ARTICLES Customers, users, relations, Design Thinking, service, and various comments, knowledge and opinions...
Branding, outside in
Branding – what’s all that about? You would think we’d have a pretty good grasp of the concept, it’s been in professional use for decades, for describing… something like identity? Vision? What, exactly, does it denote? And do you really have to include your audience in a branding process? Yes, you do. Let’s have a closer look… Originally, […]
Customer focus, practically speaking – get started
Customer focus is a good idea. Loyalty, a good customer relation, is good business acumen – a good customer is a returning customer. And people living in modern society have more choices than they know what to do with; if a business doesn’t afford them customer satisfaction, there are lots of other places to go. Therefore, […]
Will Virtual/Augmented Reality make you a wizard?
Oh boy, did I get a buzzword bingo there? Virtual and Augmented Reality is all over these days – and not just in tech circles either, we hear about it increasingly often in business, user experience, even in regular news. Sounds like it really is the next big thing, doesn’t it?Well, briefly about that, when I […]
Talkback: World Economic Forum – shopping in 2027
That’s right – it’s yours truly vs. the World Economic Forum and the CEO of Walmart. I agree that the growth in online shopping will continue, and that the customers of the future will be increasingly demanding – but that’s where the agreement ends. Or rather, things are not so simple. Also, VR shopping, retail 3D printing, remote checkout? All things considered, probably not in the next decade
Self-driving cars – what now?
Getting self-driving cars out there isn’t like introducing the smartphone; replacing a significant number of the world’s 1.5 billion cars with driverless vehicles is going to require one thing above all – and it’s the one thing that almost nobody in the field is talking about.
It’s going do require public demand.
Search and filtering, cont’d…
Search and filtering has to start appearing in a company’s customer-centered strategy, because it can’t be left to “the internet” anymore. If you’re a company, you’re going to have to start caring about this boring-sounding stuff right now.
Talkback: Visionary, manager – or design thinker?
visionary CEOs are “product and business model centric and extremely customer focused” – but these qualities don’t have to reside within just one person in the entire company organisation. Design Thinking in business is about your company being visionary, being innovative, as a matter of course.
Is Youtube really over?
Youtube’s addressing its practices has content creators worried – but YT’s aim of making $$ by catering to ad-friendliness could be a really bad idea from a wider perspective. Any media platform needs cred, and this could aversely affect Youtube’s
Authenticity Mapping
Content marketing is much more than a way of getting around people using an adblocker – if done right it has direct strategic value to the core business. Trustworthiness, however, is imperative
Customer loyalty is good business
A customer who has a problem, calls about it, and gets good service, can end up a more loyal customer than someone who never experiences a problem at all. This is fairly common, though informal, knowledge to many businesses, and here are som hard numbers on it
Hall Audio 2X8W – a user test
For a few weeks I’ve been visited by the Hall 2x8W from Hall Audio, a “solution to make your speakers wireless”. It runs on bluetooth, is the size of about a tub of ham salad, and has only a single “button” – I’ve focused my testing of it on the user experience.
What is “pull” marketing
The key to generating “pull” is understanding how things are with you and your audience. Not least of all including that the relation is in constant motion and change, and you must move with it – or, as the vice president of Vestas, Svend Ottesen, says: “Customer engagement is a process that never ends”.
Working with the 90%
Given my specialties, my work tends to extend into the area of marketing a lot. After all, creating and maintaining good customer relationships also involves finding new potential customers and convincing them to come on board, as well as communicating with existing ones in compelling and relationship-sustaining ways.Also, working with web & digital (including building websites and […]
The uncertain future of retail
What does robotics have to do with the uncertain future of the retail business?I’ll get back to that momentarily but first, what uncertain future am I referring to? – well, the “online vs. physical stores” one; the BIG one. Every retail store in the world is trying to suss out this issue and decide what […]
New or “old” customers?
“as a rule-of-thumb, some 80% of the lifetime revenue of any given company comes from just 20% of its customers” – There’s a direct line from customer satisfaction to a significant part of your revenue. Did you know that? – and are you sure your company is paying the attention an economic factor of this magnitude calls for?
