The hype around Apple’s latest product, the iPad is ongoing and every pundit has given us reasons why the iPad will be a total success or why it will be total failure. We love these discussions, but they are a waste of time. There is simply no correct answer at this point in time whether the iPad will be a success or not. But that is exactly why everyone loves to talk about that since everybody can be right and everybody can be wrong. Just like discussions about religion, the performance of Mac computers vs. PCs, BMW vs. Audi – there is not right or wrong and that’s why we put so much passion into these discussions.

If you want to innovate, you should prevent such discussions because they lead nowhere. Of course there is a difference between a well-founded feedback session and polemic argument, but even the value of feedback is limited when you are truly innovating. Could anyone have imagined a situation like the one below?

You know Facebook right? Good. Ever heard about Farmville? No? Well it is what 80 million people do on Facebook. Growing their virtual farms in Farmville, earning virtual money and helping Zynga – the company that developed Farmville – earn around 100 million USD in 2009. What’s going on here?

Facebook is a becoming huge and with 400 millions users it is currently the second most visited site in the US behind Google. Yet the biggest share in the “body of knowledge” about Facebook is about Facebook as a tool for social media, social networking and business – most of if superficial and not worth the effort to read.  But from time to time some smart people analyze the underlying patterns and contribute towards an explanation into a social motivation and behavior that makes Facebook such a success.

My favourite article about Design Thinking is an article called "Innovation as a Learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking" which describes the fundamental principles of design and defines the relationship between innovation and design. The article has been published already in 2007 and it has just received the Accenture Award of the California Management Review.

This award is given each year to the authors of the article published in the preceding volume of the California Management Review that has made the most important contribution to improving the practice of management.

The New Year is still young I would like to use this post to reflect on the various projects that kept me busy in 2009, the experiences I have made in these projects and give an outlook on my focus at the Customer Experience Labs in 2010. If you would like to read more about a certain topic on this blog in 2010 let me know in the comments or via eMail at bernhard@customer-experience-labs.com.

Design Thinking in Action in 2009

If you are working at the interface with customers you have probably been in this situation before: Should you make a decision focusing on short-term profits and accept customer experience trade-offs or should you focus on delivering a truly remarkable customer experience? When you look at this problem from an abstract point-of-view the answer seems to be clear: of course you should focus on the customer experience.

Yet if you are facing an operational decision whether you should increase the number of agents in your customer care center or if you should save costs because service-levels are still “good enough” you know that this question is more complex. One has to accept that there are times when you are not able to deliver a remarkable customer experience and I personally believe that consciously accept these situations as outliers is not a problem. But there is one area where you should not accept trade-offs: strategic decisions.

Have you ever wondered what is necessary to make sure that an iPod can be used intuitively even by new users or that a phone does not break when you accidently sit on it? Every great product is not just the result of a great designer but also of great user and product testing experts.

YouTube, Microsoft, Nokia and Apple are four companies that are well known for their innovative products and the focus they put on the user. Yet little is actually known about what these companies do to really ensure that their customers have a remarkable customer experience.

I would like to share with you some practices that companies apply when they are aiming to design and test new products that I have collected in the last months. 

Every retailer has at some point thought about the design of his retail stores in order to create a remarkable customer experience with the goal to maximize revenues. The design of retail stores with customer experience in mind is a complex task and usually a lot of focus is put on the stores environment, the stimulation of the customer's senses and extraordinary service.

Apple, Starbucks, the Mini Cooper - these brands and products are not just successful, they are cult and many marketers dream that one day they might be able to create a similar cult around one of their products or brands.

Many have tried that before, most of them have failed and when they have failed to create a cult product it is usually the result of one cause: They focus on the product instead of focusing on the product's tribe.

Another essential question is of course: What is a cult product? A cult brands gives customers a sense of belonging within that product category and owning that product is an honor.
A cult is primarily the results of an extraordinary consumer tribe, and only secondarily of an extraordinary product.

A cult originates in the mind of people
A cult product is created in the minds of customers and if you want to create cult product, having a great product alone is simply not enough. The first thing you have to change is your language - you are not trying to create a cult product, you are trying to create a cult around your product.

Economically difficult times create a lot of uncertainty in organizations and many businesses have to cut back their activities in various areas to limit expenses and protect the sustainability of their business. A lot has been written about the importance of customer-focus, innovation and design in a recession. The conclusion is always the same: these areas are just as important as ever and if you have to trim back in your organization you better do this in non-core business areas and keep on investing in the core-areas of your business.
This is obviously not rocket science but where are the real-world examples of companies that have reinvented themselves in a downturn?

Economic challenging times require a focus on customer value
There are some and my personal favorite is an analysis in BusinessWeek from May 2001 (Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work) where the author outlines why Apple’s new retail outlets are not going to be successful.

Patients that are regularly watching medical TV series develop unrealistic expectations about hospital service and are less satisfied with their patient experience than patients who don’t watch medical TV series.

Influencing Images
The images and situations depicted in many medical TV series create the wrong expectations in patients which lead to disappointment and negative experiences during their stay in a hospital. The scenes depicted in medical TV series are set to create engaging stories and increase viewer numbers and are not necessarily meant to reflect reality. That’s the reason why doctors are carrying the infusion bag next to the patients bed by themselves, show no reluctance when they are called to the hospital at most uncommon times and are in general extraordinarily committed, generous, competent and patient-oriented.

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