and bang them together until you know every angle.

After a while, you will know what the best order is. You can use it for your test audience. But you will not be tied to that order...

You will have all the confidence you need, because you will have mastered your material. But you will also have the flexibility you need. You will know that there is more than one path through the presentation, and that you can cope with anything.

Most importantly, you will be able to adjust your presentation with confidence to genuinely respond to the audiences signals - making it a real two-way exchange, not some polished performance that could have been done by DVD.

Have fun!

*Actually, a shouted rehearsal is a great technique. I know classical actors who rehearse monologues by shouting them from the beach into the ocean waves. Of course, this works best if you have a Victorian greatcoat and rather wild hair.

Photo of some of my index cards by me.

(This post is based on a comment I made last year on TJ Walker's blog)

!!! More great showbiz tips for presenters here.

Cheat the seating for better presentations & parties

2009-08-17T23:57:00.014+01:00

Leading the horse to water

If you went your presentations to be effective and your events to rock, you will need to think about where you let your audience sit. Here's why.

Check out the first diagram below - it's the well known scheme of where we ought to sit in a classroom or presentation room. You know - the more front-and-centre you sit, the more information you retain and take home afterwards. Old news.

The second diagram, two paragraphs further down, has no hard research behind it. It's just my own experience from a gazillion shows, classroom lessons and presentations I have given over the years. It shows where people want to sit.

When people come into a presentation, classroom or gala event (let's assume for now they didn't pay for their own tickets), they invariably fill up from the back, and along the aisle. It seems they are looking for a swift exit, or trying to avoid direct contact to whatever is happening at the front. Even the keen ones, unless they are die-hard fans, avoid the front row, preferring the midfield.

Now compare the two rooms - the consequence is obvious. Unless every seat is taken, your audience will tend to sit in the seats where they will benefit least from their presence, and your efforts as a presenter.

And that is only the first downside of this trend.

A successful presentation is all about atmosphere (you are there to shape emotion, remember?). For a good, infectious buzz you need to have your audience up close and bunched together. If they are all spread around the back of the room, you are going to be struggling to reach them.

To avoid wasting both your time and the audience's, borrow these tricks from the hospitality industry.

First, choose a room that is as tight as possible for your predicted numbers. Then, encourage your audience to fill from the front, perhaps by:

- using pleasant soft lighting at the front of the room while the rear rows and outer edges remain dark
- standing at the front of the room, welcoming attendees there and offering them seats
- or, most simply and effectively, reserving the rear rows until the rest of the room is full. *

The result of your audience management will be a better buzz and more effective use of everyone's time - a winner all round.

* the sneakiest way is to simply set up fewer rows of chairs than needed, then fetch "reserve" chairs from another room when it gets to standing room only. Wow, the event was a surprise hit!

Instinct helps you move people

2009-08-13T17:52:00.008+01:00

... so stop thinking too hard

Watching the extras to the Bourne films on the train, I came across this piece of advice which every service manager should take to heart.

"Often when you are a director you are trying to free everybody from thinking too hard. Because if you think too hard, you're not instinctive.

The power to move, the power to excite, the power to propel people - is instinctive."

(Paul Greengrass, Director)

As a manager, what can you do to free your people from thinking too hard? Remember, it's easy to make things complicated. Simplicity is dang hard, and freedom is scary.

But you need them both to engage customers and release creativity.

Playful design wins

2009-07-24T13:54:00.006+01:00

Game-based approach to architectural design

Here's a fascinating report on a new design methodology thesis by Christopher Totten.

Totten used games as powerful tools in cooperative architechtural design projects. The games had two functions:

A simple, self-designed board game guided the design process in a Cabal-type system: "Three or four player/designers play cooperatively but each have their own piece on the board. Each of these players takes on a different design role .... rolling the die to move around the board and respond to the directions ... to make design changes, draw new cards, lose turns, or run playtests. "

At turns, the actual building design took place in Google SketchUp or Valve's Hammer Level Editor: "Using a game engine such as Hammer allowed players to explore their buildings while they were designing them; since it lacks a traditional "orbit" tool but allows the in-program camera to be moved through the model with game controls; as one would move through a game environment ... "

Mr T. reports three main benefits of this game-based approach:

1 The board game / Cabal system helped circumvent many of the social or group-dynamic problems normally encountered in cooperative work.

2 The video-game design testing encouraged a high degree of focus on the emotions and experience of the building user.

3 Playtesters also reported that their designs were different because they felt they could make more creative moves while in the play environment of the game. Their designs were more complex and stimulating than those produced with more traditional techniques.

So, fewer arguments, higher user-centricity, and more exciting designs... sounds good to me. This is a great example of successfully using the power of play in a complex business environment.

Adam

PS I particularly liked this report on one virtual house: "The playtesters conceived the house as a path of rooms that offered sporadic views to the landscape around the house, leading up to the ultimate reveal of the river on the large porch."

Now, that sounds just like the narrative structure of the next Hollywood blockbuster...

Play house pic by barnabywasson at flickr

Start by cheering up the customer

2009-07-21T09:13:00.006+01:00

Starting out right

David Zinger posted a nice overview of his time with impromaster Keith Johnstone. There's a lot worth reading there, but I was especially struck by one side note:

Start by cheering up the audience.

Now, replace "audience" by "customer" (that's one of my favourite hobbies), and we have some powerful medicine. If you set out to start every contact by "cheering up" your customer, you will automatically find yourself:

... being present in the moment.
If you are fully tuned in to the customer's feelings here and now, I promise you will not find yourself thinking about the stack of 27B-6 forms waiting on your desk.

... empathising with the customer's expectations.
A customer comes to you with a particular emotion based on what they think is going to happen next. To cheer them up, you are going to have to read - and beat - that expectation.

... caring about first impressions made by your site, location or appearance.
Everyone knows that first and last impressions are crucial. How do your physical surroundings (colour, light, signage, access) contribute to cheering up the next customer?

... being human.
True smiles can only work over a true person-to-person connection. Humour is the same. Without giving at least a glimpse of the person you are, you are not going to spread cheer. So be yourself - you might enjoy it.!

So, here's a challenge: cheer up some customers as soon as you meet them today.

And here's another: cheer them up even more as they take their leave.

Happy face shot by litanmore at flickr

A Stand-Up's guide to presentation technique

2009-07-17T13:56:00.010+01:00

My personal top ten

Business people love my presentation coaching. I'm an actor and stand-up comedian, so they find my approach refreshing as well as highly effective. Here, in a nutshell, is what I teach them:

10 Close the laptop
Do not plan your presentation by opening PowerPoint and typing your first bullet! Instead, spend time thinking about your audience. Who are they? What do they want? What do they already believe?

9 Throw out your material
It’s a huge mistake to start by collecting material. Don’t ask yourself what you have, ask yourself what your audience will need. Avoid facts and figures - choose powerful images, human stories and genuine emotion instead. These “soft” options are proven to be more effective than any hard numbers. And cut every word that is not truly useful to your audience.

8 Take what’s left and cut it in half
Yes, in half, at least. You should never speak more than five minutes - three is better - unless the people are coming just to hear you speak or you are a paid professional speaker. (And if you think your presentation is “just five minutes”, it is probably about 12. Time it, you’ll see. ) Finish early - they will love you.

7 Don’t start at the beginning
Comedians, rock musicians and James Bond start their shows with a huge bang, and finish with a bigger one. In between, they present a sequence of highlights, getting more impressive all the time. This “Boom!-wow-wow-wow-BOOM!!” sequence is ideal for your presentation (and for any service process). So start with a really strong point - your second best one - then drop down and build up towards your very best “BOOM!” point at the end. Take questions at the bar.

6 Burn the beamer
Look, people’s eyes are attracted to light - it’s why we stare at the fire, the telly, the ocean - so if you use PowerPoint you are distracting from the real presentation - which is not your ruddy slides, it is you. Ask yourself: would Martin Luther King or JFK have benefited from bullet points? (Er.. no pun intended. Well spotted, Ms Pollard!)
(If you have a huge room, you might need a beamer. But use it to project live video of yourself, or for powerful images. Avoid wordy slides and lists - if your slide has more than seven words on it, you are in big trouble. And switch it off as often as you can. Hey, try the “B” key!)

5 Set yourself on fire
This is incredibly important - we look at light, so the brightest object in the room must be you. Get a spotlight on you, and get every other light in the room dimmed or switched off - including the beamer. Insist on this.

4 Don’t read
Never, ever, ever read your presentation. It sounds unnatural, and people need to see your eyes to trust you. Keyword cards are ok, but you won’t need to look at them because you have rehearsed so well. You were planning to rehearse (with a test audience) weren’t you? How much is the time of all the people in the audience worth?

-13 Do something crazy
Do something to surprise your audience. Give them a reason to remember you. For example - don’t hand out business cards, but print your number on bundles of €5 notes and throw them at the audience.

2 Get carried away
This is the big one. I don’t care how you slouch, how you stutter, how badly you dress and how much you fidget with your hands - if you truly, utterly believe what you say, you will convince people. Be yourself and let your passion show. (And if you don’t feel passionate about what you are presenting, please go home and stop wasting our time.)

1 Cancel the presentation
Presentations are there to persuade - not inform. Use them to move emotions, and sway decisions. If you just want to inform, then e-mails, articles, web based training, workshops or personal discussions are proven to be better. Too many presentations are information orgies. So cancel them, and do some work instead.

Magic lantern shot from Magic Lantern Show at flickr.
Article previously published in German in the FrankenPower magazine.

Book your own presentation coaching here.
You should follow me on Twitter here.

Using elevators to impress

2009-06-30T12:37:00.007+01:00

Giving captive audiences a lift...

Elevators (or "lifts", if you're a BritSpeaker like me) are massively underused resources. Even in these days of fitness awareness, if your building has a people-lifter it will see a lot of use. And people in elevators are a captive audience.

So why not show how cool you are by entertaining them, like in this wonderful elevator artwork by Marcello Brambilla for the Standard Hotel in New York?

Remember, it's a fine line between entertainment and invasive advertising. Crucially, your audience here is a captive one - so you don't need to grab their attention. Coax their interest instead, and take it slow - like Marcello Brambilla does here. Don't push product features - tell a story. (It could be one featuring your product or service, but only use it if it's worth telling in itself.) Or just choose something that reflects who you are, or reveals something about your people.

And it needn't be a professional video installation either. What about just making your elevator the official company art gallery, with a different "artist" in charge each month? Your people will surprise you if you let them, I promise.

My mother, a teacher, always says "walls have to work". That's even more true when it's walls that people like to stare at. Who knows, you might even get them talking...

Video via BoingBoing and from Vimeo.

Change the scenery and boost innovation

2009-06-10T15:55:00.008+01:00

Move the meeting to the Holodeck...

Want a cheap and easy way to boost the effectivity of your creative sessions (and in fact any meeting)? Just change the scenery.

My collegue Markus and I felt like a change for our brainstorming session this week, so we headed across the street and into the park where the local town have provided this brilliant performance/meditation/party/picnic/being space.

A pen, a pad of Post-its, and our meeting room was ready. There were no chairs, so we kept thinking on our feet. We weren't alone - but chatting to other space-users kept the mood light and the ideas flowing fast. In the end, our latest plans for world domination benefited from the presence of a couple of bikers, a theology student, two old ladies, and a dog.

Changing your physical surroundings is once of the best ways to increase the output of creative sessions. So take your crew out of that dang meeting room and hit the cafés, museums, parks and rooftops. You'll see the benefits fast, I promise.

And perhaps your people might even look forward to the next meeting...

Pics by Adam's ancient Motorola phone

UX > CX > HX?

2009-06-01T12:51:00.004+01:00

Which way next?

Once, there was UX, or user experience. An emphasis on how the user interacted with your product.

Then we zoomed out to CX, or customer experience. Looking at the customer's entire interaction with both the product and the company - from using the product to reading the ad to calling support to paying the bill.

What's next? HX, or human experience?

Considering the interaction between the company (and all it's agents, whether "working" or not) with all the humans it interacts with - whether "customers" or not?

It will be fun finding out.

Whither weather vane pic from Greg Hefner at flickr.

Never give in...

2009-06-01T00:10:00.008+01:00

If you love what you do, somebody else will love it too...

Winston Churchill gave a famously short speech to schoolboys, where he said:

"Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."

If you believe in what you do, and love doing it, he is right. Here's proof:

I love the way that the dancer directly appeals to the crowd at the start, but is ignored.

The more he just gets down to doing his thing, the more interesting he becomes. And he just never, never, never, never gives up - until his energy is finally irresistible.