AI, agency and choice
There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence but is the most important subject really the intelligence of machines, or is it the agency they have? – and how does this affect, or relate to, your agency as a user or consumer, or as a business which delivers a technologically-driven service?
Talkback: Tech development and the user perspective
did you know that the engineering part of tech development flounders considerably without proper consideration of the human perspective? Before 2011 nobody seems to have been working on the viewer experience aspect of video streaming – now, Netflix is making headway.
In a market of customers
It’s crucial to understand that it’s often hard – or impossible – to copy someone else’s customer-centric strategy. It’s like trying to copy someone else’s map to some sort of hidden treasure, reusing it with a different starting point, and still expecting it to lead to treasure.
What tech generation is this?
To recap: A piece of life-and-death software is apparently a first-generation database frontend that literally does zero percent of the work for you, while a regular consumer-grade smartphone is basically HAL-9000 in your purse.
That advertising thing
you’d probably think I hate advertising – but I don’t. Any company has to reach out to its audience and express confidence in its product, promote value etc. They have to, they’re entitled to, and some even do it in elegant, clever or funny ways. But I do hate where it’s come to.
What was Google thinking?
You might think the headline up there refers to that – what were they thinking to try and force people to tether various significant online presences to a social network. It doesn’t, though. At this time my thoughts go further back…
Talkback: Customers and their emotions
Speaking about the emotional processes that go on inside of people, we have to be aware that, mostly, neither we nor the subjects themselves actually know what those processes are, objectively speaking. We know how they turn out but ten people doing the same thing can, and often will, do so for ten different emotional reasons.
My connected home
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Yes, I am aware that some fairly detailed ins and outs regarding my home & habits are now on the world wide web. Fortunately, NorthQ know what they’re doing – the tech is up to specs, and the latest security measures are in place. This does not mean that my data is 100% secure, but it means that I have no particular reason to be worried.
What do you mean, “qualitative”?
If anyone paid attention to what I say, they’d probably notice that I tend to display some skepticism towards data and data-driven conclusions. I’ve even spoken (twice) about empathy as a business tool – this is probably some new-age thing, right? Nope. I’m actually quite the science nerd, and have been all my life. I love science.
Tool, assistant, or… what?
Hey, did you know that your smartphone is a computer that’s more than ten times faster than the late 70’s 9-million-dollar Cray-1 supercomputer? We’re carrying around sci-fi levels of computing power in our pockets – literally; less than a generation ago, writers thought computers of this power level would be smarter than humans.
“Intelligent Vision”
The big one is “Why Wearable”? That’s the core question: What, presumably, is the value of wearing technology, compared to carrying it? Well, of course you might almost argue that, at this point, some people are wearing their cell phones; it doesn’t leave the hand anymore often than a pair of glasses leave the face – but the fact remains, we are still in a bit of trouble arguing for wearable technology.
Talkback: Empathy in business
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and it is in no way restricted to compassion in times of sadness – it’s the ability to generally do so. It would actually be a problem to even behave politely considerate without the ability to put yourself in the situation of someone else…
The driverless car & You
Here’s the thing: From a people perspective, self-driving cars are two very different things, depending on whether we’re talking about something that goes on the road tomorrow, or something that comprises most or all of the “personal conveyance” fleet in a future a bit further off.
Asking the right questions
I get asked this question a lot: “- so, what is it you do, exactly…?” – as in, what, practically, does it mean to work as a user/customer experience specialist, to work with experience and behavioural economy, to work as a design thinker? What would one get in return, practically speaking, if one were to […]
IoT spitball session
“I have the Internet of Things at my house”.This is how Will Smith of Tested opens his review of the “SmartThings” smart-home automation system – a video which I’ve embedded right here for your convenience, because it happens to be a pretty good introduction to the IoT (as we geekily refer to it) as it […]
Talkback: The true power of behavior
Given my position on, well, things, and my focus on user understanding, the human-centered aspect of design thinking, and professional empathy, it’s probably no big surprise I have a great interest in the field of behavioural economics.For that reason I find this video, by Dan Ariely – professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke, […]
Apple, then and now
I know, I know – everybody has to say something following the big unveiling by Apple the other day, just like every other time it’s happened. I’m just on the band wagon, right?Well, yeah.But I do feel I have something to add, and it’s not so much about the iWatch (as if anyone is going […]
Context, put in context…
AT some point in the early 90’s Kevin Smith had a meeting with producer Jon Peters about the script for a planned Superman movie, “Superman Lives”, that Smith had been hired to write. Apparently, Peters was fresh off a viewing of “Star Wars” – at the time nothing short of the gold standard for commercial […]
Talkback: Gamification is more than gaming
Been a while, I know, summer and all – but it’s time for another Talkback. This time I’m talking back at Bernard Marr’s article “What the heck is gamification“, and at some of the general conceptions surrounding the idea of gamification, some of which I agree with, others I don’t.I wrote a bit about this […]
“Spitballing”?
