Last week I spoke at the UX Bootcamp run by the excellent guys at iQ Content. The talk (available on slideshare.net) argued for designing ‘experiences’ rather than products, and using design to break down business silos. One aspect of creating great user experiences that I mentioned was how they need to be perceived as authentic. Don’t be fake.

Here is an example of fake. Net-a-porter.com telling me I’m in Finland when I’m at my desk in London:

This is not cool technology. This is fake.

[Don’t ask why I was looking at handbags online ;) ]

This coming Wednesday I’m speaking at iQ Content’s Bootcamp. Here is my whole talk in one slide:

Interested to hear feedback prior to the talk.

I’m standing on many shoulders with this talk, notably Peter Merholz and Pine & Gilmore.

This is a request to Bank of Ireland (BoI) to hire a UX consultancy, or some high calibre UX staff.

BoI consistently provide me with shockingly poor customer experiences. One reason seems to be that their business is in many silos that don’t talk to each other. They should read this essay. Here are two stories to illustrate their broken processes:

1. Our system is perfect and you are wrong

I was in Chicago for the DUX2007 conference, having a lovely time. I knew that in the US, I couldn’t use my BoI debit card, but that’s OK, because I could transfer money online to my credit card.

I navigate to 365online, BoI’s online banking site. I enter my PIN but get error messages. I phone my BoI branch. They verify my identity with security questions. They can’t help me whatsoever (and don’t really try), so they transfer me to the 365online department. I hold for a few minutes before getting through. They ask for my online PIN. I give it to them.

“Sorry Mr Adams, that is the wrong PIN”.

I know it is not. It is the same PIN I’ve used on a daily basis for years. I explain this to them. Their response, in an unempathic, impatient tone:

“Sorry Mr Adams, the system is telling me that that is the wrong PIN so you must be wrong.”

Apparently, BoI’s IT system is perfect. I ask if they can unlock my account (so that I can get access to my own money).

“We must now reset your PIN to a different number and send it to you in the post, it will take 5 working days.”

I explain again that I’m in Chicago, that posting to my address won’t help me, and that I can’t access any money. I ask if they can simply tell me the new PIN, seeing as they already identified me with security questions before I was transferred. The agent is getting indignant:

“Absolutely not. The post is the only way.”

I ask for the agent’s supervisor but nothing changes, no-one cares. No sympathy. Unhelpful. Overly complicated processes involving multiple channels. Business silos that don’t share information.

I promise myself for the 100th time that I’m leaving Bank of Ireland. I thank the fact that Smile helped me out, I didn’t starve.

2. We’re blacklisting you even though you’re a great customer

I have two BoI accounts. One in Ireland (where I’m from) and one in the UK (where I live). I use the UK account daily, and have a great credit rating with the bank. I use the Ireland account a couple of times a year. One day, BoI send me a letter saying that they are closing my (Irish) account due to my terrible status within the bank, and that they will never do business with me again. I’m surprised, disgusted with their tone, and confused.

My understanding of what happened: My Irish account had only a few Euro in it. Unknown to me, the annual charge for using an ATM card occurred, and my account went roughly 40 Euro over it’s limit. BoI’s perfect IT system (mentioned above) apparently sent me two warning letters, neither of which I received. Upon no change to the system, it decided that this was unacceptable, so closed my account with immediate effect and sent me an angry letter.

• Why didn’t anybody check the circumstances before the account was closed?
• If someone did check, why didn’t they phone me and ask me to pay in some money?
• Why didn’t they realise that I still am a customer, a very good one at that, and that their letter is embarrassing and nonsensical?

Clearly ‘Yo! Sushi’ are trying to appeal to a broader market.

I understand why the Marketing team came to this solution. But to me it compromises the core business proposition. It makes the sushi dining experience feel less authentic. Often it is better to do less and execute it brilliantly. Just make the absolute best sushi, in the most engaging atmosphere, at the most reasonable price. And make me feel like I’m in Tokyo.

Everyone’s talking about the potential of the social graph. How we can use the relationships between people to design more meaningful products/services and make advertising more contextual and valueable.

The problem is that I often hear people talk about one social graph. “We could use the social graph to leverage ‘x’…”. In theory, people have one life and therefore one big social graph. But in reality, it is much more complicated. People’s behaviour is heavily fragmented across many different communication tools and channels. Even within groups such as ‘family’ or ‘best friends’, people use different communication tools with different people, all of which fragment the graph.