Everyone can be a star - if you let them

2009-05-27T15:14:00.006+01:00

Mark Hurst put me on to this terrific wedding video. It's great fun, but it can also teach us something...

Presumably nobody in this clip is a professional performer, but they all give amazing performances. Why?

* Because they are doing something that feels new.
* Because they are allowed to play around while doing it, which makes it fun.
* Because the only pressure on them to "get it right", is their desire to do a good job for their friends.

LOCKDOWN Projects are onto a winner here. They took an oversubscribed service (wedding videos) and shook it up with a great idea. Then they made the idea work by trusting average people to be stars.

What could your workplace learn from that?

PS I hope Brian and Eileen's marriage is as good a party as their wedding was, and I hope that LOCKDOWN get rich and famous rather fast.
I have a feeling they will.

If you liked this, try...

2009-05-25T22:37:00.006+01:00

Affinity blog group

I've been fiddling with the jolly knobs at Google Analytics, and have worked out that the readers referred by these five blogs spend longest on my site, look at the most pages, and bounce least often.

In other words, if you enjoy this blog, you'll almost certainly enjoy these:

The Customer's Shoes
Pow! Right Between the Eyes!
Design for Service
Fortify Your Oasis
Humor that Works*

The list includes several of my own favourites - if you want more, look for the feed of my own regular blog reading about halfway down the right-hand bar... just after the chicken.

* A newish blog, which can slant the Google stats, but certainly recommended.
Group hug pic by fridgeuk at Flickr.

Staging one consistent customer story

2009-05-22T12:20:00.010+01:00

Watching from the wings

Before a show or presentation, you will usually find me waaaay up in the lighting rig, hanging precariously from a gantry and peering at the top of the audience's heads. This is not just to hype myself up (although it is very focussing), or convince myself that my hairline is receding slower than many. Instead, I am trying to feel the vibe, and predict how the show will need to be tonight.

In his book The Invisible Actor, master actor Oida Yoshi (called Yoshi Oida in the West) says:

"Too often actors sit in their dressing rooms or the green room, listening to the tannoy for their cues. Once they hear the stage manager call their names, they go up into the wings, ready to make their entrance. [This] is completely unhelpful in terms of good storytelling. There is only one story being told by a team of actors; not ten different stories being told by ten actors. Therefore, you need to be there in the wings from the very beginning, in order to see how other actors are telling the story".

Anyone staging a customer experience is faced by the very same problem. And remember, the "actors" in a customer experience are not just the staff, but also the customers. So ask yourself:

• What opportunity do my staff have to see how "the story" of our daily business is going, enabling them to start in with the appropriate energy and preparation?

• What opportunity do my staff have to learn how "the story" of this particular customer's encounter with us is going, helping them to take over with the appropriate energy and preparation?

And even:

• How do I let my customer see how far along we are in his "story"? Does he have the feeling af a beginning, a middle and an end? Or, better yet, a hook, exposition, climax and resolution?

Stage wings pic from pimpampum at flickr

Freedom of Speech

2009-05-18T23:37:00.004+01:00

The limits of scripting interaction

A lot of customer encounter design is talking about the words we say. It's very important to consider the influence our words can have. But as every actor can tell you, it's equally important to remember that not every line works from every person. A script needs to be shaped by the person delivering it.

Also, tight scripts lead to rigid thinking, discouraging the flexibility which can make or break a customer experience.

As Barry Schwartz puts it in his TED talk on wisdom.

"We know why these scripts are there. We don't trust the judgment of [employees] enough to let them loose on their own. Scripts like these are insurance policies against disaster.

And they prevent disaster. But what they ensure is mediocrity."

So: give your people a verbal toolset, not a rigid script. It's not just about showing trust, it will actually work better.

(At Work•Play•Experience, we call this freescripting.
You can read more on this theme here.)

Speech bubble pic from Illustir at flickr

Ten Commandments of Experience Design

2009-05-15T09:52:00.003+01:00

Remember...

1. Thou Shalt Offer Something Unique; or thou Shalt Offer Something in a Unique Way.

2. Thou Shalt ask thy Customer what he Expects, and then Give him More.

3. Thou Shalt ask thyself, "What Tale am I Telling, and How Should it be Shaped to Move my Customer?"

4. Thou Shalt Show thy Personality and thy Passion.

5. Thou Shalt Allow thy Magnificent People to Be Themselves and Use Their Own Words.

6. Thou Shalt Give thy Magnificent People free Opportunity and Safe Space to Play Around with What they Do.

7. Thou Shalt Reward Storytellers, for They Are thy Guides.

8. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be thou Vulnerable. Use thine Ears.

9. Thou Shalt Not Do What thou Didst Yesterday. Today's Customer is Different.

10. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Emotion is Good.

(Inspired by the brilliant TED Commandments, via Presentation Zen)
Chisel pic from Tamaki at flickr

For German readers

2009-05-09T13:11:00.004+01:00

Hitting the news stands

The first of my "Fool's Corner" columns for the German business magazine FrankenPower is now in print.

If you can read German, you might like to take a look. Contact me for a copy by post, or download the complete magazine as a PDF here.

Perfect presentation structure

2009-04-28T10:25:00.002+01:00

Two minutes & 22 seconds of intensive presentation training

Raymond Crowe's shadow play of Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" has long been one of my favourite presentations. As well as his technical virtuousity, the way he arranges the various elements is perfect.

Even if you know the clip well, it's worth analysing his structure - and applying it to your presentation.

Mr Crowe has two really powerful images in his show - the Armstrong silhouette and the emotional highpoint of the baby and adult hands. Cleverly, he separates them - grabbing our attention with Armstrong at the beginning. Then come his other elements, starting with the (relatively) weakest - the horse and the swan which most of us could attempt - and moving on through the impressive rabbits. It's clear from the audience's reaction that they love the baby hand, and he wisely saves it for the climax of the piece, shortly before the end. Then we have a little gag with the old man's tongue, before Louis reappears to close the circle.

Watch it carefully, and see how it all fits together:

This classic structure is used by rock-concert planners and stand up comedians - wowing us at the start with your almost-best effort, dropping down to move steadily up through the material before blowing us away with the best piece near the end, and concluding with emotion. I call it "Boom! Wow-wow-wow! BOOM!" and you can read about it here.

In many cases, it's how you should be structuring your presentations - and your customer experiences.

Experience design interview

2009-04-13T11:25:00.006+01:00

From "The Experience Monitor"

I did an interview for Steve Dragoo's Experience Monitor recently. Here is the first part:

Adam Lawrence was born in the UK. He studied psychology and worked in marketing and product conception in the motorcycle industry before running away from suits to join the theater in Bavaria. He now lives in Germany and the Americas, and divides his time between acting, stand-up comedy and the experience design consultancy "Work•Play•Experience" which he runs with service innovator Markus Hormess.
We caught up with Mr. Lawrence recently, and were able to get this exclusive interview (in two parts) for readers of The Experience Monitor.

TEM: What do you think is unique about your own style of experience design?
ASL: My theatrical approach. Experience design is all about shaping a customer's perception and emotion - and showbusiness has been doing that since the first story tellers squatted at the first campfires. I use theatrical tools - like rehearsal, subtext, improvisation and staging - to help staff create an amazing, authentic experience that they and the customers truly enjoy.

TEM: What can you tell us about your background, and what led you into the field of Experence Design?
ASL: I'm a trained psychologist, who won his spurs in marketing and product conception, then became an actor and comedian. What else could I possibly do? :)

Put another way, my psychology background gives me an idea how people perceive and decide. My industry experiences wised me up to the problems faced by enterprises trying to innovate and to grab and grip customers. And being on stage makes me acutely, painfully aware of exactly how the audience (or customer) react to surprise, timing, phrasing and all the rest of the emotional massage that is show-biz.

TEM: You are an Englishman living in Germany (and sometimes the Caribbean). There has to be a story behind your current location. What gives?

ASL: Well, I got disillusioned with the whole UK marketing game for a while in the early nineties, and headed for the Alps (nearly). It's great here - but I really lucked out when part of my family moved to a quiet Caribbean nation. Both Central Europe and Jungle Central are massively stimulating, so I try to split my time and keep busy at both ends.

TEM: Who are your personal heroes in the field of Experience Design?

ASL: I have to say Pine and Gilmore, because they helped me focus my thoughts on the whole subject, and Joe Pine especially was kind enough to encourage me to follow them up. Their more recent work on authenticity really came at an important time.

I also think that the surprise-meister Andy Nulman is amazing. Although he doesn't call himself an experience designer, everything he does is about focussing on the customer and exceeding expectations. And he keeps on doing it again and again...

Otherwise it absolutely has to be Bugs Bunny. Seriously. Timing and (apparent) effortlessness are nine tenths of the battle.

The Experience Monitor is a great little newsletter produced by Service Solutions. Here's the relevant issue. If you sign up now, you'll be in time for the second half of the interview... ;)

Rec pic from Leo Reynolds at Flickr.

Exemplary experience design

2009-04-10T12:59:00.007+01:00

Why the Alamo Drafthouse's sneak premiere was so dang good

By now, you will have heard about the Alamo Drafthouse Theater's amazing coup with the new Star Trek movie. If you haven't heard, here's the plot:

1. The scene: a cool but globally insignificant cinema in a rather insignificant town.
2. The background: everyone's talking about the new Trek film. Opinions are divided, emotions are high. But the film is not out yet, and when it comes out it will first be seen somewhere globally significant. Somewhere far away. Not here. (See point 1). No sir, we are too insignificant for that. Sigh.
3. Because we are too insignificant to see the new film, we content ourselves with watching an old classic instead. Better than nothing, eh? It's a fun idea that fits our theater, but it has a slight aftertaste of valiant loser (see point 1). Sigh.
4. But then - the old classic melts and burns in the projector. The aftertaste of valiant loser gets stronger.
5. Sigh.
6. The management take the stage and try to get a discussion going while the film is re-spliced. Unfortunately, nobody has any questions.
7. Sigh. Sigh...
8. THEN... Mr Spock walks out on stage. MISTER SPOCK!
9. Mr Spock asks us if we'd rather be watching the new film. The one that isn't out yet. The one we are too insignificant to see first.
10. Mr Spock - MR SPOCK!! - tells us that the world premiere for the new film is here and now! Losers we are not!

This is just brilliant experience design for a bunch of reasons. So many, it almost becomes a "best of". How about:

It takes your customer's expectations (go see an old movie) and exceeds them (go see the World Premiere of the hot new movie presented by your childhood hero in person). What a terrific surprise!

Beforehand, we have the burned print and the lame discussion attempt. This massages our expectations down and makes the upswing to the climax even more dramatic. (Remember, this only works with captive audiences).

Of course this wrong-wrong-right is the classic one-two-and-a -THREE! of bait-and-switch dramatic structure seen in jokes. Two points are enough to establish a tendency, which you break with the punchline.

This whole shebang is supported by of the excellent customer community set up around the cinema. These guys have theme nights, food, live heckling by stand-up comedians, customer tours for renegade karaoke parties, their own beer...

The management have obviously gone the extra mile for their customers on this one. Not only did they get the world premiere of what is potentially the film this summer, they also got Leonard Nimoy - the nearest thing to a saint in the Trekiverse - to present it. That was more than one phone call, I suspect.

The idea and its execution shows the Drafthouse crew as hard working real people with the same groove as their audience. Remember, people buy from people.

The whole story is eminently tellable, as evidenced by its rapid dissemination through the internet today.

Great stuff. Oh, and here's the YouTube link.

Via Church of the Customer.
Trekpik by TCM Hitchhiker at flikr.

Instant USP - for free

2009-04-01T21:51:00.005+01:00

Your people know how

The human factor is probably the biggest single piece of your customer experience. If you have good people working for you, agree on the goals and then let them be themselves, it might even be this good:

Fair enough, not everyone has this gentleman's charm or musical talent - but his rap is most successful because he is initially not completely sure if he can pull it off. He shows his humanity, and that is the crucial part. He could have been equally successful doing something far less spectacular - as long as he were doing it his way.

The customers see a real human being doing something unique and - most tellingly - they know they wouldn't get anything like it from the competiton.

Are you brave enough to let your people be this good?

Via the Creative Generalist
PS. Hmm. I wonder if he has read this?

Customer experience, not price

2009-04-01T21:31:00.005+01:00

Quote of the week

In these "difficult times", it's encouraging to see some people who know that the customer experience is critical (and can even save you money). In yesterday's Financial Times, Ron Shaich of Panera Bread argued,

“We continue doing what we do, which is to concentrate on the quality of the experience.

