Blog Address Changed

Hi all,

New Year... New face...
You can now access this blog at http://psychobserver.com.

I transfered all past posts.

Happy New Year!
新年快乐!

Honeymoon Domestic Consultant

From ChinesePod.com (A great website to learn Mandarin) is an interesting look at a phenomenon that is spreading in China... I would say especially in Shanghai. Young Chinese couples are getting married, but have no clue whatsoever as to how to take care of themselves, so their parents "offer" them a kind of domestic helper/consultant (蜜月阿姨) to make sure they won't ... well starve to death for example, or put their pet in the washing machine, who knows...

You can listen to the 3 minutes dialog below to know a bit more:

	街语19 The Word on the Street is 蜜月阿姨 (mìyuè āyí)
	Visit ChinesePod.com

Merry Christmas! And happy festive season!
圣诞快乐！

"Better Living - Product Design Contributes" Expo

The Hong Kong heritage museum has organized a 6 months or so product design exhibition as part of the government initiative to promote Hong Kong as a design platform for Asia. All the exhibitors are Hong Kong designers or companies (See Pictures on Flickr).

It is interesting to see that most well-known Hong Kong designers have set up their own consultancy or design their own products on a small scale and in relatively low risk categories. Indeed the exhibition has a lot of "gift & Premium" types of products.

Still, the TTI Group area is very interesting, with a wide range of products displayed and much efforts spent on highlighting the design process behind each of these. To me, that should be the spirit of the whole exhibition and is the best way to promote design and push people to get more involved.

I was very disappointed at the Philips Design booth. Nothing much to see there. It seems they tried to build an "experience" booth with too much atmosphere and very little content.

Interactive Floors

There are more and more interactive floors appearing all over town in Hong Kong. These things even though they do not work perfectly are a great way to entertain people and make them interact with their surroundings. And kids especially love it...

Few Links - 22 Dec. 2006

The usual three links on three topics that have nothing to do with one another:

1. From BusinessWeek is an article about "China's Innovation Barriers". My thought on this: Looking at China's rapid evolution in the past decades, why would being innovative be much of a problem? China has overcome much larger problems already.
2. From BusinessWeek again is an article about "Matsushita's Green Strategy". A lot of interesting figures about Japanese companies in this article. The biggest take-away is that being greener is really a huge commitment and investment that does not bring return right away, so companies had better start quick.
3. Posted on Experientia Blog "Putting People First" is an article about Usability called "Introducing Usability 2.0". I really hate that 2.0 craze, but having done Usability Testing and writing reports sometimes even after a Web site had been launched, I totally identify with the writer. Great read.
   

Home Coffee Experience

Starbucks reinvented the coffee shop and is covering the whole world with its successful ventures. Another company is now aggressively targeting other untapped locations were coffee is consumed. This company is Nespresso and already showed impressive growth providing coffee to small and medium size corporations as well as to individuals.

While strolling around in Paris, I encountered one of their shop targeted to individuals. Everything is done to make the experience feel like a luxury one. The design of the machines is very well finished and their usage is a breeze. The staff wears suits and stands being neatly decorated desks. Change the product and this could be a Louis Vuitton shop.

If we move to Hong Kong, Nespresso does not have its own shop and is selling its machines mainly through high-end supermarkets (on top of aggressively developing its business segment). With most people in Hong Kong heading outside of their apartments for meals, especially breakfast, the approach of focusing on business, while developing some kind of exposure through supermarket chains should show great results. It is great to see a company doing its homework.

Starbucks could have brought great coffee experience outside of its stores, but it seems that another coffee company identified this great opportunity first and developed a very compelling experience to grow this under-developed market.

Forcing Change Through Bad Experience

Yesterday night the BBC was announcing the start of a new 8km tram line in Paris. With green grass surrounding the trains, this seems like a great move towards making the city more environment friendly, but it is actually the latest in a move by the city to curb downtown traffic by making it a hell to drive around. All roads now include bus lanes or other tricks that reduced by half the number of lanes available for common drivers. The city seems to hope that by making driving the most frustrating experience ever, people will use alternative means of transportation.

What a terrible way to treat its own population!

Public transportation in Paris is very far from perfect when compared with cities like Hong Kong. The metro is dirty and plagued by strikes and delays. Buses are unsafe. Is the city really providing an equally convenient alternative to the car? Not really… It also fails to realize the importance of the car for French people in general. Driving a car in France is a statement of freedom and independence. A forced removal of this can only angry people more. It will not make them abandon their car.

So apart from increased traffic jams, Paris now also has way more motorcycles speeding between cars and leading to more crashes, as more and more less-experienced two-wheel drivers get on the road. Looking at solutions like London implementation of a toll fee could lead to better results. Unfortunately, a fee, as I was discussing with a French friend, is not an egalitarian solution as it will affect poorer people more… Isn’t France quest to be the most egalitarian country in the world affecting its own relevance to the world in the end?

Few Links - 17 Dec. 2006

Below are three links about very different topics...

1. From All This ChittahChattah by Steve Portigal is a post called "Signal To Noise". It deals with the appropriateness of online advertising by highlighting a funny example. Highly relevant to any companies investing in online advertising: Don't forget Context!
   
