Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Top Five Things I Wish Of My Kindle

When I got my first iPod six years ago, it completely changed the way I purchased and listened to music. So, naturally, I had the same hopes for my recently acquired Kindle reader and how I would soon be consuming books. Unfortunately, the Kindle has fallen short of my expectations. Here's a list of the things I find myself wishing for:

1.  A back light. Seems absurd I have to use an attached itty, bitty book light to read from my "electronic wireless reading device". I probably spend half of my time reading in the dark - on the plane or before dozing off to sleep. Which means, half the time I use my Kindle, I have a book light appendage hanging off it. So much for sleek design.

2.  Color.  I hate the fact that many books I order on Kindle don't show the original hard-copy version of the cover art. And those that do, show it in shades of gray. I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but - well, I do. I miss seeing the cover art of a book and its back cover or inside sleeve reviews. Couldn't Kindle follow iPod's lead? At least they display CD cover art.

3.  A touch screen.  After using an iPhone, it took me weeks to stop myself from touching the screen of my Kindle to order a book or select something new to read. Keying in words on the tiny, tiny keyboard and using the microscopic joy stick feel so 2006.

4.  The ability to do a crossword puzzle.  One of my favorite print-medium past times is doing The New Yorker crossword puzzles. Too bad there wasn't a way to do this on my Kindle. (If there is, please tell me how.) This is another place where that touch screen -- with interfacing keyboard -- would come in handy.

5.  The social part of reading.  Sure, reading probably seems like a solitary hobby. But, when I finish a good book, the first thing I want to do is tell my friends. It would be great if, upon reading the last sentence of a book, Kindle offered the option to write a review and the ability to post it to my Facebook wall. This seems like a lost opportunity for both Kindle and Amazon to create viral advocacy not only for the Kindle -- but the books people are buying on it. I did find a Kindle fan page on Facebook -- but it only had 14 fans! And, at this writing, there are no Kindle apps available on Facebook. However, just yesterday, Amazon announced a SDK (Software Development Kit) which will allow software developers to build and upload applications. Plans are to have an app store up and running by end of year. But could it be too little too late? Until Kindle introduces new social apps, I'll tell my friends about favorite books the old fashioned way: from my iPhone Facebook app.

On the eve of Apple's rumored announcement of their new tablet (iPad? Or islate? They haven't named it yet.) coupled with a possible Barnes & Noble partnership and access to 1 million books (in comparison to Kindle's 400k titles), Kindle's limitations have me worrying about major buyer's remorse. However, the rumored price-point of Apple's tablet at $7-1000 may make me feel a little better.

Are you a satisfied Kindle user? Or are you holding out for Apple's tablet or another e-reader technology?
 
Traci Armstrong
@tannarmstrong

I can only assume that every new mom is as curious as I am about the ratio of waking to sleeping hours their little newborn gets... Or how about the amount their baby feeds versus the amount that passes into those 10-15 daily diapers!! That we all have a gut feeling something is amiss but no way to prove it.

Enter Total Baby, an iPhone app to help you keep running tabs on just about everything you'd ever want to related to your new child. From the month to month stuff like doctor appointments, vaccinations, and growth... to the day to day in extreme detail.

Almost every feature is accompanied by a running timer. So, for instance, I use it to time my newborn's feeding sessions, baths, tummy time and what short sleeps he does get. I am able to document which breast, how long (or let the timer run), when, which breastfeeding hold and any custom notes. It can also keep track of 'one time events' like diapers changed, burps, medicine given, etc.

The main screen makes it easy to see the last time you changed, bathed and fed your little one or when he last slept. This helps my husband know whether he can let me sleep if it doesn't happen to be feeding time. Daily totals on diapers and feedings help put perspective on the whole input/output question. That's peace of mind knowing my son is healthy and a big help in knowing how many diapers to buy.

I love how customizable everything is. I was able to easily add 'bouncer', 'mommy's arms', and 'daddy's arms' to sleeping locations. But mostly I love this app because it makes me feel a little more in control of my time and able to slowly (very slowly) move my son Simon towards a more regular eating and sleeping schedule.

Totally worth the $5 if it can get to a 4 hour stretch of sleep some time in the next week!!

What's your favorite "mom" app? I'd love to hear of any others that are helpful.

Marta Strickland

I am currently singing the praises of the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. It ranks right up there with my iPhone, mino HD Flip videocamera, and TechSmith's Morae software .... in making my life simpler; yet, significantly more productive. If you aren't familiar with it, you can see a full demo of its capabilities at www.livescribe.com.