Everyone is degrading their competitive message. They are sacrificing it in the interest of gaining sales tomorrow, simply based on price. And when you compete on price, you simply tell people what you are worth, which is less than what you were selling it for the week before.”

This is from a wildly successful company, which is forecasting 15 to 22% growth this year.

Yes, 22% growth - in these "difficult times".

Sale image by the justified sinner at flickr.

One customer at a time

2009-03-25T03:11:00.004+01:00

Easy, practical, effective

I enjoyed the slides for Jane McGonigal's talk on the future of game development. (Note to self: we will be seeing increasing influence of the gaming industry on customer experience thinking. Watch this space).

My favourite slide said:

THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: If you could make one person measurably happier, who would it be, and what game would you make for them?

Let's turn Ms McGonigal's words into an experience design statement:

THE EXPERIENCE DESIGN CHALLENGE: If you could make one customer measurably happier, who would it be, and what change would you make for them?

Important: we are taking here about a permanent change to the customer experience, not a random gift.

Go on, think of a customer, a real one, and start improving your experience one customer at a time....

Potentially happier customer pic by andreas photography at flickr

Presenters! Always remember...

2009-03-21T14:41:00.006+01:00

Out of the dark...

Based on several otherwise successful presentations I witnessed last week, here's one really, really important rule for all presenters...

Whenever you are using Powerpoint, Keynote or a similar projection system*, always make sure that you are better lit than the screen!

That's all. Thank you for your attention.

*usually you shouldn't be, but that's another story
Big screen shot by prizepony at flickr

Emotion and sound

2009-03-20T00:56:00.005+01:00

Berlioz, Beatles or Benny Hill?

Make sure your volume is not set too loud, then take a look at this film.
(Click on the white rectangle to change the backing music; try a few different tunes).

Isn't it extraordinary how exactly the same images can become intimidating, uplifting or comic just by changing the music? How some music makes us sit back and observe, and other music makes us want to join in? How some feels timeless, some immediate?

A lot of customer experiences, especially in retail and hospitality, feature music in some way. It is usually chosen to be pleasant, non-intrusive and non-offensive. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that - until it goes too far into musak - but it rather misses the point.

Your service offering should be designed to stimulate certain emotions in your customers. (Do you know what they are? You really should.)

Ask yourself if the music you are using in your retail location, on your answering machine or in your elevator really fits the emotion you want to create? Or is it just inoffensive pap, like all your competitors?

Gramaphone shot from djking at flickr

Making the boring stuff fun

2009-03-20T00:18:00.005+01:00

Advice from the Masters

The leaked manuscript from the Spielberg/Lucas/Kasdan brainstorming sessions that gave us "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a terrific read. Try:

"So Indy’s in Cairo with his friend. We're at a scene that we know will be full of exposition, that is, the Staff of Ra was too long for the Germans and they’re digging in the wrong place. So the question was, "what are we going to do to make the scene interesting so the audience doesn’t fall asleep?" And the idea was presented that this exposition could be done over dinner that’s been poisoned. As they pick up tainted food and gesture with it, we fear for their lives. They loved it.
And I've been saying this for years - great exposition is always given in the context of something else."

Exposition is the part of a tale where the audience needs to learn certain information, fast. There are various ways of presenting exposition, but however you swing it, the content remains facts, facts, facts. Yawn.

Now, in almost any service offering, there are things that the customer needs to know, but which are basically pretty boring. Closing times, prices, extras, "small print" - facts, facts, facts.

So, if we take the advice offered by Steve, George and Lawrence, we would be asking ourself what context we could place this "exposition" in, to stop the customer falling asleep.

Rather than writing your closing times on the door as "We close at 6pm", why not have a giant red 24-style countdown clock showing "minutes of shopping time remaining"?

Why not print your refund policy - with your next sales announcement and a discount coupon - on the inside bottom of your carrier bags?

Why not make your receipt something that the customer will want to keep?

What's the story that your customer experience tells? How could you fit your facts-facts-facts into the story, rather than tacking them onto the beginning or end?

(Keep reading - here's more on presentation structure, closing your presentation, and which tools to use. Or, for about 20 more ideas, check out "presentation technique" on the list of themes to the right.)

Indy pic by The MofoJT at flickr

Call for contributions

2009-02-20T12:33:00.004+01:00

Help me put your name in lights

I know, I know, this blog is looking weedy and neglected recently. The thing is - besides making a fool of myself on stage, I've been slaving away on the consultancy work for the last few months. The partnership with Service Innovationist Markus Hormess is burgeoning, and we've been told it's time for a book.

I've already got a modestly successful little e-book out there, but this book will be full-length, offered through a publisher - the working title is The Experience Director - and that's where I need your help.

I like a book to have fresh case studies, anecdotes, human touches. And it's important that they come not just from my location but from all over the world - just like the people who read this blog.

So here's what I'm asking you to do:

1. If you have an experience design (or service design) story, problem, question, project, TALK TO ME. Give me a call, drop me a mail, Skype me - whatever. It doesn't matter if your theme is tiny or huge; it doesn't matter if your project is current, theoretical, long finished, stuck or just a pipe-dream; it doesn't matter if you're a service professional, student or fellow designer - just TELL ME your story. I'm all ears.

2. We can talk about your project, your problems, your ideas. I'll give you my suggestions, thoughts and strategies in return. If you hate them, tell me why; if you like them, you are welcome to use them, free of charge. All I ask is that you keep me posted on how it goes, or how it went. (If you need support making things happen, let me know).

3. If the story teaches us something, or serves to illustrate a useful point, it goes in the book. You'll be credited, named and even pictured (unless, of course, you prefer to remain anonymous).

How's that sound?

Unsure if your story or question qualifies? Well, call me!

You can reach me on +49 157 7374 3112,
or adam( a t )workplayexperience.com.
My Skype name is adamstjohn
(I'm often invisible so ping me first).
Go on, call me!

Name in lights pic from Billaday at flickr.

What we do for freebies

2009-01-24T14:16:00.004+01:00

How to make a splash in the blogwelt...

Canada's Biz-wiz-joke-bloke Andy Nulman is a master of surprise - it has been said* that he "owns" the term - and he's up to his (un)usual tricks again over at his excellent Pow! blog.

In my eyes, the best bit of his "200 free books" post is the last line - "Or could there be, perhaps, maybe, something up my sleeve?"

The ideal partner of surprise is anticipation.

I've emphasised before that it works at a deep psychological level. Put it like this: surpassing your audiences expectations is always great, but pumping those expectations to a higher level and then topping the elevated hopes is unbeatable.

The feeling of expectation gets the primeval juices churning (it's all about emotion, folks!), then the surpassed anticipation wows on an intellectual level too, as well as giving a story to tell.

So Andy, I'll take the bait and line up for a copy of your book. You've lost a sale - I'd have bought one anyway - but I'm keenest of all to find out how you're planning to Pow! me this time...

After all, it's not like the man who can do everything needs help with publicity. ;)

Adam

PS You have my address. :)

* By Andy, but why not? ;)
Picture and film made at that fun Kodak site, Andy image from Pow!.

Customer orientation - sometimes it is easy

2008-12-14T05:10:00.006+01:00

You work it out

Q: Imagine you have a maternity hospital in Taiwan. Who will your main customers be?
A: Erm, maybe, perhaps ... young Taiwanese women?
Q: Very good. What is the most obvious, stereotypical thing that young Taiwanese women go crazy for? Hint: it has no mouth. *
A: Ah. Obviously that cat:

Q: OK, what would be a good decorative theme for your maternity clinic, if you can get the licence?

A: Erm... This?

The maternity hospital in Yuanlin has hit on a gold plated winner, I am sure. Not only have they got a clear and apparent USP (still amazingly rare in the medical world) and a powerful affinity market, they will be reaping outcome benefits from the psychological effects of branding their facility with a much loved and highly reassuring character. How scary can a nurse in a Hello Kitty apron be? (By the way: it's crucial that the logo is huge and not just a pocket emblem.)

This sort of thing would be easy for small medical practices to do - especially ones catering for the young. It needn't be an expensive licensed figure, just something that shows a bit if humour, understanding and humanity instead of those terrifying white coats. It's costume, folks, costume.

* I am privileged to know several young Taiwanese ladies, and the answer to this question is most apparent after about 20 seconds in their charming company.

Hello Kitty pic from Sanrio.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the heads up.

C

2008-12-14T04:40:00.005+01:00

This is my 100th post.

Well done me, and thanks! to all the thousands of readers from (in order of frequency) the US, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, France, Italy, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, Singapore, China, Ireland, Belgium, Philippines, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Poland, Hong Kong, Russia, Finland, Turkey, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Thailand, Israel, Norway, Austria, several very mysterious and secret places, South Africa, Chile, Pakistan, Iceland, Indonesia, Argentina, Taiwan, Lithuania, Greece, Romania, United Arab Emirates, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Colombia, Slovenia, Kuwait, Croatia, Egypt, Slovakia, Jamaica, Vietnam, Peru, Kenya, Puerto Rico, Serbia, Lebanon, Ukraine, Algeria, Serbia and Montenegro, Nigeria, Luxembourg, Sri Lanka, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Venezuela, Ghana, Qatar, Latvia, Uganda, Morocco, Malta, Tanzania, Dominica (yay!), British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Estonia, Libya, Cambodia, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Oman, Moldova, Guadeloupe, Nepal, Malawi, Syria, Georgia, Guyana, Sudan, Macau SAR China, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Jordan, Madagascar, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, U.S. Virgin Islands, Zambia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Namibia, Tunisia, Dominican Republic and the Palestinian Territory!

100 pic by duncan at flickr.

Customer orientation in 30 seconds

2008-12-06T12:38:00.004+01:00

All you need to know

Step into the Spotlight put me onto this one.

If your company understands this and - the tough bit - embodies this, you will get everything you want for Christmas.

Storytelling an experience

2008-11-24T21:05:00.006+01:00

Recommended reading...

I often point folks towards Frank Capek's blog "Customer Innovations: driving profitable growth". He writes pages-long posts that go into absorbing depth, touching on a lot of psychological and neurological themes in his customer experience discussions. A long read, but valuable, terrific stuff.

I've been a fan of Frank's for a while now, but I never knew he visits here too.

Today, Mr Capek used my Boom-wowowow-BOOM! model to analyse Disney's Pirate's of the Caribbean ride. He goes into his trademark level of considered detail, as part of a far wider discussion that touches on character and message as well as narrative structure.

His post is a most excellent overview of experience storytelling technique. Thoroughly recommended - and not just because he quotes me. :o)

Managing a creative environment

2008-11-16T13:16:00.010+01:00

Playstorming your customer experience

The best ideas to improve your customer experience are already floating around in your team's heads. To get them into to the real world with the minimum of digging, you need to foster a special kind of working environment.

In theater, we talk about the rehearsal room as a "safe space". It's a place where experiment and failure are explicitly allowed and welcomed. It is a place where distractions are held to a minimum, and where tools are kept simple to encourage flights of fantasy. And it's a place where the person in charge knows that their job is to help the cast do something that they (the director) cannot do.

It's a difficult task for many managers, because it feels like chaos and (oh horror!) play. Famously upside-down-guitarist Karl Wallinger describes a similar experience:

"(It's) simultaneously doing opposite things — you want to give the sessions control and direction while trying to do the opposite, to create an anarchic space where people can add their piece with as little affectation as possible. That's a fine line to tread, between too much authority and letting people go. It's like being a mini local government — making sure there's roads and bridges."

This kind of enabling, gentle, inspirational management is already important in fields that rely on fast, cheap, iterative innovation - like software development houses. And it is ideal for talking about your customer experience, playing around with it to generate valuable insights and truly fresh ideas.

You can build a safe space almost anywhere - just do all you can to prevent outside distractions, and make it clear to your people that they are safe, that mistakes made here remain here. Don't do this after a hard day's work - this is hard work in itself and should be rewarded as such. You can help release the creativity monkey by throwing in a big heap of toys. You might give them some items of clothing, coloured cloths, cardboard boxes, fat marker pens, and a bunch of crazy objects that have nothing to do with your work but which can represent a wide variety of real world items - or items that do not exist yet. Break the tension by getting them laughing - one good idea it to get them talking about their "worst ever..." experiences.

At some point in the early part of your session, you should expect some heavy venom. You have given your people freedom and - if they believe your offer - a lot of frustration will come out. (Often, this important catharis will eat up the first first half-day). Listen, welcome the honesty, and then offer the group the opportunity to work on solutions to their frustrations.

