• CEO says Victoria’s Secret Is “Too Sexy”
  “We use the word sexy a lot and really have forgotten the ultra feminine.” Victoria’s Secret was launched with the idea that Victoria was manor-born and lived in London. That’s some pretty significant drift in image/meaning/story.

A few months ago we saw a very cool Hollywood used car lot, Kay Kars, featuring rather poorly executed (and dated) film icons as enthusiastic decoration.

A mural along one wall featured Brando, Marilyn, Clint, and Arnold.

A banner along the street showed some of the same classic stars, as well as Bugs and the Three Stooges.

Meanwhile, an otherwise non-famous bunny encouraged potential shoppers to “Come On In”

A few months along, Kay Kars has either moved or closed down (the website describes their luxury car inventory; not likely the same business) and the empty lot is nothing but sad.

• Ontario health minister apologizes for diaper comment; sets participant-observation back at least a decade
  Before outcry led to apology, minister said he was “seriously considering” wearing an adult diaper to ensure a decision to use them was appropriate. If corporate execs can flip burgers and staff registers, why not the gov’t?

• Personas and the Role of Design Documentation
  Andrew Hinton’s inspiring piece: How it’s less about deliverables, and more about design.
• UX Methods Cards by nForm
  They are doing another set this year; the current set doesn’t feel very complete. How’s about open-sourcing the PDF so people can print their own?

Starfucks sticker, Taipei, December 2007

Service outages seem to be common news stories lately. Sure, it’s news when many people in Florida lose power, but also when Pakistan causes a 2-hour YouTube blackout, BlackBerry service goes down, or Hotmail is unavailable.

There’s a sense that we are relying on far too many fragile systems and that as complexity increases, these stories will become even more commonplace (and perhaps even less newsworthy). But being forced to do without something seems to be a tactic companies enjoy using to extract a sense of the value of their service. The Whopper Freakout ad campaign is the most prominent example, but other companies such as Yahoo and Dunkin’ Donuts have conducted (consensual) user research experiments where people go without something and report back on the sense of loss.

But Starbucks pulled off the genius move, closing for a few hours to retrain staff, and making front-page news not for their failure (see: Florida, Blackberry, YouTube, Hotmail above) but for their retraining efforts towards a clarified service promise

Starbucks is welcoming customers back Wednesday with a new promise posted in stores: “Your drink should be perfect, every time. If not, let us know and we’ll make it right.”

This won’t address all of the challenges Starbucks is facing, but it’s a pretty brilliant P.R. success, hitting the denial-of-services hot button and emphasizing the valid, powerful reason behind the outage.

Sketches for “Personal Greenhouse” ©2007 Dan Soltzberg

Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge have posted their article, Design Meets Research, over at Gain: AIGA Journal of Design & Business. The piece provides a quick overview of various tools in the research toolbox, calls out their particular strengths and drawbacks, and makes the point that picking the right tool for the job and using it well are paramount.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article and some of my thoughts in response:

There are a wide variety of research techniques that can have merit for designers. . . There is not, repeat not, one correct way to test design.

I see research very much as a generative tool as well as an evaluative one, and have started to question whether the concept of a border between research and design is really accurate or productive. At the front end of the design process, research is a way of surfacing opportunities and generating ideas. At later stages, it’s a way of refining and validating these ideas as they become concepts and prototypes. In this way, research is a design tool in the same way that drawing is a design tool, except that at the center of the mechanism is the customer/user.

When used correctly, research shouldn’t stifle creativity but rather offer designers stronger inspiration and focus.

By taking a facilitative, collaborative approach to working with companies and design teams, research and research findings can be integrated into the design process in ways that enhance rather than stifle creativity. Keeping the customer/user and their needs prominent throughout the design process needn’t be limiting–having clear goals and constraints ultimately makes a design problem more interesting and leads to better, more elegant solutions.

And better, more elegant solutions are, after all, the end game here.

• Goodbye to Postum
  Made of wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and corn dextrin, Postum was considered a “healthier” drink. It did not cause the jittery side effects that coffee gave some people. Kraft has stopped making it.
• How People Count Cash Around The World
  A demonstration of supposedly how people in different regions in the world count bills. The posture and gestures vary widely. One wonders these evolved so differently.

