steelcase blog

Zig or Zag…

… I’m sure he didn’t come up with the phrase,… but Marty Neumeier uses it in his marketing how-to book ZAG.  This easy-to-read book follows naturally on his previous bestseller, The Brand Gap.  In The Brand Gap, Neumeier talks about the importance for brands to effectively bridge business strategy and design.  Then in ZAG his message is one of differentiation, what Marty defines as radical differentiation,… when everyone else Zigs, you need to Zag.  To succeed, brands must stand out from the clutter (or the glut) of the many similar brands out there.  If they fail to be distinctive in some or many ways,… they will likely not be noticed.  And if they are it’s not much better, as they will need to match the best price from all the other look-a-likes out there.  In the book, a brand is defined as ‘a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.’  So much for expensive ad campaigns,… it’s not what you say about your brand, but what the customer ‘feels’ about your brand.

So how do you change a person’s feeling about your brand,… you delight the heck out of each and every experience they have with your brand.  From how they hear about your brand, how you help them decide, where they have access to your product/service (to kick the tires or test the service),… to how they continue to be delighted by your brand after that first experience.  I have an Audi TT coupe,… and even though it is 8 years old, I still get a thrill running it through the gears from a dead stop.  This serves to strengthen my feeling about Audi as a brand, and specifically the TT as a sports car brand.  I’ve also noticed that when others notice my car, it reinforces those good feelings.  I especially love to see little boys noses pressed against the back windows of their Mom’s minivan, looking down at my little bubble of a car.  “Wow, look at that”, I can see them saying,… as if it were the only sports car they ever saw.  I even have flashbacks to when I was a teen,… looking out the window of my Dad’s Chevy Nova,… wondering if I could ever afford a Camaro, or better yet a Pontiac Firebird.
What I really like about this book is the emphasis Neumeier places on the importance of not following the leader.  I see it all the time,… a new watch looks like all the other watches; one restaurant's value meal has a new name, but it’s the same stuff; once one soda goes to ‘zero’, everything is ‘zero’; nothing stands out.  But it’s not just about being different.  The baseline requirement is that it has to be good if it’s going to have lasting brand value.  Back to cars, the Edsel was different, but not a great car.  I know, because I joined 4 other fellas in investing in one, a pink one, back in 1975,… thinking we could polish it up, get it running, and make a fortune on resale.  It didn’t work, and in the end no one wanted it parked in their drive,… and it was almost impossible to get rid of.  So I get being good.  The author uses the Mini as an example of different and good,… and the brand is a rising star.

One proven way to be different is to uncover a new need: the book talks briefly about this.  Many successful companies employ user-centered or human-centered approaches to identify these needs.  We do this at Steelcase,… by observing users in real work situations (ethnographic studies), to determine behavioral patterns that represent opportunities for innovation.  These could be work situations that cause users extra effort or forces them to work-around a situation.  It could be a struggle or a frustration the user has with using a particular function/feature of a product.  Or in the best of situations, we correlate these user stories with a series of work-related trends,… and create an entirely new category of solution.  We did this with a product that’s about to be introduced called media:scape.  It redefines how information assets are brought into a group collaboration.  It uses a new table shape, an innovative new data switch from IDEO, and a dramatic shift in the way information displays are fully integrated into the furniture setting.  It’s really good, it’s really different.  Zag, you think…?

Blue Ocean Strategy…

  … it’s not only the title of an international best seller on ‘marketing’ by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne,… but it is also a responsibility we all own as residents of planet earth, to develop a strategy for the future health of our oceans.  I was frightfully reminded of this at TED 2009, held for the first time in Long Beach.  There were two invited speakers whose presentations were about the oceans.  The first was Jake Eberts, producer, who talked about a film called simply Oceans, to be released by Disney Nature in 2010,… filmed by legendary Jacques Perrin (he also did Winged Migration, a wonderful account of migrating birds).  The second was Sylvia Earle, oceanographer, who has spent her entire life exploring the deep oceans.  Sylvia was in fact one of the three TED Prize winners.  And it was her TED Prize ‘wish’ that came on the heels of another TED Prize winner, Jill Tarter, the astronomer.  You could not have picked two topics more distant,… from the unknown heights of our universe’s cosmos, to the unknown depths of our planet’s oceans.