Sometimes a company just wants a qualified second opinion. For that, I offer what I call “Spitballing”, and right now I’m going to explain a bit more what that means, when to use it, and what the benefits of it are.It’s a one-off service, specifically centered around user/customer experience and relations & design thinking. You […]
“OK, Smartwatch”
Remember a little while ago I had a piece called “Good idea, bad execution“? It’s really OK if you don’t, I won’t hold it against you (although if you want to go read it now that’s totally OK too – I’ll wait), and it’s not a requisite for what’s about to follow – but in that […]
The experience in hiring
I’ve been meaning to write up a piece on this for a while and, partially inspired by recent experience both of my own and in my acquaintance circles, I think now’s the time – we’re going to take a look at recruitment today, and see if anyone might be leaving gold on the table because […]
The ROI of User Understanding
I’ve written before about how all this user business is supposed to be worth it in terms of, well, business, but it’s such and important part of the subject matter of User Understanding, User Considerations, Customer Experience etc. that it should probably be the subject of every other article.I do, however, try to also get […]
Review: “Medbruger”
What follows is my review of the book “Medbruger” (“Co-sumer” I guess) by Claus Skytte & Bo Kampmann Walther – I’d translate it as per usual but since the book is not yet out in English it wouldn’t make much sense. If you understand Danish, however, read on…“The Business of Business is People”Dette er det […]
Talkback: Music, learning, nudging & jump-kicks
In this edition of “Talkback” we’re going to be dealing with some of the implications of this article from Discovery, entitled “Learn Mad Skills With Superhuman Speed” – about how one might use tech to learn faster.What is said, briefly, is that if we build tech wearables that can physically induce us to, say, move […]
Design & You
So, a few weeks ago I wrote a piece on the relationship between User Experience and Design Thinking, exploring the connection between the two – and then I had a conversation with a friend of mine, a design professional, who wondered about another relationship, namely between Design Thinking and… Design.His question, basically, was “why use […]
What is “The Internet of Things”?
That’s not a retorical question – sure, us nerdy types, among whom there’s been talk about this for well over a decade, we probably think this is as self-explanatory as it is inevitable but I’m going to go ahead and say there’s probably a lot of people who’ve never heard of this, or who have […]
UX vs. Design Thinking – what’s the relationship?
I’m not beholden to TED or anything but, once again, I’d like to kick today’s topic off with a video – and I should point out that even though the topic for this article reads both “UX” and “Design Thinking”, neither is heard in the talk, and it’s not because I linked the wrong video.Here, […]
Talkback: Facebook, Oculus & the future of VR/3D
OK, this isn’t so much a Talkback as it’s a Talk-Along – though at least I’m not jumping the bandwagon just to say that it’s weird, or for that matter either awful or wonderful, that Facebook has acquired Oculus.It’s something else that I have to say – it’s inspired by Wired’s article entitled “Why Facebook’s […]
Talkback: Yes, Sergey Brin – and No.
Subject of the day: – if you create a new and different product, and you have every reason to believe it takes a warm and convincing introduction to get people to like it, could it have an effect on user adaptation if you happen to imply that the conceptual foundation of your product is an […]
The timing of interaction
You’ve probably heard about how human beings are said to have five senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, right? One, two…. looks about right.Anyway, we have more than those, and even though there’s still discussion going on about which, and how to define them, this is the kind of knowledge about human functioning […]
Chocolate covered broccoli?