• The Persona Non Grata article is a gift. Really.
  And people accused me of being overwrought with my column?! Hmm. “And I will end this in the only way that seems appropriate. Harumph. “

• SoCal McDonald’s tries feng shui theme
  Menu is the same, of course.
• Starship Kimchi: A Bold Taste Goes Where It Has Never Gone Before
  Kimchi goes into space with a Korean astronaut. Formulated to resist cosmic radiation.

• interactions: Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me by Steve Portigal
  Teaser for my next interactions article

I’ll be teaching a one-day class on Design Research Methods on March 1, in Sunnyvale, CA. There’s a couple of spots still available, so if you want to contribute to a sell-out, it’s not too late!

You can see a longer version of my talk about improv and ethnography at the IDSA Southern Conference in Savannah, GA, March 6-8. See a previous talk here.

I’ll also be in Atlanta, en route to Savannah, and would love to meet up with people in that area to chat about the work we do and look for ways we might help you.

I’ll be giving a presentation called The Listener’s Journey at the Computer Market Analysis Group meeting at Intuit in Mountain View, CA, on March 13-14.

I will talk about international market research at the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association Morning Forum on March 18, in Burlingame, CA.

I will be giving a workshop on best practices in analysis and synthesis at the Second Annual eBay Visits Event on March 21, in San Jose, CA.

I will be giving a talk and hosting a workshop at a design research symposium at the College of Design at Arizona State University, April 11-13 in Tempe, AZ. I’ll be spending a day in Phoenix beforehand and would love to meet with people there explore ways we might be able to help your business.

Let me know if you’ll be at any of these events!

• It’s not easy being an edge-case
  Leisa on the user’s experience when a system’s design fails to take into account your very reasonable and personal circumstances. Also see comments by Steve.
• Apostrophes in Names Stir Lot O’ Trouble
  Even in 2008, software doesn’t accommodate those names; creating ridiculous hassle for travelers, voters, students, or anyone that has to “register” with a poorly designed system.
• AfriGadget: Simpsons Carvings from Kenya
  A small village in Kenya makes soapstone figures of The Simpsons characters. The carvings are available for online purchase. Most surprising is that they are an authorized licensee. (Thanks, Dan!)

I already described the ridiculous persona-encrusted collateral from Yahoo’s Search Marketing. This week I received a package from Microsoft (with an unnecessary piece of styrofoam in the box to protect their precious wire-bound book).

With tips from me - Search Master Steve

Search Master Steve? Good Lord!

I’m not sure whether Microsoft’s only-works-in-IE search marketing interface is worse than Yahoo’s. I guess it’s like asking if you’d rather have two fingers ripped off by an angry gorilla or have three fingers removed surgically. These products are not fun to use and the crap I’m getting in the mail from the Microhooligans is insulting.

Bolts replacing missing handles, Omogari, San Jose, CA, November 2007

• Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth: Sharper Image files for bankruptcy
  Solutions-that-don’t-work for problems-we-don’t-really-have.

Sink handle too close to wall, Tully’s, Kyoto, Japan, January 2008

Foot wear at the JR service counter, Tokyo, Japan, December 2007

• Sipahh - Milk Flavouring Straws
  “Tiny UniBeads inside the straws dissolve and turn white milk into a healthy and delicious snack that everyone can enjoy.” Sounds horrible, but maybe perfect for kids. Healthy, I’m not so sure UniBeads are good for you. Thanks, CPT!
• NBC proposes 52-week season: a massive frame shift may or may not lead to innovation
  Whether this will usher in real change is up for grabs, but this is a powerful frame that has defined much of the TV experience forever; it no longer makes sense for the way we live our lives and NBC is breaking the frame.

The progress bar is a familiar interface widget in software. But sometimes it appears away from the PC.

Crosswalk in Tokyo (full disclosure: I took the picture when the progress bar had run out; so I added them back in Photoshop).

NEX train from Narita Airport to downtown Tokyo

Airport Express into Hong Kong

• Obama, Japan, a town of 32,000, gets behind their shared-name U.S. Candidate
  “I love Obama” T-shirts, a theme song called “Obama Is a Wonderful World” and sweet bean cakes with Mr. Obama’s face on them. City Hall was going to send a daruma doll with “victory” written across its chest.

I’ve uploaded nearly 1300 of my Japan pictures to Flickr. For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, I haven’t added titles or tags or descriptions proactively, but please add comments or questions on flickr and I’ll gladly offer a story or explanation.

Meanwhile, I’m including some of my faves here, as well as part 1 and part 2.