And as a result of the two talks back-to-back, I’m absolutely convinced I’m more interested in the oceans than the cosmos.  I just can’t get excited about looking for something millions of miles away, when we don’t even understand what is but a few miles under the surface of the oceans.  We’re not sure there is life outside of the earth’s atmosphere,… but we are darn sure there is life we have yet to discover here on our own planet.  The oceans could well have more life forms yet to be identified than all those already identified, above or below the oceans.  We just haven’t spent the time to search our very own planet,… which is why it seems so odd to me that we would look up (even though I love a beautiful amber sunset and a bright moon in a starlit sky as much as anyone), when we haven’t even yet looked down.  Jill Tarter, who is very good don’t get me wrong, said that ‘if’ we are able to pick up an intelligible sound from sentient (capable of feeling and perception) beings elsewhere,… we would be hearing it tens of thousands of years after it was sent, since it would be coming from many light years away…!

Now wouldn’t that make for a great conversation…?  Someone says “hi” thousands of years ago,… and you’re just now saying “hi” back, which they’ll hear thousands of years from now.  Talk about a long-distance relationship…!  But back to the oceans,… not only don’t we know what’s beyond where we can reasonably explore today,… but where we can get to, we’re destroying it.  I’ve talked before how we have eaten most of the large fish in the ocean, and before they reached the age of reproduction.  So when they’re gone, they’re gone.  In addition to eating them all, we have tossed so much plastic into the ocean we are choking off their natural habitat and existence, literally.  The fact is we do far more in the way of protecting land areas, than we do the ocean (where we only protect a fraction of a percent),… which doesn’t make any sense considering how much of the earth is covered with water.  And that’s Sylvia Earle’s wish, expressed to the TED audience.  She said, “I wish you would use all means at your disposal -- films! expeditions! the web! More! – to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, ‘hope spots’ large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.”  Hope spots; I really like that.  Our hope and wonder lies in the ability of the oceans to heal the damage we have inflicted on them, if we just leave them alone.  A worthwhile strategy…? 

Recession Proof Brands…

… when the going gets tough, the tough get going,… I recall my Dad using that line more than once.  It usually was associated with some weekly chore which I didn’t want to do, and thus complained that it was really, really hard.  In the end it was always a waste of time as my appeal for mercy never did work,… it merely caused a delay in completing the task.  No one can deny that we are in the midst of a ‘going gets tough’ period,… every day the news reminds us of just how bad it is.  People losing their jobs, with slim prospects of another,… banks going under,… foreclosures and bankruptcies,… tough, tough, tough.  As all this is happening, I’ve been watching closely how certain companies chose to respond.  Some get tough, and get going.  They focus on building talent, capabilities and hope for where they want to be ‘after’ the recession.  Others join the race to the bottom,… watching where others cut left and right, and try and exceed their cuts.  But it’s not just companies,… it’s happening to brands as well.

This past week I read that Starbucks, one of our premier brands, appears to have chosen to join the race to the bottom.  I can understand closing underperforming locations, and slowing their growth to a more reasonable rate.  But what I can’t understand is the news that they are considering coming out with ‘value-priced meals’ to compete with McDonalds…!  Talk about a blow to the brand,… this, for me at least, takes away a huge amount of the glow I’ve always imagined around this brand.  This is a move that screams ‘survive’, not ‘thrive’ or even ‘prosper’.  In Denise Lee Yohn’s piece on brandchannel.com, she defines a weak brand as one that “has little to draw from besides price reductions and desperate promotions to generate interest.”  Sounds like Starbucks.  Denise then goes on to point out what makes for a strong brand.  Two of her points in particular I believe are right on.  First, strong brands are meaningful,… they are “relevant and compelling to its target customer.”  And second, differentiating,… strong brands are ‘different/distinctive’, and different in ways that customers value.