In my ongoing effort to clarify, or at least comment on, important concepts in the field of User Experience, today we’re going to talk a bit about chocolate covered broccoli.You may now feel you’ve skipped the parts of the UX debate, or even the pages of the litterature, in which this core tenet of the […]
“Good idea, bad execution”
I bet you’ve heard or read that expression – it comes up so often in reviews of things and services that just don’t, you know, work or take off, but have a good intention at their heart. And many if not most times, it’s because of insufficient user experience dilligence.Here, let’s have a few examples […]
Nudging
OK, now that I have your attention, by virtue of mentioning one of the hottest buzzwords of the day (other than Big Data) I thought I’d take you through a brief explanation – as it’s so often the case with buzz concepts, it can get a little confusing as everybody scrambles to shoehorn the latest whassamabobbit into their […]
The empathy tool
As I’ve teased once or twice in earlier articles, today we’re going to look at the most important tool in the User Experience specialist’s toolbox: The Empathy Tool. To make sure this makes sense, let’s first look at the concept of empathy – to some it may carry connotations of peace, love & flowers but what […]
Common misunderstandings, corrected
Let me start by making this clear: I am not berating anyone – I sincerely hope you won’t feel attacked and have to defend yourself, this is not, in any way, an accusation. Really, it isn’t, and it’s important you believe me.Because what I am about to say is kind-of important, if by “kind-of”, one […]
Big Data vs. User Experience
Right there is one of the great buzzwords these days: “Big Data”. You’ve probably heard it this week, maybe even today, and you may also have noticed the positive connotations that cling to the term – the glowing, almost awestruck tone, and the shared assumption that this concept holds all the answers. Specifically, all the answers to our […]
Is it worth it?
This is, of course, the big question for most companies: – is it really worth it to invest time and effort in user/customer experience managment and -activities?Indeed, companies and corporations often cite the reason of “complexity” and/or “organisational structure” for being reluctant to implement these activities – and this is not wrong; they are those […]
The emotional signature
To many, the field of customer and user experience seems highly esoteric and intangible. With something so subjective, how does one even begin to quantify these things…?And it is correct – for us to act upon, and seek to improve, the user experience, we must first know what we’re talking about. Fortunately, we actually do.To […]
Work & Manifesto
I’ve decided to re-publish, in this new framework, and old(er) article of mine, known as my “Work & Manifesto” from the 2009 incarnation of my website (which you can still visit here) – I still feel it’s relevant, even if it is now bolstered by another half-decade of additional experience and deliberation:
Touching the… something
You may recall I’ve had words on various touch gadgets in the past, like here or overthere – this post I thought I’d devote to a designer’s look at touch technology itself, so let’s dig in:- undoubtedly riding the coattails of both the ridonkolously successful iPhone/Pad and their own attemps at mobile OS, Microsoft have started teasing Windows 8. […]
On a great dane
I think I may be something of a jaded person sometimes – no, it’s true, at times I am cricital, skeptical, even cynical, and find that occasions of real inspiration are few and far apart.But even I get caught up now and then, and it seems this happens often when Bjarke Ingels opens his mouth… so I […]
Technology in clown shoes?
Did you get an iPad yet?You do have an iPhone, right?Or whatever brand of smartphone you prefer – you know, the kind that has internet capacity (and not WAP, either).If you do, you’re part of the future, if we are to believe some of the big players. Apple seems to have already relegated their actual computers […]
– and it designs back…
I’ve tried not to get into this, on account of it being a veritable can of ticked-off killer bees, but I think I must, so with a due sense of dread I utter the word: – Microsoft…
Was it all for naught? – the iPad
It’s out: Apple’s iPad. And if you know me you know that not having had my hands on it will never deter me from forming an opinion – this time, that happened right quick: It would seem Apple have lost their collective mind. This is the first time since the Performa series that a new […]
“UX is not” manifesto, really…
This is going to be just a short post (by my standards anywyay) – just thought I’d take a moment to commend this wonderful run-down by UX designer Whitney Hess, of what User Experience and the design thereof is not. While I’m usually not particularly fond of defining anything through what it isn’t, the field […]
Change of pace… again!