Now start working on your own customer experiences. But wait - it's effective to start outside your own company with best cases from elsewhere, then start applying those principles. Act out encounters. Switch roles. Try other ways to do the same thing. Try something crazy. Figure out what you are thinking at every step, and why you chose those words. Encourage your team to stay on their feet (even if you normally work sitting down) and always remember "don't tell me, show me". Interruptions are good, but sometimes you should specify a director to mould an interaction (as described here).

Your target is not to create a fixed script, but to generate as many ideas as possible, and perhaps narrow them down to a generous list of strategies and tips that every member of the team can draw on.

Here's the pitch - my team is incredibly good at this. So, if you need help, tips, or ideas, just call me. Talk is free. :)

Safe space pic by thornj at flickr.

Smart ideas for experience designers

2008-10-27T23:38:00.012+01:00

Wisdom straight from the stage

When Greg Allen wrote his 25 Rules for Creating Good Theater, he was thinking of his Chicago theater company and not your customer experience.

Nevertheless, Greg's one-page list of theatrical tips are as good a guide to customer experience, service design or even presentation technique as you will find on any business bookshelf.

Starting with the basics, some of his showbiz pointers are simple good advice for anyone working with customers:

Rule #7: Know your audience
Rule #10: Use the performers for who they are
Rule #523 (!): Include a surprise
Rule #5: Make form follow function

Others are more challenging and thought provoking, but potentially invaluable:

Rule #4: Know why you are creating this show
Rule #17: Put the backstage on stage
Rule #22: Get non-verbal

My favourite Rule is just beautiful - and mighty, if you can pin it down for your customers:

Rule #16: Create a gift for the audience. The show should include a personal gift for each member of the audience – either material, emotional, or experiential. Make sure everyone in the audience has an individual experience of the show to take out of the theater and share and discuss afterwards.

Can your customer experience do that? What could you add, to achieve that goal?

Here's Greg's full list. It's well worth reading.

An experiment...

2008-10-25T15:55:00.007+01:00

Look here --->

This is how it works: if this post got more of your attention than usual, simply post a comment by clicking on the word "comments" in orange below. Or mail me.

That's it. Thanks!

Adam

The Gods' View - an exercise in perspective

2008-10-21T00:22:00.006+01:00

Can you hear me at the back?

I think I like Garth Brooks, though I've never really heard his music. As the story goes, he liked to personally check out the worst seats in his venues just before the show, seeing if the seats way up in the "Gods'" were worth his fan's hard earned cash*. It's a technique we can all use - and not just when we are on stage.

How does your customer experience work from the metaphorical back row?

Imagine you are the very last passenger to check in, the diner who gets the very last portion of soup, the very last caller to dial the hotline today. Imagine you are the absolute latest adopter, the most allergic guest, or you wear the most outsiziest size. Or perhaps you have a dicky back, terrible hearing, low bandwidth or fifty-five year old eyes? Does the experience still work for you?

It's crucial to put ourselves in the shoes of all our customers - not just the ones that look like our "typical customer" personas. This is not (only) because we want to please as many as possible, but because these end-of-the-bell-curve viewpoints and needs can tell us something about the way our experience works for everyone.

A great example from WorkPlayExperience colleague Markus Hormess: I was typing up our Book of Shenanigans, and Markus peered over my shoulder.

"Look at it at 25% zoom," he suggested. "Does the layout still make sense?"

Take a step back. Book late. Get down on your knees. Sit in the cheapest seat. Squint at your packaging.

I bet you will learn something.

Experience Monitor readers click HERE for more...

Binocular pic by Operators Are Standing By at Flickr.

* If the seats were no good, Garth would give away front-row tickets to those back-row fans, or dash up there for a close-up song during the concert. And this from one of the most successful recording artists of all time. Respect.

Happy staff = happy customers, again

2008-10-05T15:03:00.006+01:00

In 2008, Norway's Flytoget Airport Express Train...

1. was the Best Place to Work in Norway.

2. was Number 1 in Customer Satisfaction in Norway.

Hmmm... I wonder if there might be a link?

Number 1 pic by Leo Reynolds at Flickr

Fake smiles are dangerous

2008-10-04T11:25:00.007+01:00

Take the test

I've written before on the dangers of fake smiles in customer experience design. Customers spot them - can you?

The BBC's psychology crew offer this test.

The best way to avoid fake smiles (and uneasy customers) is to make sure that your team are having a blast at work. That's not just a hunch - the Sunday Times Great Places to Work Survey showed that companies whose staff were enjoying their daily grin(d) grew four times faster than average.*

More on what to do about fake smiles here and here.

Plastic smile pic by colodio by at flickr.

* Over the past five years, companies rated as “a good place to work” have shown 25 per cent growth in share and dividend returns, compared to an average return of only 6.3 per cent.
(Source: Sunday Times Great Places To Work Survey, 2002)

How not to close a presentation...

2008-09-29T19:21:00.016+01:00

(A true story)

If you say...

"... thanks for that presentation. In just a second, we'll be opening the buffet. But first, an announcement: the 8.30 meeting tomorrow is not in Building A, but in Building F. Now let's eat!"

They will hear:

"... thanks for that presentation. In just a second, we'll be opening the BUFFET... announcement... YEAH! .. meeting... FOOD! ... building something ... FOOD! Now LET'S EAT!"

Remember Maslow's pyramid? It was a ranking of the things which motivate us, from basic physiological needs at the bottom, up through security, friendship and achievement and on to creativity and the rest of the self actualisation crew. Here's a diagram if you've forgotten, or never cared. Click on it to - hey presto! - enlarge.

Important point: normal people who are busy with high-brain activities towards the top of the pyramid are really, really easily distracted by issues lower down - because they are more fundamental.

This is why your top creative team can't have great ideas if they are worried about their jobs. It's why you don't carry on mowing the lawn if the guy next door drops his pants and jumps you.

And it's why you should never ever mention the imminent opening of the buffet until you have got the important business issues well and truly out of the way.

I experienced this live and in terrifying Stampede-o-rama last week, exactly as described above. As soon as the word "buffet" was out, jackets were being grabbed, chairs were scraping and conversation had started. What followed was not just drowned out, it was ignored by 100 lizard brains who could already smell the steaming flesh. And nobody - nobody - was at Building F the next morning. Oops.

So do say....
"... thanks for that presentation. Here's an announcement: the meeting tomorrow has been moved from Building A to Building F. Got that? We moved the meeting. Now the buffet is open, so let's eat!"

More on the best structure for presentations here.

Hungry man pic by misterbisson at flickr.
Pyramid from Wikipedia.

Happy Semesters

2008-09-25T14:26:00.004+01:00

If you're a student, good luck for the new year

About this time of year, my site Analytics go up a hike as student readers get back down to work. (This time, it's mostly Utah Valley University and Aalborg making up the numbers... hi guys).

So, in the interests of good customer care, I want to wish all my academic readers a great winter semester or trimester!

Grad cake picture by carbonNYC at flickr.

Movement breaks the ice

2008-09-22T12:08:00.006+01:00

Shake before serving...

I'm a big fan of David Polinchock's "crowd control" work over at the Brand Experience Lab. If you've missed it, they've got people in cinemas swaying in unison to play giant computer games on the sacred silver screen...

The most telling statement in this video is when David says that the viewers enjoyed the movie more after playing the game.

I've encountered a similar effect in my interactive theater work. In one successful show, the fun begins with the audience sitting down to a gala meal. One character is wandering around with a bellows camera, taking snaps.

Now, the various actors who play the photographer have different strategies. One will let the people stay seated and will amuse them with excellent witty patter while he sets up his camera and takes portraits. Another actor will get this bunch of strangers on their feet, stand them against the wall, switch them around, make them move into the light, out of the light, banish someone from the group, bring him back... You get the idea.

The difference is startling. While both audiences are equally amused, the shaken-and-stirred second group will move back to their table with the ice thoroughly broken (remember, these are strangers) and quickly get down to the teamwork of the murder mystery, laughing and joking all the time. The other group are just as happy with the show, but the barriers between them are still strong, and they will still be sitting slightly stiffly and making polite conversation during the second course.

Every actor who has done a warm-up knows that physical movement - especially in unison or in groups - is a strong method to break down social barriers and encourage communication. It also gets the blood flowing to the brain and encourages creativity.

If you are a trainer, teacher or presenter, remember to get your group out of their seats and moving as often as you can. If you are planning a party, remember that the simple act of asking people to stand can make the evening better. And if you are designing a customer experience, think how letting customers move and cooperate in groups could enhance their experience of your service.

Tougher stuff for airlines

2008-08-29T02:36:00.003+01:00

But who'll do it first?

As I near the end of my Dominica trip, I dig down through my holiday drawers and see the big fat chunky sweater that I brought halfway across the planet simply "in case it's cold when I land back at home".

I'll by flying back from (endless) summer into (early) autumn this time, so the temperature change won't be so pronounced: But what about the folks making winter/summer trips, who are forced to transport a whole set of warm clothes (and coat, and boots, and woolly hat) into the tropics so they don't die of exposure on the short journey from home to airport? Warm clothes that are simply taking up luggage space and sitting in a drawer through the whole sun-kissed holiday.

Craziness, no?

So who will be the first airline to let me change out of my winter clothes in the plane (or at either airport), put them in a box, and take good care of them for me until the return flight back to my freezing home?

(Or who will be the first airport service provider to offer the same facility?)

Sure, there are other ideas that are easier to organise - there are certainly logistics and security issues here - but I'd shower kisses and loyalty on the first provider who can save me that half a suitcase...

Suitcase and boots shot from metrognome0 at flickr

Wacky-pack-attack

2008-08-22T14:53:00.010+01:00

And why not?

Choosenick put me onto this wonderful little clip:

Of course, it's a gag - but comedy is always made of truth and pain. (The truth here is that we want to celebrate our cool new toy, the pain is that we can't.) So: why not?

Everything up to the point where the guy presses the red button is possible.

So why not take it that far? Then... holographic chorus girls are tricky just now, but there are a bunch of cheap and cheesy fun effects which could replace them.

What about the little melody chips you get in birthday cards? They could play an appropriately quirky tune, celebrating the purchase (no corporate jingles, please!).

How about the tiny voice recording chips I've seen? Why not hear a pre-recorded message from your guy at the store saying "Hi Adam, this is Gary. Thanks for buying this phone - if you have any problems setting it up, call me on my direct number...."

What about the clever techniques you see in modern pop-up books?

What about a little light show with supercheap LEDs? Or a smoke bomb and laser projection on your ceiling...

Erm, well, maybe the lasers are still sci-fi, but you get the point.

Whatever the gimmick is, two things would be important:

1) The manufacturer must realise it's just a gimmick, and keep it fun.
2) It must be replayable, so you can show all your friends...

Only real smiles count

2008-08-14T19:56:00.004+01:00

Authenticity, once more

I was privileged to attend a small literary event with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott last week. He was, as expected, an erudite speaker and one who did not mince words when sharing his opinions on literature, politics or tourism.

Walcott's from St Lucia, an island that has been massively afflicted with huge leisure developments. The (foreign) investors behind them have done precious little for the island in return. ("My" island, Dominica, has been smart enough to focus on high-end eco-tourism rather than mass package tours, and remains relatively pristine - for now.) As a result, the St Lucian relationship with the hospitality industry is not purely positive - and Walcott is clearly angry.

"I keep hearing this thing where if you want tourism, you have to smile," he says. "That's worse than slavery. At least under slavery, you could look grim."*

Hard, hard words, but his point is a strong one.

A false smile is not only dishonest and deadly for the worker's morale - it is also bad business. We are all wary of tricksters, leery of inauthenticity, and that faked smile soon rings our alarm bells. Before ordering your crew to smile, try letting them be themselves - warts and all.

Think about it - it's all about trust, and we all trust an honest curmudgeon more than a smiling dissembler.

Best of all, of course, is to give your team real reasons to smile - like a fair deal and a big say in their creative work. Something that many hotel developers in St Lucia apparently didn't find important.

* My notes of his words, taken down as well as I could on my mobile phone.
Fake smile shot by KM. at flickr.

Jacked Up Presentation

2008-08-04T16:47:00.007+01:00

Bill Lane on writing your presentation

I'm reading Bill Lane's "Jacked Up" - the story of his two decades as Jack Welch's speechwriter at GE. A full review may follow, but I wanted to share one passage with you already.

(I hope that Sally and the other nice folks at McGraw-Hill will excuse an extended quote. Consider it a recommendation.)