So what does a recession proof brand do…?  They use times like this to focus with laser accuracy on those areas of their performance that fall short of their brand’s promise.  In so doing they create innovative ways to add value, refine service levels, and extend their brand.  It’s a time to become even more unique and in so doing, more desired.  Instead of dropping their price, they bolster their value, and build brand equity.  Another writer that speaks to this same subject is W. Chan Kim, author of Blue Ocean Strategy.  He states, “that tomorrow’s leading companies (brands) will succeed not by battling competitors (race to low cost), but by creating ‘blue oceans’ of uncontested market space ripe for growth.”  He appropriately labels such strategic moves as ‘value innovation’,… I like that. The key is to be recognizably different,… like Cirque du Soleil, Southwest Airlines, or Apple… like Starbucks used to be in its early days.  Don’t follow the others down that slippery slope of marginalized value,… build ladders, bridges and zip lines to new, higher levels of perceived value.  Another Happy Meal…?

I’m All Thumbs…

… at least it seems that way with the new BlackBerry Storm I got last week, to replace my BlackBerry Bold (that I loved). I never realized my thumbs were that huge until I tried to type on the on-screen keyboard,… and kept typing the wrong letter. Even with the ‘auto correct’ activated, I wasn’t coming anywhere near the right word. I admit there is some nifty technology at work here. The visual color cues based on ones gently touching the surface, and then the semi-haptic feedback when pressing the glass to ‘select’, are two such examples. I was about ready to call it quits and go back to my Bold when I remembered I went through a similar experience when I initially got the BB Bold. I convinced myself I just had to get used to this new device. As I painfully struggled through email after email (of which I get several hundred a day),… I began to reflect on just what it was that was making it so difficult. I concluded that it wasn’t the device as much as it was the small-scale ergonomics at play. Simply put,… everything was in a new place (wrists, hands, fingers, and thumbs) and I had to repeat these micro-gestures over-and-over until they would become my new ‘norm’.

It’s almost humorous that my Storm newbie struggles were on a week that I visited Microsoft Research in Seattle,… specifically the group dedicated to Microsoft’s new Surface technologies, where the gestures get bigger not smaller. Here I was dynamically shifting from thumbing on my BB Storm glass surface, to gesturing with my hand across a large glass surface. From moving, rotating and shifting knuckles and finger tips,… to moving, rotating and shifting hands, elbows and shoulders. At one point I was handed an associate’s laptop computer as he was signed into the airlines web site, to print my return boarding pass,… and here we go again, but now moving, rotating and shifting fingers and wrists. I guess this is what they mean by a whole body experience. No chance of repetitive strain injury (RSI) or cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) here, what with the almost continuous shifting from one form of information interaction to another, one gradient of ergonomics to another.

Continuously re-learning a growing number of input protocols doesn’t sound like the best user-centered approach to interactive technologies. But neither does believing one interface method is going to cover every form of information request. So maybe the ideal is some form of middle ground,… where users have a core set of ‘universal’ tools for most everyday tasks, and then an array of ‘specialized’ tools for unique or high-performance tasks. And maybe the core set of tools are very personal (owned by the individual), and the broader set of alternative interactive tools are shared (owned in common by a group or team,… or made available on-demand as needed). This makes sense from a cost and mobility perspective as well. Individual users will want their personal tools to move with them from location to location (I never go anywhere without my BlackBerry). But a large digital interactive wall or high-end telepresence system for group collaboration,… is something you would move to, when you had the need to use it. Making this as easy a transition as possible, from individual to group, and having our interfaces AND information shift seamlessly as well, is the ultimate objective,… and one we are working on.

