A Design 2.0 panel took place this past Tuesday at the Union Square Ballroom in NYC. PSFK was there, taking notes.
The prevailing themes of the panel were simplicity and customer-experience on all levels. Bruce Nussbaum moderated and gave a brief introduction where he showed a few of the Businessweek covers that focused on the topic of design.
Kevin Farnham then kicked it off with a presentation was about interface innovation. Along with understanding users, he spoke of applying graphic design principles in next generation interfaces, and how every customer touchpoint should be made a priority now more than ever due to the staggering proliferation of electronic devices in our lives. He threw up a stat suggesting that the average U.S. household has 25 electronic devices. These devices all become channels in their own right, and come with tons of new interfaces (Xbox, iPod, PSP, etc etc.) In addition, more and more businesses are conducting their entire experience with customers solely through an interface (think of the Yahoo!s
and Googles of the world).
Marisa Mayer discussed "the CHI of Google" – its balance of complex technology in a simple package. She went on to explain some of Google’s design principles, which included designing for the expert user in mind (because in Search, a novice tends to become an expert in very little time) and not making users think, or in other words, not making them have to think "if I were Google, where would I have put that?" Another principle was focusing on ease and speed – not trying to keep users on a page for too long (a metric that others place major emphasis on). Instead, Google tries to make it up on volume (as a result, more queries are run and more ads are served). Mayer also talked about the
Zen of Google- she cited how Palm found that as they increased the number of features, the user experience increased to a certain point, leveled off, and then went downward. In Googleworld, the same applies to the relationship between apparent features and user experience. Google’s extremely complex backbone (to illustrate her point, Mayer went into how a search query works behind the scenes) balances with the simplicity in its interfaces.
Jeneanne Rae’s topic was customer-experience centric (cX) companies. Especially powerful was the data she gave about the success of cX companies who place an emphasis on design strategy and thinking. Their performance (4x revenue growth and 2x profit growth) and relative performance compared to the S&P500 shows how just how important a cX approach is. She gave plenty of examples, from Whole Foods’ execution of their brand, and how Harrah’s casino optimizes their system to serve the most profitable customers, and of course, Apple’s ecosystem approach with iPod + iTunes.
Andrew Zolli (who was hilarious and extremely entertaining) presented on "Designing Experiences and Designing Culture". In the surplus society we live in, he argued, there’s a sea of enormous and undifferentiated products and companies… and we’ve gotten to the point where switching toothpastes isn’t worth the emotional investment of scanning all the choices in just that section of the supermarket aisle. He put up a slide showing the "hedonic adoption curve", which had the same shape as Marisa’s user experience chart. In this one, as choice increases, satisfaction increases at first, then levels off and starts going downward. He cited a study which found that for every 10 choices companies give to their employees in where to invest, participation in the 401k plan actually decreased by 2%! He also discussed moving along the chain of meaning, from commodities to products to services to experiences. But why stop there? Zolli argued – What comes after experiences? He then put out the phrase "humanization of capitalism"… after experiences comes culture. People begin thinking about the company’s role in culture – their labor practices, etc. When brands become a part of culture, nobody asks for permission or licensing – "we remix them to our heart’s content." Andrew concluded on the topics of participatory culture and different innovation strategies, including P&G’s use of a more open-source electronic network of thousands of thinkers.
The panelists took a few questions from the audience then wrapped for cocktails. Overall, it was an enlightening discussion – we just wish it was a bit longer! We’d like to give a big thanks to Core77 and Businessweek for making this possible! More details about the next Design 2.0 event (coming up on the west coast) will be available soon.
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