Lee Dunbar

Dec

9

Went to Upper Canada Village on the weekend to see the Alight at Night Festival. What an amazing display of lights. I am not sure the pioneers had access to 250,000 LED lights, but it was a great experience all the same.

Entrance to Village Store

Christmas wreath

Christmas wreath

Village Church

Village Church

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Tags: Experience Design Stuff
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Dec

4

Despite your political leanings, Stephan Dion and the Liberal party taught us an important lesson this week. The medium IS the message.

The absolute horribly produced video that was sent to the press gallery to be distributed to the networks represented a comical string of errors worthy of the Keystone Cops. The video arrived late, was in the wrong format, the composition of the video was well below the quality seen on many amateur YouTube videos, and the quality caused people to speculate that it was shot on a camera phone.

This caused people at the water cooler and the media to talk about the poor quality of the video rather than the message itself.

Research at Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab indicate that people judge the credibility of a message based on the quality of the medium — be it a visual cue, quality, aethstetics, etc. If this is the case, and it certainly seems to bear out in my experience, Dion very well could have done even more damage to himself and to the rest of the party.

The lesson to be learned here is this —pay absolute attention to the quality of the media you are using. Make sure the design works, make sure the aesthetics support your branding and positioning, and make sure that when you do present something to the public that it actually helps your cause rather than hurt it.

And now the video in question (it looked much worse on TV than on YouTube):

Of course, this isn’t the first video to hurt Dion’s credibility:

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff
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Sep

11

Hey — it happens to the best of us. As you develop your product you keep adding features and layers of complexity as you continue through the development cycle. That’s what the customer wants, right? More features? More complexity?

Not always. Maybe never. Sometimes developers get to the point where they lose sight of what their purpose is. That is, to solve a problem or need. Sometimes the product itself can become a barrier to the desired result, whether it be for business, convenience or entertainment.

This is the conclusion 2K Sports came to when designing their newly released NHL 2K9 video game.

“Feeling last year’s version was too complicated, 2K Sports is offering a simpler entry into its hockey title, promising gamers can pick up a controller and play from the get-go with virtually no learning curve. There are deeper playing options with plenty of complexity, but the goal was to make the title simple and fun out of the box.

“Thomas and his California-based development team concluded that as consoles grew more sophisticated, hockey games became more complex, turning off some gamers.

“We just kept layering controls and adding more functionality and looking for the next silver bullet feature that we had to put in there. And we kept layering this stuff on. And what happened, in our mind, was I think the game got out of hand.”

Read the article It’s Game On for NHL2K

I can relate to this story. When we purchased EA Sports’ NHL08 for my two boys they would not use it, deciding instead to keep playing NHL06. They didn’t like the way EA changed the controls, taking what was an intuitive, simple interface with the game and adding far too much complexity.

While this article speaks specifically of products, the same idea holds true for process, place, graphic design and other elements that are designed.

Tags: Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Technology Stuff
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Aug

9

In a post I wrote about a month ago, I outlined my frustration with changes made at the concession stand of a drive-in my family frequents. I shared that we have given up on the concession stand and were now bringing our own snacks and drinks. It seems we are not alone, and the owners may very well have noticed a decline in overall sales, as the drive-in in question has added a few lines to their website:

“We ask that you kindly refrain from outside food and beverage … “

Hot, fresh, spend half an hour in sweltering heat lining up to get it. No thanks!

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Business Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Retail Stuff
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Jul

31

The Round Up

July 31, 2008

Oh please, I hope this isn’t true. ‘Cocky new female pilot‘ meets a guy who was a cocky pilot 20 years ago in this follow up to Top Gun. Yes, Maverick is rumoured to be making his return in Top Gun II. Poor Goose is turning in his grave.

PC Pro reports that the British Police have started using YouTube to embarrass people who use the emergency 999 service (their version of 911) for anything other than emergencies. “It’s important people realise that what could seem a harmless joke could result in a serious criminal conviction or endanger someone’s life,” says chief superintendent Dave Hayler. “We want to send out a warning that we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour and positive action will be taken.”

Robert M. McDowell makes the case for keeping the Internet open and free. Let the engineers solve the problem — not politicians.

Nate Anderson does good job tearing DRM apart in his article DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it.

To encourage New Yorkers to explore their own city instead of traveling elsewhere, the City of New York is closing streets for pedestrian use only for three Saturday mornings in August. The town I live in does this one Saturday a summer and there are many, including myself, who think it should be done every Saturday to allow our farmers market and other vendors to set-up. It would be a great for locals and a good tourism draw as well.

 

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Community Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Web Stuff
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Jul

9

When you speak of control measures, the benefits to the customer are often overlooked. In actual fact, people are continuously looking for visual queues – and providing direction can facilitate a positive experience for your customers while avoiding confusion, anger, and even serious incident.