2. From Adverblog is a link to an edugame aimed at making people realize how important it is to save energy in the office. As mentioned in Adverblog, the game is far from perfect, but it still provides some information in an entertaining way. Worth checking...
3. From EasthSouthWestNorth is a post about the Hong Kong Ferry Terminal Clock that is to be demolished. It raises the issue of conserving the Hong Kong cultural heritage and how it is best done. I find it very interesting as it deals with the very definition of cultural heritage and how it can be shared in a meaningful way with outside people. I recently brought visitors to the newly built Ngong Ping Village and to see the Symphony of Lights... Both disgraces to Hong Kong culture if you ask me. Especially the Ngong Ping village which is supposed to be dedicated to Buddhism and includes French food, Starbucks and dumb shows that are absolutely not educational.

"Mr. Egg... Please Show Me Your ID!"

It is not one day in Hong Kong without getting a warning on TV about poisonous food. Sometimes it is fish, sometimes vegetable or some other fake products, and they all come from China. As a result a brand new market opportunity has been created for "certified good" food. China even created the "Edible Farm Product" label that they grant to brands with strict quality control of their production.

While I was at the Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo, I chatted for a while with Mr. Tony Sin the project director of De Qing Yuan (Website only in Chinese) a Beijing company that is entering the Hong Kong market. Armed with the Chinese Green Food label and a strict process control, they aim at introducing their product - eggs - in Hong Kong by positioning them as the safe option to other brands. Their pricing would be in between normal eggs and "organic" eggs.

Another difference with these eggs will be that the date of production instead of some expiry date will be stamped on the egg itself. Those expiry dates really mean nothing to me as they are so remote in the future (at least in Hong Kong supermarkets), but having the production date on the egg could be scary depending on the speed at which the supermarket can empty its shelves. Although I got used to seeing these expiry date, I don't know what would be my reaction to seeing eggs with a production date long in the past...

In short, there is huge market opportunity here, but isn't it a bit scary that maybe not long from now, while shopping, we will have to choose from the following two sections:

1. Reasonable price, BUT EAT AT YOUR OWN RISK
2. MORE EXPENSIVE, but safe to eat

41st Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo

The expo is definitely not what I expected. With a name like that I expected some kind of display of Hong Kong best brands that would promote themselves. Nope Nope... The expo is actually a gigantic market where you can buy whatever you want from brands that are or not from Hong Kong. Food is the main item, but products span from beauty stuff and Chinese medicine to clothing and furniture (photo album on Flickr).

The expo is still interesting to understand what makes Hong Kong consumers buy...

Rule #1: Product demonstration always attract crowds
Rule #2: Display discounts all over your booth
Rule #3: Get a loudspeaker louder than your neighbor's

Or...

Get ready for a looonnnnggggg day

TED Talks: Twists of the Mind

I know I wrote that the next few posts would be about cultural differences between France and Hong Kong, but as a good French person I only define rules so that I can have the pleasure to break them… ;o)

So, here is another TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk video. This one is by Michael Shermer, founder/publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and author of several books, including Why People Believe Weird Things. It was recorded in February 2006 and last around 18 minutes.

Apart from the fact that you will get a good laugh watching this video, there is one very important point I found there about priming. Priming is roughly preparing the mind to what it will encounter. The result is that the mind will focus its attention on one thing, while actually other factors should be taken into account. Priming can result in total bias if not taken into account.

Imagine you are discussing with the creative director of the advertising company you are working with. He (or she) explains you the concept of the ad they made and shows you the storyboard. You find it great. You produce that and it is a total failure because people just don’t get the concept… The very fact that the creative director explained you the concept before showing the storyboard induced a bias that you should be aware of. This may sound trivial, but it happens everyday. It is just like asking participants to rate a product in a focus group after telling them how “this product has so many cool features”.

Making the Green Light “Greener”

Back in Hong Kong after two weeks in my home country, France, I can start blogging again. And for a short while I will blog about differences; differences between France and Hong Kong.

As a first post, I will focus on traffic lights. It is the first time that it struck me, but traffic lights are rather different in some aspects between France and Hong Kong. The main difference I found is that the French green is not as “green” as the Hong Kong green… Let me explain...

Say you are pedestrian in Hong Kong waiting to cross the road. When the light turns green, you can cross without any worry. No car can come at you as all traffic lights for cars are red. Not so in France. When the same pedestrian crosses the road, cars will be coming from other sides of the crossroad and will be patiently waiting, or most probably trying to find a way through the pedestrians, while you are crossing. This makes crossing the road a much more stressful experience. A very small difference you would say…

Well if we believe what Malcolm Gladwell writes in “The Tipping Point”, small environment cues are very important and can greatly affect people’s behavior. In his book, he goes on explaining how removing graffiti in the New York subway helped decrease crime. Well, could it be that in Paris, making green lights “greener” could help decrease the stress and frustration the population faces everyday there? Everybody who visits me in Hong Kong finds that despite the crowd the place seems more relaxing than others… maybe European cities could learn from these small things that can make a city nicer to live in.

Few links - 16 Sept. 2006

1. The onliness of Strong Brands is a BusinessWeek article about ZAG, a new book from Marty Neumeier. The book talks about the "onliness" of brands, meaning their uniqueness. It emphasize the need to create unique experiences as opposed to best experiences, arguing that best experiences leads to following common practices and fail to differentiate the brand. The article also emphasizes the need to link brands with long-term trends to create a bridge with customers, as well as be critical towards results from market research that sometimes fail to identify a killer product.