Key features of the pen include but are not limited to the following:
- Capturing what is written in a Livescribe specific journal via an infrared camera
- Capturing audio via a speaker
- Allowing users to upload their notes to a desktop application via a usb cradle
- Giving users the ability to review their notes and the corresponding audio post-session
- Providing users with a friendly approach to sharing session notes (pdf) and/or the corresponding audio publicly or privately
- Providing uploading capabilities for users to share their session with their Facebook friends

How Is It Making Life Easier?
1. Brainstorming Sessions. This allows me to capture team meetings and then share the notes + audio immediately after the session (vs. our current approach of taking a picture with a smart phone, typing up the notes and then emailing them).

2. Usability Testing. It allows me to take notes while moderating usability tests and then share them with team members immediately after each interview. It also makes it easy to search my notes for specific consumer quotations.

3. Doctors' Appointments. It allows me, with the preapproval of my Mom's physicians, to record appointments with specialists that my mother sees for some chronic health issues. As her caretaker and legal guardian, these visits can be stressful and prior to now I was always worried that we might not have caught everything the doctor had to say - compromising her care in some way. On my personal blog, I give some additional tips on how the pen can be used by caregivers.

4. Radio Programs. At lunch today, I heard a great program on Sirius radio about happiness. I took notes in my Livescribe notebook and was then able to load the audio onto my computer when I returned to the office so that I can hear the program again.

I can't wait to see what they come up with for future versions. I recently allowed Russ Hopkinson to play with it. He commented on how nice it would be if there were whiteboards with the same functionality? Think it's in the works....?

So far, my only regret is that I didn't purchase the 4GB version!!

Laura McGowan

Notes: I would like to send a special "thanks" to David Berney who familiarized me with the Smartpen at Forrester's Consumer Forum. You can follow him on Twitter @dberney.

A couple of articles that came out recently - one from TechCrunch and another from MIT's Technology Review - sparked a lot of healthy debate here at Organic.

How useful and reliable are ratings and reviews? Do super users bunk up the system? Or are these systems simply set up to fail?

According to TechCrunch, five-star ratings systems (YouTube's was called out) are unreliable and inferior to other, better-defined/fewer-choices models like thumbs up/thumbs down or favoriting. The weakness of the five-star system was pegged to user subjectivity (But how can any ratings system get around that? Aren't we looking for others to share their own personal experiences and point of view in reviews?) and the tendency to vote only when one really loves (five stars!) or really hates (one star!) something.

And this is where the heated e-mail debate begins...

Fang-Yu Lin: "Yes, only people who love or hate a video enough would bother to rate it, hence the U shaped rating curve. However, one cannot simply extrapolate that to other 5-star rating systems. Amazon's customer reviews, for instance, seem more evenly distributed. My guess is that by requiring people to write a review along with the rating, herd behaviors are greatly reduced... The issue here is not the 5-star scale itself, but the entire system one designs around it."

Bridget McKinley: "But are Amazon's ratings and reviews really all that much more reliable? The MIT Technology Review article on recent Carnegie Mellon research indicates even the Amazon system has serious issues. The culpruit? A handful of superusers and their bias."

Fang-Yu Lin: "Curiously, many seem to accept the thesis that if some users rate more items than the majority of users, reviews would be skewed as a result. Is it really so? For every item, each user has only one vote. It doesn't matter if certain reviewers are way more active; on a given item he or she can cast one vote, just like everyone else."

Bridget McKinley: "Or course, you can argue that even though each user only votes once, the likelihood of encountering reviews from power users are higher on any given item... Could this be a key issue hindering the reliability of reviews? Well, maybe. Conventional wisdom (along with hard data from a variety of sources) indicates that fewer than 10% of users end up generating more than 90% of the content on sites with social media functionality (functionality like ratings and reviews). That can certainly lead to volatility and sway that may undermine the very point of providing that type of service on a given site in the first place."

Fang-Yu Lin: "There is no proof that these [Amazon] frequent reviewers effectively acted as a voting bloc and submitted unvaried reviews, thus making the point moot."

Bridget McKinley: "But even if they aren't acting in a bloc, they are significantly affecting the curve. Recent studies by Bazaarvoice, Keller Fay Group. and JupiterKagan have all concluded that positive reviews tend to outweigh negative ones by an overwhelming margin (the Bazaarvoice analysis finds a 8:1 disparity)."