Well, gosh darnit, things just keep happening! Things like, during what we at JWcph call the anti-bubble (you know, cryziz’n all) I went away from working as advisor, PR chief, salesman etc. at Mekavi, redesigned and rebooted my own website and revived this blog – during that same time I had meetings all over the […]
Perspective on neo-tribalism
Have you heard about that, neo-tribalism? Well, it’s a concept notably promoted by Seth Godin, modern marketing guru and widely credited for popularising the concept of “permission marketing”, and it revolves around using technology (that is, the internet) to form modern tribes around products, causes, activities etc. actual tribe, the model for Godin’s concept At […]
UX thoughts on a friday
Settle down, class… I know the weekend is only hours away but we still have stuff to get through… I thought I’d just use the newly launched (or rather, beta-launched) “Den Store Danske”, the Great Danish Encyclopedia online as a case study – so let’s go ahead and take a look at this picture: You […]
Brand name dropping: So last week…!
Hunter boots, Gucci bags, Blah-blah-blah-niks, and whatever those huge watches are supposed to be, and on and on… you know it and, admit it, you’re tired of it. Well, dispair not, for JW of Cph is here with a remedy: The No-Brand Brand Get them while they’re not – over at the shop don’t […]
Huzzah, the new website!
This may not be very comme il faut but I feel like congratulating myself just a tiny bit – the new site at jesperwille.com is up as of today! Yay! I’m particularly happy about this one because this time, not only did I design it (of course, the previous one was of my own design […]
360 Winnett
This may be a little late, but anyway… Here’s an interesting project I’ve been following almost since it started – some people are building a house and sharing every step of the way with us, the internet people: It’s fun to be able to see a home being created somewhere across the world – also, […]
Good Lord, how time flies…!
Have you ever been away from home for a loooong time, then returned and proceeded to remove the white sheets from the furniture, wipe away the dust and cobwebs and re-inserting yourself into your own space – feeling comfy and I’ve-come-home-ish all the while? I never have – but I assume it must feel a […]
BigBagel is finally home
I am deeply pleased to be able to officially announce this – the once estranged, homeless, allbut orphaned BigBagels have finally ended their days of roaming aimlessly about the countryside… That is because they have found a loving home – a spacious place where their opulent size is nay longer an impairment, but rather a […]
Challenge? – don’t go there
I have an announcement to make: – Jesper W. of CPH fully intends to drop dead, or at the very least comatose, rather than participate in Bang & Olufsen’s so-called Creative Challenge. Why, you wonder? – why would any industrial designer, and even one with a particular interest in household electronics and the ilk, balk […]
Second whatnow…?
I’d be surprised if anyone remembers but waaaay back in the end of ’06 and the early part of this year, there was a buzz goin’ on about something called “Second Life”. Everybody who thought they were anybody had to be there and pretend to take it seriously. JWcph was there too, actually I had […]
Speak of the…. iPhone
Yep. It’s out. The iPhone. – but not here in Denmark… However, being unable to get one for myself and get first hand knowledge doesn’t keep me from having formed an opinion, if not about the iPhone himself, then at least of the idea of it and the hype surrounding it. It’s interesting, first off, […]
Eulogy for a stranger…
Strictly speaking I have no business talking about this but I feel the need to: Yesterday, june 24th, the world became a little bit smaller and a little bit uglier – in Jamaica, the Powers That Be reached out and took away the lovely and talented Natasja Saad. † Natasja Saad, june 24th 2007 I […]
The first date
As those who subscribe to the new DesignMatters may (or may not) have noticed, yours truly got to make a small thumb print on this edition – I am refering to the article about the workshop arranged by Sapa & RIAS in march, at which I was one of the happy campers. (The repeat took […]
What’s in a title?
I am not formally educated in the field of professional creativity, my skills in this field are self taught (in so far as I have any). Or, as I put it in my description at LinkedIn, I have attended the notorious “School of Hard Knocks”, an education which never ends an nobody passes alive. So […]