2. (Links in French) WAT.TV is an online platform launch by French TF1 (The channel number 1 in France). In LeMonde, leading French newspaper, the article entitled "TF1 fait de la television avec du Web" (TF1 does TV using the Internet) discusses the new strategy employed by the channel to bridge traditional TV programming with the Web. The online platform allows the community to share pictures, videos, text and so on. On a weekly basis, the channel will choose a selection of short videos that they will broadcast late at night on their main channel. The authors of the videos receive Euro 100 for that. I find the approach pretty nice, but I wonder if a significant community can really emerge around a TV channel... it seems too restrictive to me.


3. The last link is to the SonyEricsson ad that is showing right now on Hong Kong TV. The ad is very neat and nicely done... but at the end the phone rings and a guy says: "Hello...". Am I the only one who wants to complete the sentence with "Moto"? Every time I see the ad I think about Motorola more than SonyEricsson...

When Will They Get It?

Around 2 months ago, my Internet connection stopped working. It took me plenty of courage to get myself to go through the PCCW hotline and solve my problem (I usually prefer going to a store rather than trying Call Centers). As I was on the phone, the support person told me my Now Broadband TV subscription was almost over and that he could propose me some good deals to renew it. He said he would call back two days later.

Time passed...

... and passed...

And two days ago I decided, seeing one of these PCCW Now booths in the street to go and check for myself. I discovered that my contract was already over and that they just had continued to charge the service as usual. Well, I consider myself lucky that they did not start charging more without telling me, so that's fine.

Then the guy started to enumerate the different options I had to renew. Of course all of them were forcing me sign a new contract for 12 to 18 months, even though I have been a customer for more than 18 months. After some negotiation, he told me that there was a way for me to get a nice subscription and 3 months for free. He just had to treat me as a new customer, come to pick up my current set-top box and replace it by a brand new one.

Reluctant to sign for a long contract, I asked him what would happen if I was switching subscription through the DIY (do-it-yourself) TV system they have. He told me: "Well, you would pay full price and get no discount."

To summarize, if as a customer I change my subscription I use the way that costs the least to the company, then I will pay the most (that's DIY). And if I ask the support person to stop my current contract and come to my place to exchange the hardware, then I will pay the least for the service. How could a company do something more mind-bending than that?

Well... This kind of things happen of course everyday, but I just had to write about it!

Is More Choice A Good Thing?

Here is another great video taken from TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Talks. This one was made by Barry Schwartz in July 2005 following the release of his book "The Paradox Of Choice" (duration: 20 minutes).

Please go check the Malcolm Gladwell video I posted earlier if you did not watch it.

In this talk, Barry Schwartz builds a very strong argument against providing too much choice to people. He highlights that in regards to choice, although too little is bad, too much can as well have a very negative effect on people on four different aspects:

1. Regret and anticipated regret
2. Opportunity cost
3. Escalation of expectations
4. Self-blame

This presentation relates directly to customer experience and to the strategies companies employ to provide positive, or higher than expectations, experiences. With expectations getting higher with the increase in choice, companies should consider the paradox highlighted here seriously.

If we look at clothing shops in Hong Kong for example, instead of having a simple Giordano, now you have Giordano, Giordano Ladies, Giordano Junior, Giordano Concepts. With every new type of store created, customers' expectations of how well a specific store can address their needs will increase, thus making it much more difficult to exceed these customers' expectations. Few choices answering specific needs and clear distinctions between each choice, rather than choice overload, is a winning formula.

RSS for Everyone?

RSS feeds changed my life. They are the best way to retrieve information on a daily basis from multiple sources of information. Everybody knows that I guess... or do they?

Even though RSS feeds have been around for a long time, their potential has not been fully utilized today. One of the reason for this is that whatever easy we believe, as heavy Internet users, it is to use RSS or to understand the logic behind, well it is not. I was transferring all my feeds this afternoon from MyYahoo to NetVibes, as I think NetVibes offers more flexibility for me to build my own "stay-in-touch-with-the-World" page. It took me hell of a lot of time... adding all the feeds and very often having to copy/paste RSS feeds URLs. And I am not even talking about finding new feeds here.

Talking about my dad again...
I am sorry that I will mention my dad again. Not that I have a fixation on him, but while he was visiting Hong Kong I gave him am Internet crash course! I decided to show him the power of the Internet and how it could change his way of working. Some stuff freaked him out, like being able to find pictures of the house he just bought in a tiny village in the South-East of France on Flickr. Others amazed him like the amount of information that can be found on Wikipedia. But above all, he felt most enthusiastic about RSS feeds and how it could help him save so much time... save time, that is once you have everything set up.

All this takes so much time
And that's where for me the major problem is. To be able to make an efficient use of RSS feeds, well on top of being very comfortable with all that Internet stuff, you have to have so much time. There is so much information out there that finding really interesting content is really a challenge, especially for the generation of people who did not grow up browsing the Web before they could speak. And this segment of the population is in dire need for information, as they hold position of major responsibility in multinationals for example.