Fang-Yu Lin: "Looking at the average Amazon rating by item [per the Carnegie Mellon research], yes, there is a tendency toward higher scores. However, this is to be expected for a shopping site: People buy things that they perceive of a higher value. Of course more reviews are on the positive end (Sometimes things don't live up to the expectation, hence the higher standard deviations)."

Fang-Yu Lin: "Now look at the average rating by user: There's still a bias toward higher scores for the same reason, but the bias is much less pronounced. The standard deviations are lower here too. This seems to suggest that many Amazon reviewers are rather evenhanded."

But what is really the point of all this, what is the crux of the matter...

Is the fundamental question really about the benefit or detriment of power reviewers on the user experience? After all, without them, most sites (including Amazon) would be left with a much shallower pool of user participation and feedback. Perhaps... but perhaps the question is more about how sites can best maintain usefulness and credibility in star-rated and other voting systems with power users in the mix. With around 70% of digital consumers relying on and trusting in other's opinions online, this is a problem that needs fixing fast.

Bridget McKinley
Fang-Yu Lin

Ever since Crispin Porter + Bogusky launched their new website, they have gotten a lot of positive feedback from the blogs and twittersphere. Their move away from the branded portfolio and to a social aggregation has been praised as a step in the right direction.

kaseymarcum: Impressive! -- Crispin Porter + Bogusky's new site that puts social media ahead of their work

MattFiedler: Out with traditional websites, in with social media terminals

But I struggle with whether or not these are actual compliments. Do we want agency and brand websites to be "social media terminals"? Is CP+B losing something by doing it this way? And to be honest, is it really as social as it seems?

Craig Ritchie, a strategist at Organic Toronto, had this take:

This "digital uhm... fishing net," as Alex Bogusky describes it in his "candid" video, doesn't allow for any context or brand definition. Some are saying this move is good for all of us. "No matter what you think of it, just be glad they did it. It's one step toward making a lot of what several of us have been pushing for a whole lot easier," says Paul Isakson. But there's no move here.

As "the social web" becomes just "the web," brands will need to, yes, monitor and engage with all channels and not take themselves so seriously. But, there's no brand if everything anyone says about your company becomes your brand promise. You don't need a "uhm... fishing net," you need a big ol' crab boat, and a good crew that's in it for the long haul.

I agree with Craig's assessment. But my real problem is that the new CP+B site doesn't live up to the promise of being social. It should be about conversation, not aggregation.

The site pulls in bits and pieces of what people are saying from the social web, but doesn't actually allow people to comment or engage in dialogue on their site. Sure, they can tweet, and it's unfiltered, but it's also disconnected and not very meaningful. It's a lot of noise for noise sake, and it certainly doesn't show how CP+B is part of that conversation. Instead, it feels a lot more like they are spying on the party, rather than hosting it.

Marta Strickland
Craig Ritchie

We often think of user and brand experience in the online space. But what happens when that experience exits the digital realm? I recently came across two pieces of work by two distinctly different agencies that successfully took the user experience off the safe path. One was driven by the brand. The other by the consumers.
 
Brand-Directed Paths
eView360 focuses on the reach of a brand experience and how it should touch print and interactive, and then carry over into physical space.  One pointed example is seamless brand experience Tessera Executive Search in Dubai presents from print to web to office.

eView360 is a unique agency that employs a multidisciplinary approach that includes print, web, interior and architectural design. When creating a branded experience for their clients, they carry their design cues into the physical office environment. For Tessera Exectutive Search, the color schemes on the Tessera website carry over to the wood stains in the office or the seats in the waiting room. The environment "feels" Tessera in all the areas where you interact with the company.

Consumer-Created Paths
Mazda 3 used an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) in Quebec, Canada to build awareness around its launch. Called the 33 keys project, it enticed users to find 33 keys in a scavenger hunt across various mediums. The ultimate prize? A real vehicle. A TV spot created awareness, and seeded through blogs and guerilla marketing. There were a number of web properties built for the campaign including a website, a Facebook group and a blog.
 
Over the course of play, the game changed and players reached out to each other through social media channels outside of the established properties. With this change in strategy, the brand was forced to change how they supported the game. They also worked with bloggers and Facebook group owners to seed clues. Their flexibility only added to the excitement of the game and encouraged more participation. Overall, it was a very successful campaign.
 
Managing the Experience
Both presentations got me thinking about how all-encompassing a user or brand experience can be. Seeing how the 33 keys project grew organically from their own properties to blogs and social networks, I wondered if it's even possible to manage the experience. Also, seeing how eView360 carries the brand through to physical spaces, I thought about how quickly a brand can be lost once outside the print or web space.
 