Work (and Life) is going to come at us from every direction, at an ever increasing pace,… that we can be assured of. Content, available information, is growing faster than we can even predict. And we’re all on the move, constantly. So matching our task with our information need with our location is the combination that will unlock effectiveness. Finding that combination, and finding it faster than the next guy,… promises to provide a competitive edge. I’ll eventually get used to my new BlackBerry Storm. And just in time for them to replace it with something new (and they will claim better). After all, one never wants to let their thumbs get too comfortable. But my hope would be that we, teaming with other research groups, will one day crack the code on how this ‘ecology’ of devices seamlessly responds to the information demands of individuals/groups,… as they move from task-to-task,… and from location-to-location. Thumb wrestling anyone …?

Simple or Complex…

… it seems like a fairly straight-forward choice; whether describing a person, a product, a process, or a place.  All that changed after spending time at the Santa Fe Institute (ground zero for a lot of complexity thinkers) and then reading the book Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger, senior editor for Time magazine).  I now see these two descriptions in a totally new and entirely different light.  Kluger’s book is not a long book and fairly large print (I like that), but it is filled with such rich content that it is not a book you can read super fast.  It’s one of those books you read a paragraph or page, and then reread again to make sure you took it all in.  The basic premise of the book is that the two, simple and complex, are much more linked than one might imagine.  But not like two sides of the same coin where it is heads-tails, one or the other.  It is more like the boiling of water in a stove, eventually converting to steam,… moving from one condition/phase that is relatively stable (water - simple), to one that is more random and thus unstable (steam - also simple).  And complexity reigns in the middle (the complexity arc, like a bell curve).

I know this is a rather simplistic (no pun intended) view of the relationship between simple and complex,... but it helps me understand how our instincts, or first impressions, may often be wrong.  Why that which we label as complex, like the spread of a disease, can actually be resolved in a very simple way.  And that which seems on the surface to be so simple, like a handshake, is actually a very complex gesture.  The author explores this new science of complexity by asking a series of questions, each highlighting for the reader where their preconceived notions may be wrong.  What’s most interesting is when Kruger describes how introducing ‘confusion’ moves one up the complexity arc, and correspondingly how introducing ‘order’ or purposeful ‘disorder’ (as a response to predictable patterns) can reduce complexity.  The book quotes Gell-Mann, who cofounded the Santa Fe Institute, “It’s the region between order (pure robustness) and disorder (pure chaos) that gives you complexity, not the order and disorder at the ends.”

So what does this have to do with office furniture…?  It just so happens a lot.  I’ve referenced before that we have developed a model to develop the ‘sweet spot’ for innovation,… where three converging need sets overlap – social, spatial and informational (SSI).  To the extent we design solutions that respond to all three, we create resonance with users.  The discovery of ‘patterns’ is instrumental to this process, as described in Kruger’s book.  It is the knowledge of patterns, and effective responses to same, which reduces complexity.  Take collaboration for example; it is a very complex process.  Here you have different people, many from different departments, each with different experiences and often hidden agendas.  Plus you have an objective that may or may not be all that clear.  And a team setting that more than likely hinders easy information sharing/comparing of ideas.  There are issues of trust, social protocols engagement; issues of ergonomics, light, sound, comfort; and issues of access to power/network and display of content, digital or analog, the making of models.  No wonder it is so hard to do, and do well.

But there are ‘patterns’ of interaction and use that we have consistently observed over the years,… and for which solutions can be designed.  Solutions which increase chaos when desired, or engineer robustness as needed, to achieve a simpler (more effective) group/team interaction.  One such example is to have the shape of the room and the furniture within designed to keep the focus of the participants on each other.  This is done by eliminating the ‘front’ of the room, and the sense of a ‘head of the table,’… creating a more democratic co-ownership to what is being authored.  Another example is to provide tools that make everyone’s thinking visible (a large digital display and/or white board), and by so doing eliminate the guesswork out of where the differences truly exist.  Collaboration complexity increases the more isolated and divergent the thinking of each individual participant is.  Solving for ‘patterns’ of interaction make for a less complex, and much more productive output.  Take a look at the many alternatives you have for group work today (both inside and outside the office), and assess if it helps or hinders your ability to contribute.  Simple or Complex…?