"Firstly, shun the PowerPoint. Avoid the computer like it was a roadkill skunk. Go into a room with no phone. Turn on a tape recorder. Stand up. Walk around. Yell. Splutter. Trail off. Start again. What do you know and believe that will knock this audience on its ass? What must they understand, be aware of? Make rough notes on a pad. Write down whole phrases or sentences if you absolutely love them.

All this will start to clarify within 10 or 20 minutes. Ignore the boring crap you have been told to pitch - the mind-numbing "report" or "analysis" that no-one cares about.

Think, at first, only in terms of what the crowd will hear from you, and see in your face and in your passion. At this point, you should put out of your mind any evil vision of a tedious word chart. Spit at the thought of turning you back to your victims and rushing through a read of a two hundred word chart that no-one is interested in.

At this point, PowerPoint is the abortionist of the great presentation gestating within you.

Any presentation that does not give the people in the audience something they can take out of the door with them and use is a failure and a waste of their time."

(Edited for length between the last 2 paragraphs).

Amen, Bill. And thanks.

Rich and famous

2008-07-29T13:22:00.006+01:00

You don't know where I've been...

Sorry for disappearing for a whole month, but the reason is symbolised by the logo on the right. Soon, Work•Play•Experience will not only be a blog, but a fully fledged company.

I've been spending many an hour with my old rock'n'roll colleague Markus Hormess, working out how to turn his process expertise, my showbiz thoughts, and our mutual love for innovation and customercentricity into a service that companies can buy. Change management guru and top-coach Frank Kaeppler was excited enough to jump on board, and in the Autumn we'll be on the market, bringing BoomWowowowBOOM! (and the rest of the show) to a service provider near you.

Expect to see a lot of workers turned into stars, a lot of hidden values exposed, and a lot of customers well and truly impressed. Customer service design with a showbiz touch. You saw it here first.

Adam

(PS All this business planning and service designing has put my next book "The Experience Director" on the back burner for now. But don't give up - it's still on the way. Until then, here's the first volume.)

Tools for finding meaning

2008-06-27T17:30:00.006+01:00

What's it all about, then?

In theatre rehearsals (and in service design workshops), we spend a lot of thought on our message . We ask ourselves what we are trying to say with our play or customer experience.

Hang on! Don't exit stage left pursued by a groan!

This is not wishy-washy heart searching, tree-hugging or vibrating crystals, it's cold hard business. If our offering does not reflect who we truly are, our audience (or customers) will rapidly smell the inauthenticity, and will stay away in droves.

To the surprise of many (and at the cost of much initial eye-rolling) one of the more powerful tools we use to find out what we are talking about is the collage. Remember the heady smell of paper glue in fourth grade art class? That's the one. A table gets filled with ripped-out pictures, Post-its, sections of underlined texts, snapshots, sketches, even small props. When you sit back and look, you can see connections you never saw before. And - very often - the dominant themes are staring you in the face.

The Intarweb offers some tremendous (and addictive) tools for doing much the same thing, without the Copydex headache. One of my favourites is Wordle, which produces word clouds based on any text. Often, the meaning hits you right in the eye - along with a couple of surprises.
Here, for example, is Churchill's famous "fight them on the beaches" speech:

Obviously, the repeated fight refrain dominates - but so do defend, confidence, island, British, and strength. Just the sort of positive, rousing words that master orator Churchill wanted to be heard.

And here - in dangerous proximity - the word cloud for the five most popular posts on this blog:

Hmm. Stage. Audience. People. Wow. Customer. Experience....

I think it about sums it up, but I would have expected another order - so a valuable lesson for me there. Perhaps I should spend more words on the more theatrical side of my thinking...

Go on, go crazy. Stick your website, handbook and ads through a few of these visualisation tools, and see what message you are really leaving with your customers.

PS Thanks for the Wordle heads-up to ConversationAgent.

Collage tools pic by VaguelyArtistic at flickr.

Backstage heroes

2008-06-26T13:15:00.005+01:00

Ninja* customer service

I am sure most of you will have seen this great video, and others of this ilk.

The lesson for customer experience and service designers?

Sometimes we have to give up the easy life backstage, to make things more memorable for the customer frontstage.

PS For a very different take on "the men in black", try here.

(*Actually it's bunraku, but ninjas always sell better.)

Subtext in customer contact - try this!

2008-06-18T20:30:00.006+01:00

A practical exercise to understand customers better

Luvvies (that's us theatrical types) tend to drone on about one or two subjects pretty much constantly. Besides fourth walls, the indisputable fashion merits of roll-necked pullovers and how awful the audience is, one of our favourite themes is "subtext".

Subtext is what is left over when you take the written lines away from a role. In other words, it is what the character is thinking. The same piece of text can have different subtexts depending on the context, character and interpretation of the role.

"I love you!", for example, could have a bunch of different possible subtexts, including...

"I want to sleep with you!" "Don't leave me!" "I'm sorry!"
"I'm leaving you!" "Help me!" "Goodbye!" "You have to die!"
"Don't hurt me!" "Mmh. Please do that again!"

Get the idea?

Here's an exercise that generates lots of insight: set up a couple of your team to simulate a customer encounter (yes, the dreaded roleplay). Try to be as real as possible. Now go through the encounter again, and for each statement, think about the subtext - what the customer or team member really means.

(A fun and practical way to do this to have someone stand behind each speaker, perhaps with their hand on the speaker's shoulder. Just tell them to "say out loud what you think he is thinking". This impro game will give you the rough idea.)

For example, when the customer says "Do you have anything simpler?", his subtext speaker might "This has more features than I need". But they could equally say "I don't understand this, I must be stupid.", or just "I cannot afford this, I need to get out of here."

This is a powerful exercise for two reasons. Firstly, it can sensitise team members to see the customers' point of view better.

Secondly, you can use the subtext of the customer's words to think about replies that truly address the customer's needs - or at least pin them down more precisely. (The three versions above would all need very different answers, and two of those answers must be delicately phrased to avoid making the customer feel awkward).

Remember, it is only by deeply understanding your customer's needs and expectations that you can hope to exceed them. And exceeding expectations is what creates the emotions that bring customers back again and again.

Script pic by kevinthoule at Flickr

Rapid feedback, rapid action

2008-06-04T17:05:00.007+01:00

Instant applause in the workplace

We actors are lucky for many reasons. Not only do we get free beer, wealth and all the best girls, we also get immediate feedback on our customer experience when the customer applauds - or doesn't. In most businesses, though, it's hard to get that highly valuable instant reaction from customers. Here's a great example that pulls it off.

At Jet service stations in Germany, the key to the rest room contains a little dial which you can turn to show how satisfied you were with the cleanliness of the facilities. You finish your business, and while walking back to the attendant you dial in your verdict - thumbs up, or thumbs down. As you hand it to the cashier, she can immediately respond to your feedback, affirm you as a customer, and take action if necessary.

This "Toilet-TÜV" is a excellent feedback tool, and a rather splendid bit of customer experience design*. The name is well though out, because the TÜV acronym represents the car safety tests carried out by the scarily strict - and highly esteemed - German quality authority called the Technischer Überwachungsverein (Gesundheit!). The link to motoring is clear, and it invites the customer to adopt a role that carries a lot of respect, while still remaining playful. As the key needs to be handed back to the cashier, there is also a guaranteed human element involved, and a built-in opportunity to win back a customer who might be disaffected.

And because it requires less time and courage to turn a plastic dial than to answer truthfully to the question "Alles OK?", the feedback is going to be more honest and thus much more valuable.

Nice work, Jet.

Now, most honoured reader, could your company use something similar?

* Far better than the terrible coffee-spilling voiceover on their website, sorry. (Key image by Adam.)

How To Do The Impossible

2008-06-03T01:11:00.008+01:00

Advice from a comic turned businessman
A Work•Play•Experience book review

In many ways, I wish I were Andy Nulman. I pride myself that we have some things in common – a resume that includes comedy, blogging and big business; a joy in the unexpected or irreverent; and an oft-irresistible desire to drop our trousers for laughs. He’s a well-known figure (hey, he’s got his own Trivial Pursuit question), famous for his insanely successful comedy festival and equally vibrant business venture, Airborne Mobile. He also writes the occasional book, and that’s what we’re here to talk about.

Andy’s 2007 book is called How to do the Impossible. It’s a pretty interchangeable title that you could find anywhere in the business or self-help section of your bookshop, but it's clear after the first page that this is not an interchangeable book. The wee volume has Andy’s stamp all over it, his personality (as I imagine it) coming through on every page.

Like any comic, Andy Nulman knows that a few good words are better than many less select ones; and as a network content expert he knows that bandwidth is expensive. This combined wisdom gives his book its first great advantage over the rest of the pack: in his own words: IT AIN'T FAT. Like Steve Job’s speechwriter, he isn’t afraid to use monster typefaces, or evocative pictures. The result is a slim volume of giant headlines (sometimes a sentence fills a page) and pithy pics – easy, light, fun reading that you can get through in a couple of hours. Good stuff.

It’s probably also Andy’s stand-up experience that lets him get away with minimal set-up for his philosophical punchlines. While eighty percent of most business books is hard sell – convincing you that you need to change – Andy assumes he already has your attention. He eschews further brainwashing and relies mostly on his infectious energy and Justin Adler’s page-turning design to suck you into the book. By the time you look up, you’re past halfway, your buttered toast is stone cold and leathery and you might as well plunge back in.

With an introduction and four chapters, HTDTI has five acts – just like a Shakespearean play. There's also a slightly Puckish epilogue. And like all of the Bard's plots, the actual themes are robust, precious, real - and not really terribly original. That is absolutely no problem – indeed, most words of truth have been spoken before. We still need to hear them, and be convinced to act.

And Andy’s talent lies in making you listen, wake up and see the path forward – and in convincing you that you are just the chap who can walk it. That's the truly tough bit - and Andy nails it.

He’s presented the content of this book in hundreds of seminars, and it’s impossible not to see him bouncing up and down on stage as you read (I have no idea is Mr Nulman is a bouncy person, but in my head he is). And it’s equally easy to imagine his audience leaving filled with his energy and inspiration. As a reader, you’ll feel it too.

In the knots and fiddles of everyday life, it’s easy to get tangled up in the details. Beside being a fun read, How To Do The Impossible is a great way to recharge your batteries and get back on track – in just a couple of hours. Andy’s four tips apply equally well to a business person, an actor, or someone trying to create an innovative customer experience.

(If that is not enough reason to buy it, it may have novelty value as the only business book to contain almost nude pictures of a senior media-industry executive. Perhaps that is why it sells second hand at Amazon for over a hundred dollars. But never mind, you can download it here.)

Andy's TV nakedness here
Book image from the publisher's site

Improvised solutions impress customers more

2008-05-26T00:18:00.007+01:00

Throw away the script to be more authentic

Those of us who work on the stage are fortunate indeed - for we are blessed with an immediate and clear feedback system. If we work well, we are immediately rewarded with applause or laughter. If we do poorly, we are punished with silence, or jeers, or departure. (Or with another kind of laughter. Or with people throwing things. Or with people coming up on stage and trying to punch my head. But that's another story.)

The ace bit about this phenomenon is that it often lets you know precisely which bit of your experience design is working best. It's simple - if they responded well to that bit tonight, it was good. If they didn't, it needs some work. No problems there. But what does it tell us?

Now, much to our writer's chagrin, it is often the case that the biggest laugh of the night is rewarded to an "aside" - something you say which is outside the script. This can be a quick put-down to a heckler, a humorous reaction to a cellphone going off in the house, or a rapid quip in response to collapsing scenery or colleagues.

These asides are not usually the wittiest gag of the evening. To be honest, they are not usually very funny at all. They are not rooted in your character, or in the dramatic form, and they often lack depth and/or cleverness. But if they are halfway quick, and halfway decent, they get a monster laugh. Odd, isn't it?

The crucial bit is that - because these asides arise in response to a particular unplanned situation - they are obviously unscripted. And this makes them two things. They are:

1. unique
2. authentic

They are unique because the situation was a one-off, and the audience know it will never happen that way again. That laugh will not be there in tomorrow's show - it is their laugh.

They are authentic, because they obviously came from the actor himself - not from some highly paid, uncaring jokewriter. The gag was obviously invented right here and right now, by that living person standing right there.

All too often in service experiences, we feel that the employee is working to a script. And when they leave that script to improvise a solution for us, we are deeply impressed. We feel it was our personal solution - unique and authentic, invented by a real person.

So, how often do you ditch the script in your services? Or, if you are the big cheese, how do you respond when your staff throw the book away? Is there perhaps a way you can make your customers feel that every solution is authentic and unique - just for them?

improvised first aid pic from gregor_y at flickr
ditched script pic from z1784 at flickr

Experience design e-book

2008-05-21T19:30:00.008+01:00

It's time for a small celebration...

