Emotional Design 2 - Unconscious Desire

When I finally was able to upgrade my mobile phone, the decision to buy an iPhone was very easy, in fact, I believe my unconscious mind made that decision for me long before it was time to enter the credit card number to close the sale on the shopping cart web page. The truth is that our unconscious mind has the majority of influence in purchasing decisions, and our poor conscious and rational mind is left to justify the decision so we can explain our actions rationally to our spouse and friends. So what is our mysterious unconscious mind considering when it makes decisions?

There are at least two key questions that must be resolved in the unconscious mind as it navigates the decision process. The first question, and perhaps the most important one is related to personal image, “does this help me be who I want to be?” All day, from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep, we are managing the impression we make on others. When we see an ad, a new product, a new store, web page, etc., we are always relating that new thing to our personal image. We are seeking those things that can help us project the image we unconsciously seek to display. When something very strongly resolves the image we are seeking to project, we have a strong desire to own that object.

Emotion is at the core of the second question. We sum up all the emotions we associate with that thing. We ask ourselves; “how we would feel if we owned that product?” To answer this question we sum up the emotions we have stored in our memory associated with that product, the brand it is associated with, and other things we relate to it in some way. So if you have had bad emotional memories associated with a specific brand, it may be hard for you to consider any product from that brand, even if it closely connects to your image. If the product is associated with primal, reptilian emotions such as those affiliated with sex, the appeal can be very strong.

For products to perform at a high level in the market, the product and the overall experience associated with that product must resolve these unconscious considerations. Therefore every aspect of the offer must be in tune with the image the consumer is seeking to convey, and evoking the emotions the consumer wants to feel. Understanding how consumers perceive products and brands in their unconscious mind is not easy.

Highly skilled researchers, designers and creatives can leverage these unconscious needs in the development of products and brands. To do so, they use methods that get to the unconscious drivers, and convert them to attributes to be designed into the offer. Skilled creative resources can utilize this insight to develop concept proposals. These proposals can then be carefully evaluated by consumers in a way that determines if these unconscious needs are being met. Through refinement and optimization, the offer can be crafted to strongly resonate with the consumer’s conscious and unconscious mind.

Emotional Design - What is it?

Recently there has been a great focus on the role of design in evoking emotion and creating a strong connection to the consumer. But what is emotional design?

In reality, all design is emotional. Everything that we see evokes some kind of emotional response. There is an entire pallet of emotions, 64 according to the psychologist Plutchik. Love, fear, acceptance, sadness - these are all emotions, and each may be evoked by a designer, either intentionally or unintentionally in the design of a product or any form of media. Everything we see is interpreted emotionally in our unconscious mind. According to neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, every memory has an emotion tied to it. When we need to determine a response to something, such as when we see an animal in the forest, or go to the market to purchase something, we recall those emotions associated with our memories related to it. The thing could be a product, brand, retail experience, website, person, etc. Our initial response to everything is emotional. We then know if we should fear it, or love it, be sad or laugh. It all happens in the unconscious mind within seconds. When we see something for the first time, we try to make associations to other things we have experienced in the past. We then recall those emotions associated with the familiar things. If it looks like a bear, we will run in fear before we properly identify it as a bear.

Therefore all design is emotional design. The task of the designer is to understand the emotions they wish to evoke, then understand how to evoke that emotion within the intended beholder of the object, the target consumer. The challenge is to understand what evokes the intended emotions for your target consumer (emotion is universal, but the triggers of emotions vary across cultures).

More to come in future posts on the various ways design can evoke emotions.

Twitter and social networks: when having millions of customers is not enough - Part 2

Hence, advertising alone will not save Twitter. To convert users and traffic into money, Twitter should start charging users, even if it entailed losing momentum and giving up growth. In fact, if the service is really creating value, people must be willing to pay for it. Still, no social network has ever attempted to charge users as they all fear to crash their business. And it sounds logical: when people get accustomed to using a service for free, they will resist whatever fee on the same service.

But let’s imagine just for a second a world where phone calls have always been free. Sure people would resist a sudden charge of the service, but would they really stop making phone calls rather than paying a reasonable fee? Impossible to say with certainty, but it’s highly probable they would not. Moreover, it’s not necessary to charge all users, Twitter could just charge big users which are more likely to keep on using the service.