Bloomberg for everybody
So, if we look at how things work in the Financial world, where Bloomberg and others feed real-time information to traders around the World. Wouldn't a concept like that nowadays work with general information where users could choose to be informed about special topics of interest? As many Web sites do it, it is great to leave it to the community to decide what is interesting, but for people with little Internet experience and little time, the task of choosing the type of content that is interesting to them could be left to one or several experts.

Following Pandora concept
A Web site that has nothing to do with information but that I find so great is Pandora, where the system builds a radio suited to your own taste, just based on the name of a band or a song that you provide. When a song comes up, you can just say that you like it or not and the system will tailor further the radio. It is that kind of simplicity that could make to my mind RSS feeds and information providers reach their full potential. Of course Pandora is a huge initiative that necessitates to review and categorize every piece of music that can be found. Could that be done with information? My feeling is that leaving an algorithm and the whole community do it may not be enough... and may leave out a part of the population who would be avid users is they were given the opportunity to try.

The Solution to Branding

Last week-end, as my dad was visiting, I went to Shenzhen to show him the difference between Hong Kong life and China life. Sure enough, you cannot summarize China by looking at Shenzhen, but you see a big difference with Hong Kong right when you cross the border. Colors are paler. It is dusty everywhere because of the continuous construction going on. People look tired. You can tell you are not in Hong Kong anymore. You can tell you are in a country that is developing and in a city that is still struggling to find its identity.

On one of our errands, we saw a celebration in the street. A Hong Kong jewelry brand was celebrating a very important event. That brand had joined the exclusive circle of "CHINA FAMOUS BRANDS" as the certificate that they were showing off explained (see picture on the right).

That got me thinking... How can a certificate, be it from the most important government body, give you the status of a famous brand. Aren't the people supposed to decide which company is famous and which one is not?

Now, I am reading "1 Billion Customers" by James Mc Gregor right now (a book that I recommend to anybody with interest in doing business in China). In the book he explains how the Chinese government when there is a lot of money at stake will find ways to benefit more from it.

To me that example could be one of these. Branding, advertising and marketing in general are great sources of revenue. So, what if the government could issue a document that decided whether you were famous or not, whether your brand was a valuable asset or not, wouldn't that be a great power in the hands of the government?

Targeting the niche

Going mainstream gets harder and harder by the day. Significant behavioral differences and increasing expectations among customers makes it near impossible to develop a message that will reach every consumer. As a result targeting niche segment can become a more and more valuable option. That is one option that the Telecom provider Smartone is following in Hong Kong by targeting explicitly the Filipino community.

Smartone brand is usually red and white, but this store closed to a Filipino hotspot in Hong Kong Causeway Bay has been totally rebranded to fit the community taste and even displays Bahasa language instead of English or Chinese. Shops assistants are of course Filipinos as well. With a huge Filipino community, dedicated Filipino shops are not uncommon in Hong Kong, but it is very uncommon for a "big" company to recognize the fact and spend the effort to research the needs of that community. With no other company following the example as thoroughly, Smartone surely has a huge lead in a community of several hundred thousands.

The Compliance Assistance Centre in Hong Kong

As one employee stated it when explaining what it was, if the Environment Protection Department is the stick (armed with laws and regulations), the Compliance Assistance Centre set up in September in Hong Kong is the carrot. The center main mission is to educate people in specific industries on how to comply better with environment standards and how it can benefit their image to do so (the carrot). The center focuses on four areas: the construction industry, vehicle repair shops, restaurants and property management.

The attitude of the center is quite passive, waiting for interested parties to contact them. From the material distributed at the booth, the focus is also on big companies. Indeed all documents are thick reports that only a company with a legion of administrative staff would read. Even if the initiative is good I am not sure the carrot (a better image) will be big enough to attract the bulk of companies in the targeted industries where image may not be a top priority.

The other limitations of the center is that it only provides information and will send companies to other third-parties for actual services to help them, significantly affecting convenience. My first feeling on the Compliance Assistance Centre is that it should focus on a bottom-up approach with targeted trial programs with few picked companies rather than a top-down one. The carrot would appear much bigger with successful case studies done with other small businesses.

Blurring the line between real and virtual

A pretty interesting article today in BusinessWeek Online Innovation section entitled: "Second Life Lessons". It explains the threats and opportunities of advertising campaigns or even setting up shops in virtual worlds like Second Life. As a gamer I really do not believe in in-game advertising. They are intrusive and if not their effectiveness still has to be proved.

The example of Toyota, which plans to build its own shop in Second Life selling customizable virtual cars is another kind of interactions between companies and customers, which to me offers much more appeal. If Toyota is creating great virtual cars that blend totally in the virtual world, it may very well have crucial impacts on its brand in the real world. But it is also a risky path... as the article points out, virtual communities are not easy to crack and blend into (The example of avatars bombing virtual stores is pretty scary). Second life also offers limited opportunities in terms of exposure due to the volume of its traffic... at the time I write this post, only 6,250 people are online.

Oh! That's Great!... oh... no, finally no...

That ad is displayed inside the MTR (Metro) in Hong Kong. It is an ad for the fast train that links the airport and a new exhibition hall. It says in big that you can enjoy a same day return trip to the AsiaWorld Exposition Hall for only HK$42, instead of a usual HK$100 if I am not mistaking. That sounds like great! Then you look at the right of the ad with all these street signs displaying places in Hong Kong Island and a big 42 next to each of them...