Today, the 2,000th reader downloaded my mini-ebook, which lists some showbiz tools that anyone can use to impress customers. Thanks, folks!

If you've not taken a look yet, you can download the book here (or via the link in the left column). Just 20 pages, and it's free!

My second e-book - The Experience Director - is still in the works. Watch this space...

2000 image by Leo Reynolds at flickr

More on the experience sequence

2008-05-18T10:57:00.004+01:00

Shuffle the notes...

My coffee-smelling post last week has attracted some attention - many thanks to all those readers and bloggers who picked up on it.

Jeff Howard - who writes the Design for Sevice blog - was kind enough to refer to my tale, adding the following terrific analogy from (you guessed it) showbusiness.

A grace note is a short, separate note that occurs immediately before a longer run of notes. If a musician were to simply launch into an extended passage, the listener might be apt to miss the effect of the first few notes and struggle to catch up. The grace note engages attention and makes the sequence more impressive. I often use the visual equivalent of this principle in interface design to delineate animations; it works exactly the same way.

(Read the full post here.)

This is a nice refinement of my coffee-pot story, where the whiff of java was often just plumb necessary to get the attention of potential customers who were lost in their own thoughts or media. In Jeff's analogy, the concert audience is presumably already attentive - but the grace note helps focus their attention on the virtuoso passage to come. It's less of a "wake up!" and more of a "ok, here we go..."

One of the main functions of customer experience design has always been to draw customer's attention to hidden values - to show them exactly how much bang they get for their buck. Perhaps we need to be using more grace notes to draw our customers' attention to virtuoso service...

piano pic from evilibby at flickr

Why laughter is good for innovation

2008-05-15T16:31:00.026+01:00

You need to be joking II

Many thanks to regular reader Kat for passing on these excellent words from genius comedian Stephen Fry (Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, V for Vendetta etc), assisted at the close by Mr GK Chesterton:

"There is an argument that comedy is a greater public service than any other genre of art or culture: it heals divisions, it is a balm for hurt minds, it binds social wounds, exposes real truths about how life is really led. Comedy connects.... Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity. Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."

(read the complete transcript here)

I've argued before that every workplace needs at least one jester - someone who is allowed tell the bitter truth with a sweet smile. Not only is a climate of laughter good for your health and your staff's motivation, it can teach you valuable stuff.

Believe it or not, poking fun at your company's structures, habits and products is a terrific way to learn a whole lot about your set up - and make plans for the future.

The key is that humor is based on truth. If comedy builds on untruths, it might be absurd but is never truly funny. Back in 1926, H.W. Fowler put together this oft-quoted table to explain the different types of gags. If you don't have super-vision, just click the image to enlarge.

The venerable H.W. argues that humor, wit and satire promote discovery, illumination and amendment (we might say improvement), and that they are based on observation, surprise and accentuation.

Two important things to note:

Firstly, there's a strong contrast there with sarcasm, invective et al, which hurt more than they help. Avoid them, unless you are trying to topple dictators this weekend.

Secondly, are not discovery, illumination and amendment just the sort of things we need in our next innovation cycle?

As an exercise, why not let your team write some gags or a wee comic sketch about your work? Show them H.W.'s chart if you like, or just let them go crazy. (You could even get a professional to help out, e.g. this guy.) Do this not as part of your annual office party, but as part of an innovation or strategy workshop.

Sit back, hold tight, and hold your tongue. Be prepared to laugh a little, and to wince in pain, and to cry. And make notes whenever you want to do one of those things - because all three of those feelings are telling you the truth.

Minijester pic by Liquid Paper at flickr

Shuffle the service to make it better

2008-05-09T15:52:00.015+01:00

Pants first, then the shoes....

When you are designing a service or a customer experience, you sometimes have to do things in a slightly less efficient way.

In other words, you might have to work a little harder backstage to make things smooth for the customer frontstage.

Points to remember:

1. This is hard work. Sorry.
2. But it sells stuff!

I saw a wonderfully simple example of this last week.

Picture the scene: on mega-whizz German express trains they sell coffee by helpfully walking down the carriages with a tray of cups. Nice. The brown stuff is poodle-scorchingly hot, and superfast trains move oddly, so we have a guy in a blue uniform with a very careful gait and nervous expression as he teeters through the train calling out "Kaffee! Kaffee!".

Sadly, his valiant efforts are in vain, as almost nobody buys any. Ever. Everyone has their eyes down, ears phoned and is busy with their novel, highlighter pen or Great Train Journeys dvd. Our poor public servant is steadily ignored.

But if you watch the rows behind him, you will see a dramatic effect. About five seconds after he passes, people smell the java. They look up with bright caffeine-addict expressions, their hands groping in a tight back pocket for change. They lean out of their seats, ready to order and... the guy is gone.

(Actually, he is about three rows away, but it is far too uncool to call him back. So no-one does.)

The effect was proved last week, when our heroic conductor forgot something. He turned around to fetch it, and was staggered to sell his six cups off coffee within three rows. Three rows of people that he had already walked past, shouting, but who had only noticed him when their noses started speaking to their gastric juices.

Doh!

Of course, from the workflow perspective it makes a lot of sense to efficiently walk through the train just once, and waste a pretty good service.

From an experience design point of view - ie the customer's - our conductor needs to walk straight through each carriage first to let people smell that richly roasted aroma, then turn round and get selling. Thrice as much walking, but what a difference!

About a million billion years ago, a guy called Aristotle knew that the sequence of events in a story is as important as the events themselves when audiences emotions were to be excited. How does that apply to your service... from the customer's point of view?

Want to read more like this? Click here.

Coffee&lips pic by Bitca at flickr
Coffee&window pic by charliebay at flickr

Service designed from the outside in

2008-04-21T21:15:00.005+01:00

In the family way...

Most companies on this planet are conceived from the inside out, starting with the offering. They have some kind of service or product, in various forms, and they want you to buy it. Their entire structure exists to support the offering, and find customers that match it.

Take new car dealerships, for example. Typically, they are contractually bound to one manufacturer and sell that one manufacturer's whole range, from sports cars to people movers to citymobiles to executive saloons. The upshot - a typical car dealer has a showroom full of cars - and about one particular model which is of interest to any given customer.

It's a nightmare for the salespeople ("should I dress fashionably or conservatively?"), and it's a nightmare for the customer ("I want a cheap runabout - I'd better go and visit six different dealers...").

At familycars.de the concept is far smarter. They sell only family cars - from a bunch of different manufacturers, and out of a single showroom. The whole experience is well designed - with activities for kids, childcare, family-friendly opening times (a miracle in regimented Germany), play areas inside and out, free dvd players for those long journeys - and even family-oriented financing.

But their approach goes far beyond experience design - it is a completely customer-centric service design, from the core out. Brilliant! Terrific! And they are quite deservedly being showered with prizes...

If you think about it, it's an obvious path to success. So...

... why are there still a thousand Product Managers out there for every Customer Segment Manager?

Photo by freeparking at flickr

Make it tellable

2008-04-14T16:14:00.009+01:00

Normal folks don't talk dpi, they tell stories

Cool new printers are like leaves in a forest these days, and it's terribly hard to make any one stand out. Even super-duper printer-fax-scanner-copiers are now serious yawn-material. But when my good buddy and colleague Markus bought himself an HP machine last week, he called me straight away to rave about one feature.

"You put in your memory card," he says, "and it prints thumbnails of all your photos."
"Uh, OK," I reply.
"Wait, this is the cool bit. On the printout, there are little boxes next to the thumbnails. You tick the size you need, and put the paper back in the machine. It reads your ticks and prints the pics you want automatically!"

Now, I don't know if this is HP's own idea, or if it's even new, but it's solid gold experience design for two reasons.

Firstly, that is a brilliant interface. People are much happier with pens and papers than with even the best computer menus - and you can pass a piece of paper around. Choosing the pics to print becomes a social experience on the sofa or in the cafe, without the sickly light and cricked necks of too many people trying to see the same computer monitor. Excellent work!

Secondly, that design feature is something that it is really easy to talk about. And this is important.

Remember, a lot of technical development results in improved specifications - say, a higher dpi or printing speed. There's not much you can say about that, except "well, it's better quality" or "yes, it's a bit faster". Hardly gripping stuff - and well on the way to Commodity City.

HP's clever user experience gimmick is different, because it gave Markus a story to tell - and helped him endorse a product he was excited about without boring us with geeky spec-numbers.

Pine and Gilmore argue that the experience economy is about creating memories. You could also say that experience design is about creating good stories - that bring all the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing.

Question for the week - what part of your offering is easily "tellable"? What makes a good story, for people to pass on to their friends?

Storyteller pic from travel_aficionado at flickr

7#3 d3v1c3 #45 b33n m0d1f13d

2008-04-03T01:27:00.005+01:00

IT'S ADAM'S BIRTHDAY
Not saying how old he is, but does that matter? Let's just say it's a good one.

Anyway... time for you to come up with some extra-creative birthday wishes.

Me? I wish him the groundbreaking discovery of the secret of Step 2.
And, of course, all things bright and beautiful. And cake.

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       ######GET#A#SAFER#PASSWORD#####

There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the companion cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. More quickly than any test subject on record. It wasn't brave. It was murder. Now there will be no party associate to pick you up for your party. Not even if you assume the party escort submission position.

L00k at me still talking when there's science to do... goodbye.

Using opposites to emphasis experience

2008-03-26T18:56:00.007+01:00

A burning contrast

It would be a disservice to Flash Art to describe their work as "firework displays" - they combine fire, lasers, water and music in world-class spectacles, like the closing display of the 2006 World Cup final. Here's a great tip from Flash Art pyrotechnics wizard Markus Katterle, interviewed in Focus.

"If I want the audience to experience the colour red in the sky especially intensely, I first need to colour the sky green for one minute."*

Those of you who played with a colour wheel at school will remember that red and green are traditionally considered complementary colours - perfect opposites. Mixed together, they give a dull sludge, but they can placed in opposition to dramatic effect.

Contrast is a vital tool in experience design, and Markus' quote can be applied to much more than just light. Any loud chord seems louder if it crashes out of silence, and we all enjoy that cup of piping hot cocoa most when we are truly frozen.

One of the best uses of contrast in experience design I ever encountered is in the German National Museum in Nuremberg. The lobby here is very light, warm and airy, with acres of glass and glaring white walls. At the back, you pull open a heavy door and step - Pow!- into a cold, dark medieval cloister. The contrast is quite simply startling, and the feeling of time travel inescapable. Great stuff.

Contrast need not always be extreme, and it need not always generate a feeling of surprise. Use it to draw attention to your experience's best aspects, and to provide variation in your customer's emotional curve.

Where could you use contrasting light in your customer experience? And what about sound? Texture? Temperature? Aromas? Activity? Price?

* Focus magazine, 31.12.07 pg 83. Translation by Adam.

Colour wheel from jasmic at flickr.
GNM pic from bsnu.

Artful Making

2008-03-21T22:34:00.006+01:00

A Work•Play•Experience book review

I’ve been writing about parallels between theatre and business for a while now, and of course I am not alone. When “Artful Making” fell into my lap a few months ago, I was immediately curious. Aha, says I. A book by a Professor of Business and a Professor of Theatre, subtitled “What Managers Should Know About How Artists Work”. Right up my street.

It’s clear that the parallels between – for example – a software company working towards product release and a theatre company heading for opening night go deeper than the dangers of divas distaining decaff as the deadline draws nigh. Profs Austin & Devin emphasise several aspects of “artful” (it’s mostly theatre, as it happens) work processes that are of interest to managers – especially managers in the knowledge industry or where innovation is in the foreground.

In the Profs’ words: “Artful managers begin a project with some idea of the outcomes they desire, but without controlling preconceptions. They set up a low-cost, iterative process that facilitates exploratory production (aka rehearsal – Ed.) . They coach their performers on a journey that they themselves cannot take, using earned trust to influence the focus of the group. They believe that good ideas will emerge from an impeccable process, and they moderate a complex, multi-layered interaction in which many elements converge over time, though they never lock in on exact replication. Artful processes elicit innovation in every iteration, hence they are never perfectly consistent. They are, nevertheless, reliable and precise when it comes to the requirements that must be met.” (Artful making pg 161)

As you can see, Austin and Devin know that art-work is often seen by “real” business people as lax and freewheeling, are they are at pains to emphasise that this approach to work is actually disciplined, reliable, financially responsible and able to produce extremely precise results. They also press home that an artful making approach is not always appropriate, especially where production requires serious capital investment in advance.