Last summer, my family traveled to the Eastern region of Quebec to go on a whale-watching cruise. To book your spot on the ship, it is recommended that you book through one of their partner sites (physical site), as there is very little parking at the dock. Once you arrive at the pick-up destination – in our case a restaurant – you receive your tickets and then a shuttle bus picks you up and brings you to the dock.

Once we arrived, we saw that there were two companies that shared the dock on the St. Lawrence River. One company had very clear signage, an area fenced-off to form a line and a person was staffed to answer any questions, control the line and provide information. The other company, the one we purchased ticket with, had – a dock.

Once we figured out where we were to go (with the help of the staff member from the other company) we stood near the dock entrance and people kind of wandered up and stood in line so we followed suit. Others followed and soon the line grew kind of haphazardly along a fence. After about 20 minutes in line, the cruise ship approached the dock. Staff disembarked and started taking tickets – and of course a whole group of people budded in line with no interference from the staff.

“Excuse me, there’s a line here,” a young man that was behind us said. “I don’t care,” was the response.

So we finally board and off we go through the St. Lawrence for what was a pretty amazing experience viewing whales. I was actually quite surprised with how many we saw and how close we were to them.

And now back to the dock. We disembark and again – complete confusion. There were no signs as to where you should stand to meet your shuttle bus and nobody was around to offer any information. We stood there with a group of people waiting for the bus. When it arrived – absolute madness ensued. People budding, jumping in front of each other and from where we were lined-up only one family that was actually in line got on the bus.

It actually took three missed buses and witnessing one argument between a ‘line-ee’ and a ‘bud-ee’ to finally get on – and that’s only because we (my family and another family that was waiting with us in the original line) specifically asked the driver to meet us at the far side of the parking lot away from the crowd.

It was a frustrating experience. No direction. No information. A lot of rude people.

We will go on another whale watching cruise, but I’ll tell you, it will be with the other company.

It would have been so simple to avoid all of the resentment, frustration and arguments that we witnessed on the dock. Simple control measures such as signage and a designated area to form a line – for the ship and for the shuttles. Such control measures would have contributed to an overall positive experience rather than the absence tainting what could have been one of the most amazing experiences of someone’s life.

Are there control measures that you could take to improve your customer experience?

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Experience Design Stuff
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Jul

4

My family has been going to the same drive-in theatre five or six times a summer since we discovered it about four years ago. Last season new owners took over and at the end of the season they renovated their concession building so it would be ready for this year.

On the surface not much has changed. They removed part of the counter so that it is straight instead of a ‘T’ shape, and they removed an antique projector that sat in the corner of the concession lobby. One apparently small change they made has greatly affected the guest experience as a whole.

They removed three drink coolers that the previous owners used in favour of a self-service fountain machine. This of course would likely triple if not quadruple their margin on drink sales. However, this may not equate to more profit for them.

This seemingly small change has slowed service to an absolute crawl. Under the old owner’s system, guests would go to the fridges off to the side of the concession lobby and once they chose their drinks, they would join the line to pay and grab any other snack they may have wanted. Smooth, simple and efficient.

Under the new system everyone gets in a single line which first runs perpendicular, and then turns parallel to the new, straight counter. First there is the coffee station where you pour it yourself from a typical household coffee maker, and don’t forget to add your cream and sugar. Next stop, the popcorn rack where some of the best popcorn you’ll ever taste sits pre-bagged, warm and fresh. Right beside is the self-serve butter and popcorn salt. Next stop is the small counter-sized beverage fridge that holds bottled water and a small selection of juice. Next, the drink fountain machine, where two people at most take about forty seconds to one minute each to fill-up their drinks. Next we have a jar of pickled eggs and another of pickled wieners, dig those hands in there and pick the one you want! Next we have a small selection of candies and chocolate bars. And finally stands the cashier, where you pay for the stuff you picked, and you also place your order for hot food such as fries, hot dogs and burgers that you then stand in another line to pick-up on the other end of the counter.

The new system is terribly inefficient. I watched the cashier as I stood in line and I would estimate that about 60% of her time was wasted because of the log-jam at the fountain machine — and to a lesser extent the other self-service stations. As a result the line is long and slow, and the people in the line-up frustrated. Some, like me, gave up entirely. We now bring our own food and drinks.

And that’s my point. This is absolutely poor customer service. The new owners were thinking of margin, and their convenience rather than the customer’s experience. At the end of the season, when sales are tallied they just might find better margins on their fountain drinks, but I suspect that they just might find that a number of people are forgoing the concession stand for their own thermos of coffee, cooler of drinks, and bag of snacks. The concession food is a lot more expensive, and with their new system a lot of people won’t have the patience to wait for their snacks while they miss the movie.

Anything you do in business needs to follow a design process — and the most important aspect of any design — is the experience you create for your guests. You do this successfully and the profit will come.

Clearly, the new owners didn’t think about the implications of their new design. Hopefully they will do something about it — and while they are at it, they can improve the situation with their bathrooms, but that’s a story for another day.