... unfortunately, when you look at the bottom of the ad, you can see that if you take a full ride from Hong Kong station (on the main island of Hong Kong like the places displayed on the signs at the top right of the ad) to the exibition hall, that will cost you HK$72. Still a nice discount but not as nice as HK$42.

I will never understand how an advertiser can manage customers' expectations so badly. You have a great discount, but by showing IN BIG a wrong figure you actually make people feel bad about the offer and about the company that is seen as trying to trick people. It would have been so easy to display the right price first or at least to change the copy and say: "Same day return trip ticket to AsiaWorld Expo FROM HK$42 up".

Enthusiasm is not enough

The Hong Kong Government Environmental Protection Department had a large booth at the EcoAsia Expo dedicated to promoting its efforts. I spent extensive time there talking to the staff, exchanging ideas and learning about the latest initiatives implemented by the department. Among the initiatives are the Compliance Assistance Centre (CAC), EcoPark and the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Charging Scheme to which I will dedicate separate posts.

The first thing that struck me at the booth is the people. When I think government staff, it usually does not trigger very positive emotions (It is true that I mostly interact with immigration staff which is not the most pleasant of all experiences). But at the booth every single person I talked to was knowledgeable (in their particular area) and presented well. The most important was that they believed in what they were doing. They were eager to explain the newest initiatives happening, their impacts and exchange ideas about how things are done in other countries. Having enthusiastic employees is a first step in making a change.

It was clear as well that the department was spending endless efforts and money on trying to make their message stick and change people’s habits. The booth was full of reports, booklets, leaflets, freebies and other posters aimed at explaining how to be a more environment-friendly citizen. As a researcher, I am not convinced at all though that all these documents are “sticky”, to use Malcolm Gladwell terms.

I don’t think any study has been performed to assess how efficient all these promotions are, but there should be some. Mostly after people pick up leaflets, if they don’t throw them away, they will store them in a drawer not to look at them again. To really achieve its goal of changing people’s behavior, the government should look at more innovative ways and channels to research people and communicate its message. Being enthusiastic is good; being an expert about the environment is even better, but in the end how the message is communicated is most crucial in changing people’s habits. And there, the expertise necessary is marketing and psychology, on which I doubt that the government focuses enough.

Ethnographic Research at Intel

Linked from Experientia blog Putting People First is an article on how innovation is done at Intel these days "Making computing a people science". The article especially focuses on how Intel team of social scientists help to spur innovation that truly addresses customer needs.

Nothing really revolutionary in the model that is introduced in the article. It is basically a SET (Social, Economic, Technological) model, used to make sure design is considered from every point of view:

• Social: Does the design address a need of customers or could create one?
  
• Economic: Is the design viable financially?
• Technological: Is the technology available to bring the design to reality?

But it is interesting to see that ethnographic research is applied, at it should, to any industry. The IT and software industries formerly based their processes on very strict sequential models and should definitely wake up to the call and get into their users' lives much more.

Slides on Mental Models

Below is a pretty nice presentation on mental models from Indi Young, a former AdaptivePath staff member (I found the link to this presentation from Karl Long's ExperienceCurve Blog). Mental models are key to understand the customer experience and identify patterns of behavior. They can be leveraged on to define the features of a product and how they should be organized for example.

The haircut vending machine

I hate going to the hairdresser. I go there as rarely as I can. Usually I wait until more than 90% of my friends complain about my hair getting too messy before I actually go and get it cut. At that time, I cut as much as possible to make sure I won’t go back that soon. It is hard to compare a haircut and going to the dentist, but to me it is as hard to convince myself to go to either one… if there is no obvious urgent need or symptoms, I won’t go.

In terms of hairdresser, I am not loyal at all. I never had any outstanding experience that made me want to stick to a specific hairdresser. I want a simple cut, nothing fancy. So a good stylist does not make much of a difference. Most importantly I want to spend as little time as possible in the company of the hairdresser. The main things I look at when choosing a new hairdresser is price and convenience. That could be a short version of my persona, summarizing my behavior in relation to getting my haircut.

When walking in the streets of Hong Kong I ended up finding a hairdresser that directly addressed this type of personas. QB House is a Japanese chain that was created in 1996 and that instead on focusing on style, focuses on efficiency. On the door of the hairdresser, then rules are set:

1. Get a HK$50 note ready
2. Buy a ticket (no change given)
3. Wait for your turn
4. Explain the hairstylist what style you want
5. The haircut lasts only 10 minutes

When searching on forums, it clearly appears that this concept does not rally all type of crowds. Many are reluctant to try, and it is true that in Hong Kong you can find countless cheap hairdressers that will induce more confidence by focusing more on style. But I can very well imagine the computer geeks in Akihabara district in Tokyo rush to that kind of quick hair salons, enjoying the very systematic process detailed in advance by the hairdresser. With a salon in Hong Kong just next to two major computer and game centers in Wan Chai, the concept can work very well. No need to please everybody.

Hong Kong people and the environment

Two weeks ago, I went to watch “The Inconvenient Truth”, the documentary on global warming based on the work of Al Gore. The figures in the movie were so striking that at that time I thought the movie should become a compulsory watch for everybody in Hong Kong. People had to realize what was happening to the Earth. But something struck me even more during that movie. A couple of local Hong Kong people stood up in the middle and left the theatre never to return. How was that possible? How could anybody be so indifferent about the future of the Earth?