I’ve uploaded nearly 1300 of my Japan pictures to Flickr. For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, I haven’t added titles or tags or descriptions proactively, but please add comments or questions on flickr and I’ll gladly offer a story or explanation.

Meanwhile, I’m including some of my faves here, as well as part 1 and part 3.

I’ve uploaded nearly 1300 of my Japan pictures to Flickr. For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, I haven’t added titles or tags or descriptions proactively, but please add comments or questions on flickr and I’ll gladly offer a story or explanation.

Meanwhile, I’m including some of my faves here, as well as part 2 and part 3.

Developments Magazine highlights an interviewing method that is part-historian, part-journalism, part-ethnography (and you could probably throw in participatory design and co-creation for a higher buzzword count). But the thrust is that stories, built from the details of the lives of real people are more effective drivers of change for advocates and policymakers and other stakeholders.

National newspaper, TV and radio journalists spent three days recording the lives of more than 30 rural people in Sindh province – people whose main qualification for being interviewed was their poverty.

These life stories were gathered by the Panos network and partners using a painstaking method of interviewing which emphasizes patient listening and open ended questions. The result was that those journalists are now more inclined to highlight the problems faced by the people they met and others like them.

These interviews were gathered using a method known as ‘oral testimony’, which sets out to record the fine detail of the lives of people in developing countries. This involves ‘active listening’ and encouraging the interviewee to dictate the direction of the interview.

• More pizza tracking transparency (also huge logistics and efficiency benefits)
  At Papa John’s,18% of all delivery customers in the last 60 days have gone on the Web site to track their pizza. TrackMyPizza.com is a startup that provides the service.
• TrackMyPizza.com Home
  Peppy, the pepperoni-encrusted vehicular mascot should tell the web designers to fix the broken demos, cryptic navigation and just generally crappy site design.

Public bathroom doorway, Karuizawa, Japan, January 2008

Before we hiked up the nearby mountain I wanted to use the bathroom. I was very frustrated to find the door locked. I pushed and pulled and saw the keyhole for the deadbolt and figured I was out of luck. Then I saw someone enter the adjacent women’s room - by sliding the door. I wouldn’t expect a bathroom door to slide, and I didn’t interpret any of the cues (or affordances) about how this door works to suggest sliding was a possibility.

As I’ve said before, garbage in, garbage out. From Rob Walker’s Consumed

Recently, Stardoll did a study of its own, polling United States users about their brand preferences. Apparently they saw real-world brands on the same plane as the half-dozen or so invented brands that exist only within the site. (Some respondents even made the — clearly impossible — claim that they wear the strictly digital Goth-style brand Fallen Angel to school.)

These sorts of stories always crop up in market research and business case studies. And they are wonderful because they illustrate the depth of meaning the products, services, brands, and stories we create can be to the people that consume them. So meaningful that they will conflate pretend brands online and tangible experiences offline. Wow, we marvel, that tells you how great our stuff is; they will lie about it.

But the flip side to that is that if you are going to ask people what they think and do and want, you better have a way of triangulating their responses against other data. If you don’t know more about the person than their response, how can you contextualize it? If you don’t know what they are really saying when they answer the question - if they understood the question or are answering it in the way you intended - then you must be very careful in what you conclude and how you act on those answers.

In my recent column Persona Non Grata I point to some of the cultural problems inside organizations that personas can create, or mask. And what happens when your personas become your marketing?

We’ve recently been experimenting with search marketing on Yahoo, MSFT, and Google. Today I received a shiny booklet from Yahoo, with a note from Sharon Goodsense, Yahoo! Search Marketing Specialist (”and remember, we’re always here to help you.”)

And I’m referred to as Bashful Beginner.

Yahoo’s search marketing management interface is so completely useless that all I ever do is click and click and click until I get some result; with no mental model being built that would help me next time. I have no idea what most of the information they are providing is about or how I can use it. So maybe this book will help me, but the first two pages are the most patronizing and fake thing I can imagine. I can’t believe they went to the trouble to come up with these fake characters to represent the company I’m doing business with; it’s offensive to take my money for a service, give me an unusable product, and then hand me a cartoon character who talks down to me; if I can’t call this person for help with my problems, because they don’t exist. It’s the least transparent thing a company should do. Yahoo got off the cluetrain a while ago, I guess.

• Interaction Design Community Considered Harmful
  Ah! A new kind of fatigue emerges: professional community fatigue. Interesting and slightly controversial perspective here: stop participating in your professional groups and go do some work.