Tags: Customer Service Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Retail Stuff
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Jun

24

The Round-Up

June 24, 2008

What happens when Google and Disney get together to throw around a few ideas? You get the Walt Disney World Resort available on Google Earth in 3D. The project features over 1,500 fairly detailed 3D models of buildings and attractions in all four theme parks and more than 20 of Disney’s Resort hotels. I had a lot of fun scrolling around — what a great way to allow your guests to move around and explore the park when they are either planning or dreaming if a trip to the most magical place on earth.

Montreal is the first North American city to role out a self-service bike rental system. Users will be able to pick-up a bike at one location for a nominal fee and drop it off at another location which are dispersed around the city.

More search engine election fun. A blogger has launched a Google bomb attack on McCain. The strategy was designed to raise the rankings of negative news stories about McCain. Yes, the same strategy you use to raise the visibility of your organization, can be used by your competitors to raise rankings of negative stories or reviews about your organization, officials, staff, or product. It is a good strategy to continuously monitor your own brand, trademarks and product category keywords. It can be as simple as subscribing to a comprehensive Google news alert.

It also seems that people are messing with page views and video ranking on YouTube. In an effort to make it the most viewed video, a blogger has created a refreshing web site that is increasing the number of views of Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend video.

Tags: Advertising Stuff, Brand Experience Stuff, Community Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Search Engine Stuff, Web Stuff
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Jun

17

One of my favourite movies of all time is Stephen Spielberg’s, Jurassic Park. In the movie, Sam Neill’s character, the technologically challenged paleontologist, Dr Grant says, “I think we’re out of a job,” to which Jeff Goldblum’s character, a trendy mathematician quips, “Don’t you mean extinct?”

While  Spielberg included this line in the movie as a reference to a remark Phil Tippett made after sitting with Spielberg to view early tests of CGI animation techniques that would eventually replace all of his go-motion animation, the same fate could have fallen on the full size animatronics built by the legendary Stan Winston, who passed away June 15th after a long struggle with multiple myeloma.

Stan was a lead member, and integral part of Jurassic Park’s design team. His team built the full-size animatronics that he described as being, “A perfect combination of art and technology.” It was actually Spielberg’s original intention to use these full-size dinosaurs throughout the movie, but it became clear early on that this just wouldn’t be feasible.

August 1992, the production of Jurassic Park began in Hawaii. Eager to see how their dinosaurs would perform, the first scene shot featured an interaction between one of Stan’s full-size models — a triceratops — and the characters played by Neill and Laura Dern. “It was important that we either got bloodied on our first day of shooting or succeeded,” Spielberg says, “Thankfully for Stan Winston and his team, it worked wonderfully.” Winston’s full size characters brought an element of believability and level of interaction that could not have been achieved through CGI alone.

I am one of those geeks that actually gets as much, and likely more, enjoyment out of watching the “the making of X” bonus features on DVDs as watching the feature itself. If you ever have the chance, it is a treat to see how the team brought the dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park. Along with other members of the team, Stan Winston shares some great stories throughout. On the T Rex, he shares, “It was wonderful to see this 9000 pound wonder, 40 feet long, acting.” Indeed it was Stan.

Stan Winston was a pioneer, a legend in experience design. He shocked, fascinated and entertained. He has left an impressive body of work that will entertain people for years to come.

From Wired:

“Most recently, Stan Winston Studio devised the suits featured in Iron Man. The movie’s director, Jon Favreau, said Winston brought a “childlike enthusiasm” to his craft.

“He was the king of integrating practical effects with CGI, never losing his relevance in an ever-changing industry,” Favreau said in a statement. “I am proud to have worked with him and we were looking forward to future collaborations. I knew that he was struggling, but I had no idea that he would be gone so soon. Hollywood has lost a shining star.” 

In the wake of Winston’s death following a seven-year battle against multiple myeloma cancer, Aliens producer Anne Hurd told Variety: “Stan Winston never looked at anything as a problem. It was always an opportunity. I never saw him defeatist, regardless of what may have happened. And he had an incredible childlike passion for films and for makeup effects and animatronics.”

Tags: Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Technology Stuff
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Jun

13

Behind the Scenes

June 13, 2008

If you’ve been fortunate enough to see Turtle Talk with Crush at Epcot, you know just what a cool experience it is. Driven by live animation technology, the Crush character actually interacts with the audience of “little dudes” and “the big dudes in the back”.

Since seeing the show for the first time, and being the geek I am, I have worked out in my head how they must be creating the live experience for the audience. Now I don’t have to imagine it. Thanks to the folks over at My Take on Disney, I can actually see how it is done.

And here it is for you to enjoy, behind the scenes with Crush:




Here’s a link over to their site … MyTakeOnDisney.com

Tags: Experience Design Stuff, Neat Stuff, Technology Stuff
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