I then started to tell my friends around that they had to watch the movie and that it was so important to realize that if habits are not changed there will be serious repercussions. But with movies like “The Devil Wears Prada” or “The Departed” the Hollywood remake of a Hong Kong blockbuster, there was little chance many people would go and watch this amazing documentary.

As I was reading “The Tipping Point” from Malcom Gladwell at that time, it got me thinking about the “stickiness” of the green message in general and why it seemed it received so little attention in Hong Kong. I thus decided to look into this issue by going at the EcoAsia Expo in Hong Kong organized by the Trade Development Council. On October 27^th I took my notebook, my pens and my camera and went there to try to better understand the phenomenon. Why were people little interested in the future of the Earth around here? How could we get them to do more? Especially with a section of the expo on green consumer products, I was looking forward to see what products would affect consumers’ daily life and how they could be marketed.

The expo, targeted purely at buyers, did not have the kind of innovation I was looking for, but I still met some very interesting people and learnt more about what the government in Hong Kong is doing for the environment. As this post is already pretty long, I will detail some of these points in later posts on the topic. The most important thing I retain from the expo and the seminars that were held is a number: 1% to 2%. This is the objective the Hong Kong government has in terms of renewable energy by 2012. This means that by 2012, 1% to 2% of the energy produced and used in Hong Kong will be from renewable sources, like wind and solar power. To put this in perspective other numbers were shown at the expo. Tokyo has an objective of 20% renewable energy by 2020 and even more strikingly India today has a 5% renewable energy ratio. Way to go Hong Kong…

If you are interested in Green Technologies, please do look at the following links:

• Climate Crisis - The Inconvenient Truth Web site
• World Changing – An organization focused on Green Tech
• SustainAsia – A new consultancy in Hong Kong that promotes the use of Green Tech

Starbucks in China

The news came in yesterday that Starbucks was buying out its local partner in China, thus taking control of around 60 shops in Beijing and Tianjin. The story can be read on BusinessWeek Online in their article "Starbucks Caffeinates Its China Growth Plan".

Below is a quote from the article that highlights the crucial difference that exists between running Starbucks in Western countries and running it in China:

"It's not just a drink in China. It's a destination. It's a place to be seen and a place to show how modern one is," adds Technomic Asia's Kedl. And with China's economy growing in double digits, there are likely to be lots more young urban and modern Chinese ready to sip java in a sleek new Starbucks.

People in China do not go to Starbucks because they like coffee. They do not go there because it is comfortable. Starbucks, just like trendy bars (but maybe appealing to a different crowd), is a place to be seen. Married women go there with their friends to chat and show off their apparel. Families spend the afternoon there reading newspapers proudly showing they can afford two kids despite the one child policy.

So of course, with wealth increasing that fast in China, more and more people will want to show off their newly acquired fortune. But at the same time the process will help create many more alternatives to sipping a coffee in a Starbucks to show off one's wealth. A main threat for Starbucks could be businesses that are more relevant to the culture of China elites. And then Starbucks had better hope that Chinese do actually like coffee... because its early lead could backfire and push it down the value chain.

Lost in Malls

In his book “Call of the Mall”, Paco Underhill talks at length about the way mall floor plans and directories are badly designed and make it hard for shoppers to find their way. In one of my expeditions to Mong Kok (most famous shopping district in Hong Kong) I was looking at the small booklets provided by Langham Place shopping mall to help shoppers find their way. These booklets could prove handy in a shopping mall that offers almost 600,000 sq. ft. of floor space and spans over 13 floors!

With my background and experience in usability, it was an opportunity to identify few flaws in the design of the booklet:

Aesthetics driven
The booklet is very nice to look at (the picture on the left presents a front and back view). Unfortunately as it is sitting on the stand at the entrance of the mall, the color difference between the front and the back and the labels “Shopping Guide” and “Dining Guide” lead shoppers to think that these are two entirely different booklets. Many pick two booklets up and only realize after some time that the two are actually the same.

Information Architecture
Another flaw is in the structure of the booklet. It is accordion or zig-zag folded and the title on each side (front and back) should represent what it contains. While holding the booklet on the “shopping guide” side, shoppers can browse a list of all the shops divided in subcategories, with no map of where they are. However on the other side, “dining guide”, the first two pages are dedicated to listing restaurants, while the rest is a series of floor plans to actually locate the shops. I can very well imagine the designer of this booklet thinking that there are too many shops and restaurants compared to the number of floor plans and deciding to group restaurants and floor plans together under a “Dining Guide” category so that the accordion fold CONCEPT would still work…

Not task-oriented
The last flaw of this booklet is that it was not designed with relevant tasks in mind. Shoppers might have two main tasks when taking the booklet. They may need an overview of all the shops available, or they may have a specific shop in mind and want to locate it. First, with subcategories like “The Spiral”, which is a specific location of the shopping mall, it makes it very hard for new shoppers, who do not know the mall’s jargon to get an overview. Second, shoppers who want to locate a specific shop have to look for the code of the shop first, figure out that floor plans are under dining guide and finally look up the shop on these plans; not the most straight-forward of tasks…

It is interesting to see that for an item like a guide to a shopping mall, design seems to take priority over usability.