Such a reasoning doesn’t work just for users. There are lot of companies and applications avidly following the huge stream of information generated by Twitter. This stream – the so called fire hose – has always been offered for free. What would happen if Twitter started charging for it? Deals would be formalized. That’s what happened when Twitter announced it would start restricting its fire hose leaving full access only to paying customers.

A question remains unanswered: would the freemium strategy – offering some features for free to attract users and charging some features to make money – work also with users?

Twitter and social networks: when having millions of customers is not enough - Part 1

Twitter glitters. This online company operating in the field of micro-blogging attracted more than 100 million users in roughly four years and managed to raise $57 million from venture capitalists. Yet, Twitter is not gold. Millions of users and a huge amount of traffic are not enough to generate money, and so Twitter is not making a single buck out of its impressive business. So far, it has chosen to pursue growth and service improvement at the expenses of profitability, as other social networks have. But things are now changing. A few days ago Twitter decided to launch its own advertising platform: promoted tweets will be placed in Twitter’s search page and possibly in a user’s Twitter stream.

Placing advertisements alongside a page’s content has always worked fine for Google, why shouldn’t it work as fine for a social network such as Twitter? Well, because social networks are not search engines. When people go to Google, they are looking for something and they spell it out. Here is how Google is able to display the right advertisements and catch clicks. When people log in to a social network instead, they just want to share a thought or know what other people are doing. That’s why advertisements on social networks are not as valuable as on Google.
As a result, advertising alone is not the cure-all for the profitability of social networks. What should Twitter and other social networks do then?

(Cross-blogged on behalf of Alberto Marcuzzo)

Corporate Leadership: Failure by Selection?

In some large corporations, or even not-so large ones that may think same wise, the ascension to the career ladder resembles Darwinian selection process where an odd mix of competences, or evolutionary traits if you like, play their part.

Wave after wave, promotions and firings progressively sieve employees not only on the basis of their domain knowledge and work ethic, but also on their ability to endure grueling and pointless meetings, keep their managers happy no matter what, and stay in tune with the prevalent corporate vision and culture.

Hence, it’s no accident that this brand of corporate eugenics often cull employees that when they eventually reach the top echelons of the corporation they are much more comfortable to keep the ship running exactly it had been before, rather than challenge previous assumptions, question product or market relevance, axe aging cash cows, or simply try something new.

Research suggests that successful leadership amount to 50% of overall corporate success. Could this explain why so many large companies ingloriously succumb to smaller more nimble startups? After all large companies have the experience, the network, the process, the patents, the brand, and an army of soldier to throw to the battle. Yet, the numbers are striking: Out the companies on the Fortune 500 list 50 years ago, only a handful are still around... 

Another game changer by Steve Jobs?

With the widely anticipated introduction of the tablet computer today, Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine — a chance to undo mistakes of the past. Read more on the NY Times.

PS: Yes, you can compete against free. Think bottled water...

Design as a Tool for Innovation Continued

Not only do innovators overlook design as a source of innovation, they frequently neglect to use design optimally to create consumer appeal for new products. Innovation teams are often comprised of engineers and technologists who have strong abilities in the development of new technologies, and financial managers who have expertise in the funding of startup ventures. These teams almost always lack skilled design strategists who can optimize the use of design of the offering, and coordinate the design across all touch points. Often the development of a cohesive design strategy is not pursued to conserve cash, or because the managers involved under estimate the importance of design in generating consumer appeal for their new product. The resulting new products may have heralded new technology, but lack consumer appeal to drive sales. This opens the door to competition to come into the market with more appealing offering that can leapfrog the first mover.
Frequently new technologies may be of interest to consumers, but consumers reject them because they are not in sync with the image they are trying to convey, they do not understand how they might benefit from this technology, or they do understand how to use the product. The Segway does not come up short in innovative technology, but many consumers find the product out of sync with their image, or cannot imagine how they might use it. Early MP3 players were perceived as computer accessories that were complicated to use, then the iPod/iTunes combination moved electronic music players out of the computer accessory space into the world of consumer electronics, and created a plug and play connection between the player and the music store.
I recommend Innovators shift their focus off the technology itself and to the benefits consumers would enjoy through using the technology. Focus on how consumers would like to feel while using the product, and interacting with all the touch points of your offer. Not only should the interaction with the product stimulate the desired emotions consumers are seeking, but the product should also be in step with the image consumers seek to convey by owning your product and affiliating with your brand. By incorporating consumer research in the design and development process, innovators can better understand consumers and target their offering to meet their functional, image and emotional needs.