So, how do we help users experience a brand through multiple mediums?

• Create continuity. Consider all the places where your customers interact with your brand and make sure they're consistent.

• Think about your leitmotif. What cues can your customers feel that let them know when they're in your space, be that physical, cyber or print?

• Plan for change. As with 33keys, customers may pick up on your brand and run with it.

• Generate novel ideas. What would you do (or have you tried)?

Anthony Viviano
Sarah Jo Sautter
 

The Emerging Experiences team at Razorfish recently unveiled their experimental retail platform Razorfashion. The system is built around a multi-touch enabled surface display that aims at augmenting the user's shopping experience in offline stores. It is indeed an interesting exploration and contains several inspired ideas. However, this "retail experience" that Razorfish created may not actually be a consumer darling in a real retail space. Here's why:

Retail experience that isn't

Due to iPod's dominance, some competitors attempted to unseat it by introducing new killer features. One of these seemingly attractive innovations was wireless song sharing, however it never gained much traction. The problem is that it goes against people's expectation of what "sharing" embodies in physical space. When you are together with your friends, the music is shared by co-listening through the same pair of headphones or speakers. The wireless transmission of files deprives users of the intimacy or camaraderie that the act of sharing traditionally promises. Same problem here. The retail experience for most shoppers is the enjoyment of seeing/feeling/touching merchandises, comparing/matching them side by side, trying them on, and admiring oneself in the mirror. If one wishes to "shop" on a computer screen, he or she can simply stay home.

In the nascent stage of e-commerce, many had the misguided notion of replicating brick and mortar experience in the cyberspace. Some went so far as to champion 3D virtual mall built around the (then) cutting-edge VRML. Now the pendulum has swung to the other end; efforts such as Razorfashion aspire to recreate digital experience in physical space using the (now) cutting-edge touch surface. It just might be as futile. It is my opinion that our digital social lives have evolved to the point that the real world is starting to collide with the virtual one. Experience design professionals now need to take a hard look at how these two realms can compliment and enhance each other. Replication is not the answer.

Crossing the chasm and then back

In order to induce such a tectonic shift in shopper behaviors, a critical mass is needed to create strong enough network externalities. Razorfashion's clever responses are a) to create an inter-store system that facilitate a continuous experience in the same shopping center, and b) to leverage the consumer's personal social networks such as Facebook.

The former would be a vast infrastructure-building initiative. Not only the cost can be prohibitive, it also ignores the differences in branding requirements of all these diverse stores in the same mall. One design does not fit all, and some brands may flat out refuse to be associated with any modern technology. Even if we somehow manage to establish such a network, the user's personal data is portable only through his or her own mobile device. Coupling with the fact that the social network touch points Razorfashion trying to duplicate already exist on said mobile device, one has to question the wisdom of building an elaborated display network in the first place. Why not keep the experience on the mobile device from end to end?

Private touch in public space

There is no question that the characteristics of multi-touch interface such as tactility and direct manipulation lend itself well to small devices that are personal and intimate in nature. Problems however arise when the surface is scaled up. Most early applications of large-scaled touch interface were collaborative "workbench" systems. Since they were often used in semi-private settings with trusted participants, the tension between private and public modes of computing, while emerging, was still well contained. Nonetheless, the simple act of bringing up the surface from its traditional upward-facing orientation to its new full-frontal public posture stirs up that tension to new height. Exactly which parts of people's shopping experience they deemed private and which parts public need to be researched and then addressed accordingly. Razorfashion's social network mashup features further underscore the issue.

The deployment of multi-touch surfaces in public space also faces a couple of problems that are trivial but not any less real. First, due to the size of the display certain operations are difficult or imprecise to operate with just one hand, thus all the two-handed actions that you saw in the Razorfashion demo video. This would spell trouble in its intended environment, where users are likely carrying shopping bags or handbag. The second issue is one of sanitation--real or perceived. Witness how people loathe the finger smudges on their iPhone; now imagine magnifying that smeared screen and placing it in a shopping center where sees thousands of visitors...in flu seasons. It seems a contact-less gesture-controlled interface, not unlike the Xbox Project Natal, is more suitable for large public display.

Despites the aforementioned issues, projects such as this and IconNicholson's interactive mirror are important trials that surely will one day lead to better retail design and services. Integrated online/offline service design is likely to become the new focal point of the industry. It is exciting times to be an experience designer.