Customer Experience is about Individuals!

There is a great speech from Malcom Gladwell, the author of bestsellers "Blink" and "The Tipping Point", that I think explains very well the need to consider customers as individuals. It thus complements nicely the concept that customer experience is about individuals as I highlighted in my last post on What is Customer Experience. It also highlights the need to use innovative techniques when researching customers to uncover needs that cannot be identified by direct questioning.

His talk on “what every business can learn from spaghetti sauce” was made during the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) 2004 event in Monterey. I know it is a bit old, but it is simply a great talk that can be watched over and over.

When watching this, we can wonder how ready the organizations we are working in or we are interacting with are to identify, understand and leverage differences among customers.

What is Customer Experience?

Not sexy enough for Asia?
Customer Experience is a term widely used in the US and in Europe. But when I try to explain the concept in Hong Kong where I reside, or in other Asian countries, people go: “Customer what?!”. It appears the concept is very hard to grasp here and very remote from the concepts that govern the market. It is true that in Hong Kong for example, Telecom companies only focus on acquiring new customers without caring at all about their current customers, who receive bad customer service, pay more expensive fees, … and as a result are not “current” for a very long time, as they switch from providers to providers.

The concept of Customer Experience appears also a lot less sexy than Design or Innovation, and as a result receives a lot less attention. The two latter concepts feel quantifiable and concrete. Companies who claim that they can design great products and that they can be innovative now open every day. It would be interesting to count the percentage of companies, which display the word “innovation” or any of its variation on its homepage. Unfortunately for companies in Hong Kong, and potentially Asia, who follow the Design and Innovation wave, they do not realize that without understanding customer experience, there is no “innovation” as it is defined today in Western markets or as IDEO is implementing it.

Tentative definition
In this post, I will try to add my few cents to define customer experience and highlight the points that are crucial when building an efficient customer experience management structure. Here is how I would define customer experience:

“Customer experience is a measure of how well a company performs at any of its touch-points in relation to its customers’ (and prospective customers’) expectations."

I put this definition is the graph below:

It is about emotions!

When considering customer experience, the very first thing to do is to acknowledge that customers are people. A customer cannot be put into a labeled box or market segment and expected to stay there for the rest of his or her relationship with the company. Customers are individuals and we should say customers are changing individuals.

Several factors influence customers. Some uncontrolled factors will affect their perception and expectations of a company. For example outside information like blogs or reports can have positive or negative effects. The customers’ present need is also changing depending on his or her state of mind, the environment, and much more. Apart from uncontrolled elements, the company has a way to regulate expectations using its value proposition communicated through advertising for example. Finally and most importantly, customers’ expectations are regulated by their past experience with a company.

It is about small things!

Focusing on customer experience also necessitates the realization that small things matter. Customer experience will be impacted by things like the tone of voice of a sales person, the weather outside a shop, the blog that a customer read before purchasing a product, the argument that a customer had with his or her daughter the day before, the way the support staff at a competitor’s store handled a problem, etc.

Of course it is impossible to address all these. In the end, the company that succeeds is the one that is able to identify these “small things” and allow enough flexibility in its processes to adapt to them. Some small things may appear insignificant or may even relate to unconscious needs of customers, but they still play a very important part in exceeding customers’ expectations.

It is a virtuous circle!

Experience is not built in one day. Experience is built over time and taking a snapshot at a precise moment may not be enough to understand the whole picture. When looking at customers, companies should look at the interactions they have over time and how these interactions lead to a positive or negative experience. While a negative experience may lead to a customer breaking the relationship all in all with the company, a positive experience does not mean that customers’ expectations will be higher the next time they interact with the company. Yes, they will demand the same level of care, but their expectations will not increase indefinitely.

It actually appears that with time, as discussed in the book “Married to the Brand” written by William J. Mc Ewen (Gallup Press), customers who had a long term relationship with the company are actually less demanding than new customers. This fact even reinforces the need to focus on current customers and exceeding their expectations to keep them longer rather than targeting higher and higher customer acquisition rates.

This post is a first try at communicating about the concept of customer experience and future post will hopefully relate to this definition and highlight examples of how it translates into reality.

Speech-to-speech Translation

In news dated October 12th, 2006 IBM announced that the US Army will use its new speech-to-speech translation software in Iraq to support troops on the ground. The difference with this speech recognition software is that it can process and translate free speech instead of predefined sentences.

This opens up great opportunities, and could change the way people communicate if the technology is really proven to be efficient. The software is also available to translate between English and Mandarin... not a bad idea with the Olympic games coming up. IBM has a demo video of this on its Web site.

It would be interesting to see the system in real and play with it. The demo only includes very simple sentences that I guess any recognition software could process. Pretty exciting anyway to see that finally this type of software is commercially viable... at least for the US Army.

Riding the YouTube Wave

Google has acquired YouTube for USD 1.65 billion. Not bad a price for buying an online video sharing platform that has no business model whatsoever. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how Google can turn this to its advantage. Here are some related articles from BusinessWeek Online:

• Google's Video-Search Challenge
• YouTube's New Deep Pockets
• Google Competitors Beware

This morning chatting with a friend we thought that combining the power of YouTube and the China market could only work. We started our venture... our quest to develop the winning online video sharing Web site in China.