People have many social graphs, all of them incomplete and all of them misleading. Most of the graphs are not just incomplete, they are a tiny slice of the complex relationships in someone’s life.

To really create more meaningful products/services using social graph data, designers will need to pick which subset of graphs are most relevant, and heavily research the complexities and subtleties of those graphs. It is naive to think we understand any more than a tiny fraction of how people communicate in a digital networked world.

When a company’s service is designed to reflect their internal structures, you know they have a problem with the role of design thinking in their organisation. Like this example from Staples.ca, where you need to enter “where the goods will be shipped” before you can browse any products. Clearly a back end inventory process reflected on the customer facing front end.

In what world do people buy before they have looked?

In the last month I’ve travelled through three London airports. The experience of passing through security was different in each one:

Heathrow: take off shoes, laptop stays in bag

Gatwick: leave shoes on, laptop removed from bag

City: take off shoes, laptop removed from bag

How can airports expect customers to take security seriously when the experiences are so inconsistent? Also, setting inconsistent expectations leads to less preparation, longer queues and poorer customer experiences.

Not to mention the increasingly complex and contradictory rules:

Related article from the NYT on the “folly” of airport security.

A restaurant menu in Zurich airport showing faster menu items and how long they will take to be served:

Simple, thoughtful, free to execute.

When your business is under threat from increased regulation, declining sales, and increasing social stigmas, how do you find new ways to create meaningful experiences for the customers you have left?

Witness this boutique smoking lounge in Zurich airport:

A place to be seen in?

A previously glamorous product reinvented as an experience. Airlines take note.

In the last four days, I have received two MMS adverts from my carrier T-Mobile. In fact, one wasn’t from T-Mobile at all, it was from Sky Sports via T-Mobile.

I have three problems with this:

I never opted into any agreement that said T Mobile could invade my personal Inbox with advertising.
I already pay T Mobile a generous sum for allowing me to use my phone on their network.

There is no obvious way for me to unsubscribe from these adverts.
No ‘unsubscribe here’ or ‘how to unsubscribe’ link.

The advertising is borderline spam.
There are two problems with the advertising: not relevant to my life, and dreadful content execution.
Although the adverts are marginally contextual to my life (one is about skiing, close to my heart as I love snowboarding; one is to watch Man Utd versus Man City, again pretty close as I love football), they are useless as I have just came back from a snowboarding holiday, and the concept of watching a 90 minute football match on my W880 phone is a non-starter as I already subscribe to Sky Sports and if I care about the match, I’ll watch it on TV at home. Or if I’m out I’ll pop into one of hundreds of pubs in London that will be showing it in plasma TV glory.
Even if they nailed the context, the content is typical phone carrier garbling of the core message. Leading with phrases such as ‘Pack your phone’ to highlight cheaper international call rates is burying the message. If you only have a few words, why not say ‘Cheap calls abroad’ or ‘Cheap to phone home’.

T-Mobile, as phone carriers go, I love you, but you better stop cheating on me. If you keep sending me ads, I might as well join Blyk*.

*if I could, I’m way too old ;)

Which is more important to your business:

- 10 people who buy your product once
- 5 people who buy your product twice
- 2 people who buy your product 5 times

As a generalisation, I would argue that the bottom option is the most valuable to a business. However, many businesses design for the top option as a default. Often this is never even questioned.

More usage leads to stronger brand relationships. People with a stronger brand relationships are more likely to remain a customer if you get a few small details wrong. More importantly, they are much more likely to recommend you to their social network and use your brand as an extension of their personal brand. Viral growth from the top.

Related is how Hotels.com get it all wrong:

Providing sharing functionality in the first place suggests that Hotels.com must understand that part of their offering is the ability to compare hotel options and discuss with friends. Yet they actively discourage high usage.

Customers don’t care about your problems with email abuse. They just want to send hotels to their friends. Hotels.com need to design for passionate customers.

How long does advertising last? How do you track when an advert goes ’stale’?

What about this faded Transat advert in Toronto Airport? Want to go on holiday with them?

And to stretch the impact on brand perception, how does it make you feel about the upkeep of their planes sitting outside on the tarmac?