Besides a bunch of enlightening parallels, perhaps the most useful contribution made by this book lies in offering a different wordset to talk about business process in the knowledge industry and elsewhere. The language used to describe many business processes is drawn from industry and the last century – and it often fits poorly. In Artful Making, Austin and Devin offer an alternative metaphor and model for conceiving business processes, and one that is more fitting to many service industries than the current vocabulary.

It’s a serious book – the final score is Graphs 4, Pictures 0 – but there are sufficient anecdotes and case studies to provide variety for luvvy-airheads like me, and the writing style is light and easy so the pages keep turning.

I recommend Artful Making highly to anyone working in, or interested in, new business fields, the knowledge industry or service design.

.

Step 1. Steal Underpants

2008-03-06T18:13:00.007+01:00

The Big 3 Strike Again!

It's a well known fact that there are three essential components to any hit. They are:

1. Sex
2. Humour
3. Death

The excellent KnickerPicker site combines the Big Three in a great online experience.

(The site may be NSFW if your work environment objects to underwear being sold in public. If it does, get a new job.)

At KnickerPicker, a trio of virtual ladies will model top brand underwear for you, helping you choose just the right set for your own self, or your better half. You can change the outfit, get the girl to turn round, even come closer. There is an online shop and delivery service, of course.

Go on, try it.

Here's why I like it:

1. Sex: the site uses sexy girls to sell sexy undies. Nothing new there, but it's nice that the girls come in three sizes from "ouch!" to "real woman". And the fact that you can influence the models' actions makes it a little sexier somehow. (Blush).

2. Humour: it's good clean (?) fun making the girls walk up and down and turn round, and their expressions seem beautifully ironic at times. The ladies find it fun too - Marie Claire made it their "favourite new website". Best of all, though, is the "Boy's Buying Guide" for men faced with the terrifying task of finding out her size...

3. Death: let your lady catch you spending too long with the wrong sized model, and you are in big trouble.

KnickerPicker: a great site, combining a fun experience with a genuinely useful service.

Vintage undies photo from antiques.about.com.
More about the importance of stealing underpants here.

Steve Martin on dead rooms

2008-02-29T18:44:00.004+01:00

Huge, unfunny barns

An oversized room is a killer for every event, as I have written before.

In an excellent and fascinating article in February's Smithsonian Magazine, über-comic Steve Martin makes the same observation:

"I got a welcome job in 1971 with Ann-Margret, five weeks opening the show for her at the International Hilton in Vegas, a huge, unfunny barn with sculptured pink cherubs hanging from the corners of the proscenium.

Laughter in these poorly designed places rose a few feet into the air and dissipated like steam, always giving me the feeling I was bombing*."

Remember if you are planning an event - always choose your room one size too small...

Photo from stevemartin.com

*If you are unfamiliar with the term, "bombing" is comic-speke
for completely failing to amuse an audience. It's no fun.
And don't ask me about my last gig in Budapest...

Architecture as experience

2008-02-26T17:50:00.006+01:00

"Architecture is great cinema!"

Quote of the week this - erm - month, is from Friend-of-Brad Thomas Willemeit of hip Berlin-LA-Beijing architects Graft.

“I have always enjoyed asking myself how we can describe a home not just as a organisational floor-plan, but by describing how we experience it. When I enter a dwelling, I have certain atmospheres one after the other - sequences of light and shade, of narrowness and space. There is a scenography, a dramatic structure for the space. Architecture is great cinema.

We design buildings like films, whose power lies in leading us through worlds and catching hold of our emotions.”

“We felt the poetic, narrative aspect of architecture. Where does the architecture trick us? Where does it lead us astray, like a stage set?”

(From an article in GQ Germany, February 2008).

Architects are among the most experience-aware designers, probably because you cannot take in their work all at once, and they are forced to consider the timing aspect. Remember, once design has a time component, it becomes experience...

More for architects here...

Translation by me, image from the GQ online article.

Here's one...

2008-02-13T17:16:00.011+01:00

First entry in work-life-experience ...

I asked readers to design my new apartment, so here we go...

Thanks for this go to Kat who - as well as being as smart as paint - is massively tech-savvy, knows a scary amount of kooky and non-kooky stuff, and has a sense of humour that can freeze-wither a sitcom writer in asbestos underwear at 500 yards.

Here's the video at YouTube.

Nice bit of Boom-wowowow-BOOM! in her work - and all kinds of hidden gags. If you were to see the original walk-through, you would see that the cardboard cut-out of me (wow!) has a white macBook like me (wow!) and on the screen of the laptop is ... this blog!

BOOM!

Kat wants to work in gaming, and if you guys don't snap her up in minutes you are quite possibly letting yourselves in for a due diligence suit.

You need to be joking

2008-02-07T18:33:00.000+01:00

Clowns in big business

Medieval kings knew the value of a jester - someone who was allowed to say the truth, and was able to soften the blow by the skilled application of humour. They were a valuable pressure valve too - careful doses of humour can dissolve tension, and lead to honesty.

It turns out that comedians are fast-thinking types too, and can even have the occasional creative flash (at least, that's what folks tell me in the brainstorming sessions I do with executives).

Perhaps it's because we jokers are not afraid to think outside the box, because we have to be good at seeing others' points of view and are practiced at turning ideas over and over until we find an angle we can use.

Whatever the reason, the jokers in your midst can help keep everyone sane, as well as generate off-the-wall ideas. See jokester-meets-business-wiz Andy Nulman if you need any proof, or have a look at this Fast Company article on humour Professor John Morreal.

And ask yourself - who is the joker on your team?

Joker pic by kevin (iapetus) at flickr.

It's all in the drool

2008-01-16T19:29:00.000+01:00

Anticipation again...

Like a million other Mac fans, SquireTV buddy Markus Hormess and myself were keenly following yesterday's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs.

My favorite bit of the hype was the "back soon" sign posted on the Apple Store website for the last few hours before the speech - you can see it in the picture above. Markus (who's much more tech-savvy than I) tells me there was no technical reason for this. The website could have kept running normally, switching in new content as appropriate.

Instead, the "back soon" sign gave a feeling of the (mac-)world holding it's breath, waiting for the latest thing in gorgeous little white boxes.

I've written before that anticipation is hugely important - at a very deep neurological level. This little gimmick milked that fact nicely.

PS More on Steve Jobs' presentation style here.

Choosing rooms for successful events

2008-01-14T20:53:00.001+01:00

Pack 'em in tight

Apart from speeches (you know I hate speeches) and bright white light, there is one thing that really kills any event. It is:

a room that is too damn big.

I learned this lesson from bike industry guru Silvio Manicardi back in my distant youth. We were organising the publicity auction of the first road-legal NR750 ultrabike. The bash was due to take place in Milan, and I was told to book a function room.

"How many people are we expecting?" asked the boss.

"About a hundred, maybe a hundred and forty," I replied.

"So book a room big enough for seventy."

The effect was spectacular - people were struggling to get in, and standing on tables to see. Photographers were - literally - fighting to get a shot. The atmosphere was electric, and our little event felt like the hottest spot in town. The NR sold for a monster sum - securing a pile of money for Unicef and our bike's place in the Guinness Book of Records.

You can see the reverse of this effect at any half-full soccer game, or half-empty nightclub. It's an easy equation: under-filled venue equals zero atmosphere.

When you are planning an event, product launch or party and want people to have a good time, it's crucial to avoid a feeling of empty space. (This is the reason why are never going to have a hit event on your trade-fair stand, so don't even try.)

Choose a room that is slightly too small, and go for a low ceiling if you can. Warm acoustics are important - nobody wants to laugh or applaud into cold silence. Even a door onto an echoing foyer can kill the atmosphere if it is left open. Don't listen to the venue if they suggest putting in free-standing partitions to make a large room smaller. This will not take away the echoing space above, and will only make the event feel more like a flop.

And don't under-heat the space. You want people to be taking off jackets, loosening collars, and letting their hair down. It's easier to open a window than to turn up the heating...

In the worst case - and if the event is suitable - you might need to consider "papering the house", as they say in showbiz. This involves inviting free (or even paid) guests to make up the numbers. Even the Oscar-organisers have a regiment of students in tuxedos primed to fill up the seats during the boring technical awards, when half of Hollywood heads for the bar and the bathroom*.

So pack 'em in. And remember - no crush, no rush.

* Of course, not every event is as inviting as the Academy Awards, so it's hard to be sure your "wallpaper" will come. Broadway tradition says the best place to give away free tickets is at the dorms where nurses live. Students will accept your free ticket, then forget to show up. Nurses are more reliable - thank goodness.

Sardine pic by Saffanna at flickr.
Stadium shot by Amin Tabrizi at flickr.

Back to business...

2008-01-14T17:59:00.000+01:00

Papa's got a brand new book

The good news: I finally managed to get my sticky mitts on my new MacBook. Yippee!

The bad news: So, I'll be posting regularly again from now on.

Massive kudos points to EnterVisions for their excellent personal service. A teeny-weeny firm located in a local village, they were able to get me the machine within two days (the Big Boys would have needed two weeks). Then they called me to conform that my baby had arrived, and stayed open late so I could come by to pick it up after hours.

And when the cashpoint only gave me three-quarters of the money I needed, they said "No problem, just give us what money you have and send us the rest next week."

Wow! Guess where I'll be macShopping in future?

HappyMac photo by Patrick Haney at flickr.

Empty, so empty...

2007-12-07T15:06:00.000+01:00

Blogger blagged

Well, you've not heard from me for a while. The reason is not lack of ideas, or even time, but the fact that some atter snivvering bampot stole my beloved i-book from the dressing room at my last stand-up gig.

This means that instead of using my travelling time for writing wisdom, I am forced to look out of the window and count cows.

1,229 so far. I like the brown ones best.

bull pic by baroness_nordmark at flickr

What managers can learn from directors

2007-11-13T15:24:00.001+01:00

Once more with emotion, darling!

Directors, like managers, come in different shapes, sizes and smells, and their styles are equally varied.

One type of director will microdirect you - to the point of telling you how to say your lines (or even saying them out loud for you to copy), telling you precisely when to stand and to sit, and even when to glance where. This approach is not popular with actors and has lead to the defenestration of several promising directorial talents (usually accompanied by cries of "don't tell me how to act!" and much piqued twitching of neckscarves). On the other hand it can lead to some very precise work and is certainly necessary when directing more physical sequences or stage "business".

Another type of director will only talk to you about your character's motivations, background and feelings, emphasising different aspects thereof until you both come naturally to the effect the director is looking for. They will rarely tell you what to do at all, but will try to make you develop actions from within. This can be a slow process (and it feels a lot like that therapy session you never told anyone about) but the results are convincing.

Last year I worked with a director of the first "micromanaging" type. He was a great guy with many great ideas and the show worked out well - but several actors felt we were basically playing the director, rather than playing our part. We had particular problems when the show required us to react spontaneously in character - because we didn't really have a character, just a sequence of moves and vocal intonations.

If you are managing people who work with customers, are you micro-directing? Are your people trying to "be" you, to do things as you would do them (or worse still, by the book)? Or do they understand the motivations behind their actions?

To avoid micromanagement, copy the motivation-based director. Never tell your people how to do anything, or even what to do, but talk about goals and meanings with them, inviting them to suggest their own strategies. Not only will your staff be far more motivated and really believe in what they are doing, they will be better placed to deal with new problems.

And I guarantee you, some of their ideas will be better than yours....

pic of groundbreaking director Dorothy Arzner from moah.org
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Virgin gets it

2007-11-11T01:58:00.001+01:00

And finally!

I've ranted before about how dreadfully interchangeable and commoditised many airlines are, so Karl Long's Experience Curve post about Virgin America was a breath of fresh air - as well as a pleasing vindication of my own prejudices.

Virgin have invested heavily in customer-oriented technology (power sockets everywhere, seat-to-seat chat functions, computerised drink ordering, computers for everyone and lighting that's groovier than an 110-year-old engraver with a jazz collection and a frown). All very cool indeed.

But even cooler are the things they have done that cost nothing (or at least cost no more than the boring option). My two personal highlights in Karl's report were the staff who are empowered to do their own playful thing (see this article for more on such talent) and - wonder of wonders - a safety video that genuinely makes people laugh!

Extra cost - zilch. Extra effect - priceless! I'll be flying Virgin America as soon as I can.

Virgin interior lighting shot by magitisa at flickr.
Groovy! Have these guys been reading my e-book?

Unexpected... and thus authentic

2007-10-29T15:44:00.001+01:00

Avoiding the cliché

I was flicking through my review copy (thanks Joe! - I'll review as soon as I possibly can) of Pine & Gilmore's "Authenticity", and I got to thinking about authentic places.