Design as a Tool for Innovation Continued

Many innovators overlook the importance of design as a source for innovation. Don’t get me wrong, the development of new technologies is a very important form of innovation. However, many successful new products have been launched that simply deliver existing technologies through new designs. When Apple introduced the iPod, electronic music players had been on the market for several years – Apple made the iPod better by designing an enhanced consumer experience. In the automotive world, the Volkswagen New Beetle and Nissan Xterra were both launched largely based on components of existing vehicles, but these new designs created an entirely new market for the existing technology and tooling.
This type of innovation can be generated by taking a deep look at consumers who are seeking the benefits associated with a category but are not buying for some reason. Often innovators can find groups or segments of consumers who express needs and desires that can be satisfied by existing products on the market, but resist current offerings. Many consumers were seeking entertainment inside the home but stayed out of the video game market until Nintendo reinvented the image and experience of video gaming. To create the first sit down personal watercraft in the 1980’s, Yamaha researched consumers who were seeking the experience offered by the existing stand up watercraft, but did not buy. They found that many believed the existing products were difficult to ride, and did not want to leave their friends and family on the shore. Yamaha researched many configurations for new products to better meet their needs, then launched the first sit down, multi passenger Wave Runner.

Design as a Tool for Innovation

Design is a powerful tool for the innovator; as a source of innovation, and as a tool for optimizing consumer appeal of new technology. Design can be used to create new markets for existing technology or to enhance the appeal of a new offering. Design can be used to stimulate visual appeal, connect a product with image of the consumer, enhance the enjoyment of the consumer, and make the product easier to understand and use. Design can be applied to all elements of the offer, including the product, the user interface, the web site and all other consumer touch points. In addition, the design of the product communicates what that product is, how the product is used, what the product does and conveys the unique personality associated with the product and brand. Any time a consumer comes in contact with your offer, that connection point, or touch point, should work in harmony to optimize the consumer experience, and reinforce the personality, tone and values of the brand.

To be continued...

Obstacle or Opportunity? Welcome 2010.

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Happy Holidays - Wherever you are!

The editorial team of CNB would like to wish to you a Happy and… Restful Holiday. Wherever you are and you seem to be all over the Globe (see below).

Our New Year's wish: The data that we have gathered during the first week of our ongoing HBR survey (“Are You the Bottleneck of your Organization?”) indicates that 97 out of the 405 of the respondents, i.e., 24% are not sure what vacation means…To these overworked Chefs:  Please do take some time off and why not think about how you can do more for your direct reports, perhaps starting with giving them more responsibilities?!

On bottlenecks: To be or not to be?

Funny thing, these bottlenecks. As my fellow chefs have noted, the one thing you don't want to do when you run your own company, is to be the bottleneck- to be the one that keeps your organization from creating and capturing value. Yet, when it comes to your position in your industry ecosystem (what we have termed "industry architecture", as I discuss in www.london.edu/mjacobides), what you want to do is to be this "bottleneck", i.e. the most valuable part of the sector, the hardest to replace, and one without which stuff does not happen. So much as you should ensure that you balance your own energies as a manager and ensure that you're not too busy on one set of activities, keeping your firm from growing, as a strategist you need to put your firm in a pivotal position that allows it, if it so wishes, to stop the value creation process.

The insight here is simple: Your objective is to become irreplaceable, and you can do this either by making your value add greater, or by making your partners more interchangeable. This is what Microsoft did as it managed to become the dominant player in the computing ecosystem, engaging in a world of one-sided alliances; and this is what Google is trying to do in mobile telephony, becoming the bottleneck in the Android platform, inviting all and sundry to cooperate with it. So, when it comes you your position in the industry architecture, think strategically - and build alliances that enhance your relative power!