Fang-Yu Lin

image credit: tanakawho

We told you about how one restaurant used customer feedback on Yelp to better their product and service. Well, now Yelp is making it official. They're allowing restaurants to respond directly to customer comments.

Previously, Yelp had limited small businesses' voice on the site to paid advertisements. But in the past year, Yelp has been taking steps to foster their relationships with these local businesses starting with allowing them to update their own business profile and contact reviewers privately.

This is great news for smaller local restaurants like Zumba just outside of Detroit, whom I first wrote about emailing customers to encourage them to write Yelp reviews. They then followed up by letting customers know that they indeed acted upon those requests.

Yelp doesn't screen comments, but users can flag inappropriate ones. Until now, this has been cumbersome for businesses who simply want to publicly rectify their name. Other reviewer sites like TripAdvisor have been allowing businesses to post responses for some time, though Yelp still remains a favorite among locals. Yelp has been accused of bias towards some restaurants in certain communities. So is this Yelp's way of rectifying itself?

Yelp has created a Business Owner's Guide to help restaurants like Zumba (and other businesses) that want to address their customer's comments.

As a marketer, this is could really help dispel myths and maintain branding. However from a consumer perspective, I'm a little skeptical. If I could be sure every restaurant would take action like Zumba, I'd trust the business responses I read. But honestly, I'm more likely to believe people who are more like me.

And according to research, I'm not the only one. Just look at these statistics:

- Online users value consumer reviews, 53%, over expert reviews, 40%, and traditional advertising, 11%. (JupiterResearch / Bazaar Voice Survey, Online Consumer Opinions/Use of User Generated Content, January 2008)

- Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. ("Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," JupiterResearch, March 2007)

- "Person like themselves" still most trusted source for information about a company and, therefore, products. (Edelman Trust Barometer, November 2007)

So if all the evidence says consumers won't listen to businesses' posts, will Yelp's new policies really work?

Sarah Jo Sautter

image credit: MR McGill

In the growing field of Neuro Marketing, we're beginning to understand the neuro science behind what appeals to a consumer from the primordial recesses of the brain. Susan Weinschenk, researcher and author of the book Neuro Web Design, What Makes Them Click?, is applying this principle to web design. She presented some of her findings at the Internet User Experience 2009 conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. What an eye opener!

In the study of human-computer interaction (HCI), we often look at cognitive psychology to understand what motivates a person to click. In fact, the study of HCI was born from cognitive psych. Weinschenk, however, points out that this goes deeper. Decisions are motivated not only by the conscience but also by the unconscious mind.

Weinschenk touched on three interesting principles. I'll begin with the last since it's the most exciting: the principle of social validation. If a user is uncertain about a decision, he or she will look to other people. Specifically, consumers trust peers over expert reviews or recommender systems. We, as web marketers, can apply this principle in smart application design and social media. Find and promote the community around a product and include credible reviews.

Another principle is related to decision making and the number of choices presented. Users may say they want many choices, but the research presented in the book actually proves that the fewer the choices, the more likely a person will click -- or better yet, purchase. Too many choices cause the user to freeze and make no choice at all.

The third principle presented was the fear of loss. It's better to begin with all options and then allow the user to subtract. The fear of loss principle means that users are reluctant to remove options and more likely to purchase a product with premium options if that is what is first presented. An example of this principle in play is on Dell's website. Products begin with more expensive options and the user can subtract these for a less expensive end product.

Since all this happens on a subconsciousness level, it's hard to say whether or not (as a consumer) I've actually acted this way during a purchase process. Still, I agree with Weinschenk's conclusions. I'm eager to apply these learnings in my XA practice. I'd like to give users fewer and more relevant choices. Then integrate social media as a way to influence their decisions.

So the next time you make a purchase decision, think about what made you choose what you did.

Anthony Viviano

I just picked up a copy of Data Flow, a 200+ page anthology of data visualization examples from around the world, and I can't put it down. The collection is deep and wide, from the playful (pictured) to the abstract (meandering lines of measurement representing the meandering prose of Kerouac's On the Road) to the narrative (a comic-influenced non-linear story of lives intersecting).

Even better, the book is light on words, save for the concise and insightful intro, a few choice interviews, and five thematic chapter titles -- Datasphere, Datascape, Datanoid, Datalogy, and Datablocks. Simple as they may sound, these titles help make sense the vast world of information design by identifying the most common metaphors by which designers communicate complexity. An inspiring and informative reference.

Sam Cannon