I've written now and again about why I prefer Dominica to other Caribbean islands I have visited - Antigua and Martinique, for example. A lot of my love for the place comes from its unspoiled character, from the pioneering feeling you get from being one of very few tourists, and from it's non-sanitised atmosphere. (Yes, it can pong a bit.)

Another reason that strikes me is that Dominica is not like you expect. We all have a vision of "Caribbean" in our heads, comprised in varying measures of beaches, cricket, rum, Bob Marley and Jack Sparrow. When you arrive there for the first time, you find Dominica looks very little like that. "Hey," you think, "this isn't like the catalogues - it must be the real thing!"

This Heineken ad (a very popular beer in Dominica, though I prefer the local Kubuli) hits the nail on the head.

Avoid the cliché, if you want to be authentic.

Fishermen picture by the author. Ooo!

You're only supposed to blow the bl**dy doors off!

2007-10-23T08:20:00.000+01:00

Sir Michael Caine on experience design

I'm reading the autobiography of one of my favourite actors, and it turns out he is also a restaurant owner with some snappy ideas on experience design. From the conceptual:

"A restaurant should be like a show where you are the star when you come in, and the audience when you sit down."

To the practical:

"You should never be able to see a lightbulb."

You get your money's worth with Sir Michael.

PS There's a prize for the first reader to recognise the quote that titles this post. My money is on Andy Nulman. At the very least, he should like the picture. ;)

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Thanks for the flowers

2007-10-16T11:50:00.000+01:00

List of Truly Useful Things

Jessica Hupp at VirtualHosting has put together a a list of links to the Top 100 User-Centered Blogs. It's a useful list, and it's great to see Work•Play•Experience in there alongside big hitters like Adaptive Path or chart-topper Signal vs. Noise.

Thanks Jessica!

Flower pic by BaronessNordmark at flickr

Where to from here?

2007-10-06T13:41:00.002+01:00

Finding your way around this page

Packed full of showbiz tips and tricks to blow your customers away, this blog is getting chunkier by the month. So here are a few pointers to find your way around it...

The main window only shows the last few posts, so if you want more nourishing goodness, check out the side bars at the right.

Towards the top you will see a box called "Top 5: the most popular posts". These are the five posts which you, the readers, have clicked on most often. If you believe in crowd power, there must be good stuff here.

Further down is the mighty, mighty "Search posts by theme". Click on a keyword and you will be transported - hey presto! - to a screen showing all the posts tagged with that word. Here, for example, is the very popular tag page for "presentation technique".

Look out, further down, for clips from the latest posts on a bunch of other blogs I recommend...

And way down below you'll find a complete listing of almost all the posts on the blog, just for your home or office browsing enjoyment.

Have fun! And now click here to return to the main window...

Cheers!

Adam

Dublin signposts pic by infomatique at flickr

cX makes you rich and famous

2007-09-24T19:42:00.001+01:00

Quote of the week...on customer experience design

I'm a little tied up with my festival just now, so here's a Fast Company quote to keep you going...

"A three-year study of more than 40 Fortune 500 companies by the research firm Peer Insight found that companies focused on customer-experience design outperformed the S&P 500 by a 10-to-1 margin from 2000 to 2005."

It's great to finally be at the point where the numbers start coming through...

ten picture by spacepotato at flickr

Just for laughs

2007-09-12T04:07:00.000+01:00

A little link

There's no special reason for posting the link to this video that Markus and I did, except the hope that you might enjoy it.

Even history can be fun, Actually, I think most things can.

Adam

UPDATE: Well, our little film has been featured by the YouTUBE editors! We have had 12,000 hits in three days, and lots of flattering comments. (Blush).

PS Speaking of fun, my stand-up website is now also online, in English and in German.

Comedy smooths conflict

2007-09-10T04:01:00.002+01:00

Classroom tips for all

So, I'm visiting the primary school at Mahaut, and listening in on a young teacher with her class. It's a scorching hot day and despite her lively presentation style the pupils are slouching at their desks.

Young Teacher has two options:
1. Yell at them to sit up straight (expected result: grudging compliance, and the kids think she is a slave driver).
2. Give them a cheery suggestion of the "hey kids, let's all stand up and shake out the tiredness" variety (expected result: the kids do it, but roll their eyes, and think she is a dweeb).

Of course, like the young Tony Blair she finds a Third Way.

She gives a huge yawn, and cries "OH! I am SO tired!" Surprised, the kids all look up. "Oh! I can hardly stand," she continues. "I have to sit down!" As she staggers theatrically to a stool, the kids start to smile. The smiles turn to laughter as - bump! - her head hits the desk. And when the snoring starts, pure hysteria reigns (hey, they are seven years old). Then - another yawn, and she starts to stretch, to stand, to straighten up. Of course, the kids are right there with her - stretching, wide awake, and thoroughly impressed by their new teacher.

Good NLP, good psychology, good comedy, good job.

Or, as the kids on Dominica say, "Faaaan-tastic!"

PS Young Teacher is the lady jumping highest in this video. Her colleague on the right had just had a flood-bourne boulder take out her classroom. More on the blond lady and her work at show-me-wow.com.

Earned experiences feel authentic

2007-09-04T05:10:00.001+01:00

Heaven is hard work

One of the things that makes - and keeps - Dominica special is that it is a pig to get here. There is no international airport (yet*), so you are forced to island-hop. For us Europeans, it's two days with an overnight hotel stop, multiple borders, wads of forms and all the usual travel unpleasantness. Blurgh.

Of course, when you finally get here it feels even more special because it was hard work. You feel terribly intrepid, and can scoff at the "tourists" who get off the cruise boats for six hours of faked-up Dominica on a Tuesday afternoon.

And that very feeling can cause you to do silly things - like me this evening.

Having spent the day down in the capital, I had three possible ways to get home up the mountain:
1) jump in a taxi-bus and pay five bucks (EC) for the twenty minute ride;
2) hop in the back of a Rasta-driven pick-up and bounce home in a holy haze of ganja at the cost of a few bruised ribs;
3) or, call Q, the long-suffering (and wonderful) Stepdad, and get picked up in style.

Of course, I chose Option 4. Walk.

Now, it's only about four miles up the hill, but it is almost vertical, pitch dark, and terrifyingly precipitous. Substantial stretches of the road are washed out - or at least ankle-breakingly uneven - and most of the strangers you meet on the darkest, loneliest corners are frightfully polite fellows who openly carry knives as long as your arm.

And of course, it was wonderful.

I arrived at the top an hour and a half later, soaked to the skin with sweat. I had taken off the shirt after the first mile - the cataclysmic white flash no doubt causing several ships to run aground. I was sporting two prize blisters on my feet, and grinning like a loony. My family have been here almost two years, but I doubt they have ever experienced "their" road like I did: dancing fireflies, agutis in the undergrowth, glimpses of parties down side roads, the lyrical sound of domestic disputes through open windows, late-night hymns carried on the sultry air, teenagers trying to sell me stuff which they really shouldn't be selling, night birds hooting, and a million billion dwillion stars splashed across the sky. Brilliant.

Now, another traveller could have come up in a taxi, walked about for a bit in the dark, and got many of the same impressions. He would probably have enjoyed himself no end. But not as much as I did.

If we feel we have worked for an experience, we enjoy it more. That is hardly an new insight. But it occurred to me tonight that an earned experience is not just more satisfying, it also feels more authentic, feels more real. And if Messrs Pine and Gilmore are right, the Next Big Thing that customers want is authenticity.

So, how can you make customers think they have earned an experience? A tip: putting the price up is not the only answer - or the best one.

Moonlight photo by jackhynes at flickr
Slender loris by Joachim S Müller at flickr
(I know there are no lori on Dominica. Just testing.)

(* Incidentally, most Dominicans are crying out for that international airport. When they get one, they will lose a major part of their uniqueness. If they are not very careful, they will end up competing on price like all the rest of Disneyland-Caribbean, instead of turning Domenica into the premium destination it should be. Sigh. It's not their fault. People living in a shortage economy do not understand what a USP is...)

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Green magic

2007-09-02T04:37:00.000+01:00

Using colour to draw people inside

I was leaping about in the rainforest today (I'm in Dominica again), and ended up taking a detour which left me standing on a moss-covered rock in a deep ravine. The emerald stream was splashing around my feet, the vibrant green jungle was above and all around me, and a hummingbird flew past my head as the rain began to fall. Wow.

In terms of colour, it was the greenest moment of my life.

A living green is a powerful colour, as it suggests refuge, peace and refreshment. We are drawn to it, as the pictures on the right show. Who could resist stepping through these doors?

When planning the physical part of a customer experience, we need to set highlights at carefully chosen intervals. Some of these might be what Disney call "wienies" - things that we glimpse from afar and which draw us in. Others might be areas of quiet reflection or refuge. The living green of plants can fulfil both these functions.

If you want to draw people into your location, place a powerful display of greenery (human size, if possible) where they can glimpse it from the entrance - but not see it in it's entirety. You are trying to suggest a secret garden, or a hint of paradise. Light it brightly with sun-coloured light and keep it glowingly healthy.

Or, for a relaxed moment in the experience curve of a large location, create a leafy place to rest - and adding water if possible.

You will be amazed by the power of green.

PS A pocket-sized alternative for smaller locations can be a well maintained, thickly planted and brightly lit aquarium...

P.P.S. I saw this effect vividly after hours at a recent trade show. The Degussa stand had a central staircase leading up to the hospitality area. It was decorated with ferns and looked incredibly inviting - especially with the "landing lights" on the ceiling drawing the eye inwards, and the staircase spiralling up out of sight. This lousy picture (on the left) shows the stand, but you will have to look hard to find the green - I snapped it just after the cleaning lady turned out the light... sigh!

Garden pics by siegmar sommer, tahoe sunsets and wok at flickr.

In the chair

2007-08-31T02:46:00.000+01:00

A simple exercise to absolutely revolutionise your customer experience

You need:

- your team, or at least three of them.
- one chair (preferably of the folding canvas variety with DIRECTOR written on the back - but a normal office chair will do at a pinch)
- (optional: one megaphone, one beret, one monocle, one riding whip, one amusing central European accent)

This is what you do:

1. Sit one of your people in the chair. This is the Director (and you can give them the fun props and accent if you like - I know I would). Remember, the Director's word is Law.
2. Get two or more of the team to act out a typical customer service situation. One is the customer, one is the team member.
3. The person playing the customer should be as honest as they can.
4. The director can stop, start, modify, re-run and generally reshape the behaviour, manner, words, posture, actions, choices and facial expression of the team member (not the customer) at any time. They should do this as often as they want until they think the customer contact is just perfect.
5. Discuss
6. Switch jobs.

7. If you are really brave (and want some really telling results) use a real customer. No, don't ask them to play the customer, use them as the Director.

Chair pic by cathycracks at flickr

Another point of view...

2007-08-18T19:34:00.001+01:00

Stealing an idea from Hollywood

I was working with some first-time movie directors recently, and noticed that they soon figure out not to watch the actors directly. Instead, they learn watch their monitor. It shows the point of view that the film-goer will have in the cinema.

Crucially, the view through the lens is often very different to what we expect to see. That "focussed" view blocks out distractions and really tells the truth - warts and all!

So, next time you walk through your location, looking for little problems and potential improvements to the experience, try this:

1. Get a video camera and walk through, filming. Scan from side to side, up and down. Don't forget the toilets and the carpark. A day or more later, watch the film (preferably in slow motion) and see how many potential improvements you spot. Pause the film now and then. I bet you see stains on the paintwork you had forgotten you had. I bet you can tell now if that sign really is prominent enough... (Interestingly, if you have a way to reverse the film, you will notice even more details.)

2. Repeat the exercise on your knees, or in a wheelchair. This is the visual experience a child, smaller person or wheelchair user will have. (Behaviour guru Temple Grandin uses this technique when checking out abbatoirs for animal welfare approval. It gives her the "animal-eye-view", and she spots lots of potentially spooky stuff other inspectors miss).

3. If you haven't got a video camera, use a still camera, or even an old viewfinder. You needn't even take pictures - just walk slowly.

4. If you haven't got a normal camera, cut a hole in a piece of cardboard and stare at parts of your location through it. Don't laugh - this works!

5. Try it blindfold - with a guide - and pick up the auditory and olfactory experience far more sharply than usual. Where is it too loud? Stinky? Too echo-ey and cold?

Try it. You will be amazed. But don't trip.

Viewfinder pic by Rutty at flickr.
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