For now... we have a logo:
;o)

What else do we need?
- A Web site
- An audience (10,000,000 should do it)
- Wait for the Chinese government to allow free flow of information
- A business plan (an empty blank page should do it)
- Strong marketing (with that logo, half is done)

YouTube Beware...

Clear Concept

While walking around Mong Kok, which is one of the main shopping area in Hong Kong, here is a picture of a shop that stood out from the rest thanks to its "multiple concepts approach". For me the name "3-concepts" really worked well. I wanted to know more.


It is actually a simple clothing shop and here is the concept they have (written in smaller fonts below the shop name): "Represents either tri-chromatic or neutral, cohering extravaganza paraphrasis together similarly".

A brand always benefits from a clear concept or mission statement. After reading this the shop had lost me as a potential customer. But of course I do not belong to the target audience of this shop. The target audience, young local Hong Kong girls, would not read the smaller captions and just memorize that there was English there, which in itself is a mark of quality.

Obviously in Hong Kong English is not the first language and it is always interesting to see the role that it plays in building customers' perception. Somehow, whatever is written, there has to be English. English role goes beyond making sure non-Chinese speakers can find their way around town...

When you are not sure... better be general!

A picture taken in a local ParknShop in Hong Kong. This is the leading supermarket here...

After six years living here, I have learnt that you should never ask what your Chinese dish is made of... but at least when I buy ingredients, I'd like a bit more details...

;o)

21 + 3 = 24, 24 + 3 = ...

I have that picture for a long time on my computer. Finally I can post it!


Let's zoom a little on one specific day schedule (all are the same)


A very nice poster from Hong Kong i-Cable company that was displayed during the Germany 2006 World Cup in selected restaurants. This is a provider of cable TV and Internet in Hong Kong. They are losing market share at light speed to broadband competitor Now (PCCW). Although this poster is a very small detail, it may shed light on a much bigger problem overall...

I wonder if some people waited until 27pm to see the game...

Where is the exit?

Everybody knows how an Ikea store works. You follow the arrows – the only path available. First you will go through different kinds of rooms designed with a mix of Ikea furniture and accessories, feeling tempted by how nice these look put together. Next to these rooms you will browse through the complete line of furniture offered by the store. After some time, the accessories section will start with maybe bathroom, kitchen, lighting, etc. one after the other. The formula is a real success.

But what happens when a customer who does not know the concept enters?

That’s what I observed the other day in one of the Ikea store in Hong Kong (Causeway Bay). After some time browsing through the products I turned as I heard: “How the hell do we get out of that thing!” A mother and her daughter were running around shouting and cursing. Maybe they had gotten inside just to take a quick look and now they were like imprisoned not knowing how to escape. Remember the movie “Cube”? Intrigued, and always on the look-out for consumer stories, I followed them as they were going through their struggle.

They continued running around the shop shouting (and for sure not looking at the products). Finally finding a shop assistant, they asked: “Where is the closest exit please?” Then the shop assistant had the best answer to calm down the ladies: “It is pretty far you know…” and then just let them continue their journey along the dreadful arrows. The two poor customers were fuming and just continued to follow the arrows until they finally reached the exit.

The interesting thing about this is that the shop has actually two floors. The store has a first basement floor with all the furniture and then another floor below with basically all the accessories. At the time the ladies were already looking for the exit, they were on the first floor somewhere in the middle. It would have taken only a short time to escape by turning around and heading to the entrance. But with the layout of the store maybe, and with these arrows everywhere, both the ladies and the shop assistant did not even think about this solution. Somehow they had to move forward.

In a way, it means the store is really well designed, as the clear aim of Ikea is to get customers to go through the whole store every time. Nevertheless in this instance this lead only to more frustration for our two ladies; especially when they reached the escalator to go down to the second floor. At this point there was only a glass to separate them from an escalator going up, the exit and the much looked after day light, and they had no choice but to go further down… quite sadistic in a way, no?

In the end these two may not be returning customers… at least not in for while.

Where did I put my memory card?

Nowadays, smaller is better, but does small become TOO small at some point?

The newest memory cards, called microSD, are barely the size of your fingertip and can hold roughly as much memory as its older brother, the miniSD. Now, that’s technological innovation for sure. It is really impressive to see the progress that is made in memory storage devices these days. Progress that is necessary when we see the diet mobile phones, mp3 players and other portable devices are going through right now. It is the race to know who will be the thinnest. One day it is Motorola and then Samsung fights back. Who’s next? We may wonder when the first association against mobile phone anorexia will be created…

To be frank, when my friend pulled out her Samsung X828 out of her jean back pocket the other day, I was stunned. Thinner really looks cooler! If we can have less bulky and lighter phones we are happier right?

Nevertheless when I see microSD cards I cannot help but wonder if these guys did not go a bit too far. I mean, how do you handle such a small piece of hardware? How many people will inadvertently drop their memory card in their coffee cup or lose them somewhere around the house? Memory cards are meant to be moved from one device to another. In such situation, small may at some point become TOO small.

The product feels and looks cool, but usage is what matters in the end. The early buzz may change into frustration when consumers are faced with difficulties actually handling the thing… just wondering.