“Twitter is not a media company,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo declared on stage at AllThingsD‘s media conference in Laguna Nigel, CA, Monday evening. The statement was surprising given Twitter’s well-publicized role as a platform for breaking news, entertainment and other communications.
“You even sell advertising,” AllThingsD‘s Peter Kafka pointed out.
“We’re in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company,” Costolo elaborated. “We don’t create our own content; we’re a distributor of content and traffic. We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to other media properties, namely to other online web properties, even to films.”
Costolo pointed to a Super8 campaign Paramount Pictures ran on Twitter last June. The studio promoted the hashtag #Super8Secret, through which it offered advanced screening tickets to the film. The film performed “50% better” during opening weekend than Paramount expected, Costolo said.
Kafka and Costolo went on to discuss the origins of Twitter’s advertising business. “When you came to Twitter in 2009, Twitter’s business model wasn’t clear,” Kafka recalled. “Now it’s solidly an ad business. Did you push the company in that direction?” he asked.
“I was certainly involved in it,” said Costolo. “The honest answer is that i was a key participant in it, certainly advocated for it. By no means was it my idea to create and launch the products we have now.”
Kafka asked Costolo if the company explored any other business models at the time, but Costolo evaded the question. “The notion that there were other ideas we considered and that I disposed of makes it sound too palace intrigue-y,” he complained. “It makes it sound a little too Hamlet. The reality of life is that it’s a lot more Tom Stoppard than Shakespeare,” he said.
Costolo likewise skirted questions about whether Twitter would have its first profitable year in 2012 — “We don’t discuss financials,” he said — but did stress the health of Twitter’s advertising business. In particular, he noted that engagement in several recent Promoted campaigns was above 50%, and that the cost per customer acquisition rate — by which we assume he means the cost per follower acquisition rate — is “fantastic.”
At the moment, Twitter is less interested in developing new products or revenue streams than growing the ones it’s already developed, Costolo suggested. “It’s all about scaling that now, launching these products globally,” he said.
Customers are increasingly expecting to get help from companies through social media, like Twitter and Facebook, in addition to traditional channels like phone, email, and web. That’s why Salesforce is launching a new application, called Desk.com, aimed at small and medium sized businesses (SMBs).
Desk.com expands on the suite of social applications for large enterprises that Salesforce launched last summer. Built on technology from Assistly, which Salesforce acquired last fall, Desk.com lets SMBs manage requests for help wherever they start from—Facebook, phone, Twitter, web. It also has a mobile component, so staffers can support their customers even when they’re out of the office.
But what’s equally interesting is Desk.com’s pricing structure. They have the standard “per seat” model ($49 per agent after the first seat, which is free). But they also have a “per hour” model for what they call “casual” customer support reps.
“We realized that small and medium sized businesses might have a small customer service department, but, really, everyone in the company is doing support,” Alex Bard, the former CEO of Assistly who is now vice president and general manager of Desk.com, tells Fast Company.
He gave the example of a clothing company. A customer might post a note to Facebook with a complaint about a pair of pants. The company’s primary customer service agent might initially field the ticket. But they might also forward it to the product manager. The product manager might then pick up the phone to talk the customer, not just to help resolve the immediate problem, but also because, by hearing what’s not working with the current line of pants, they might get good ideas for the next batch.
For staffers like the product manager, who only do customer service a small part of the time, Desk.com offers “flex” pricing at $1 per hour.
“That enables companies to create accounts for everyone in the system,” Bard said, but only pay for casual support reps’ actual usage.
Such innovations are possible now that more and more software is being served in the cloud. With desktop applications, software companies by definition had to sell by the seat. But with a cloud-based application, like Desk.com, which can track actual usage, companies like Salesforce can develop more innovative pricing structures based on real-world use–thus making them more affordable to a larger range of SMBs with smaller budgets.
“Life used to be simpler,” my mom says while making her fourth attempt to update her Windows firmware in order to install Office 2011 on top of Office 2008.
I don’t correct her, but I don’t believe her either. As far as I can tell, life has always been complicated; and certainly as long as my mother has been alive, there has been incredibly sophisticated technology in the world. (When she was my age, people were landing on the moon. Nothing simple about it.) What I do believe, though, is that life used to be more usable. What’s different now is that complex technology has become so freakin’ cheap that it seems free to include “one more” feature in your product. The unforeseen cost, of course, is that those extra features hurt usability.
But we know all this. There is plenty of literature on the subject, and good usability is table stakes for a modern product. If your product isn’t usable, your business is in a dangerous position. Maybe you can get by in the short term by boasting your killer feature set; but the fact is that if people can’t figure out how to use your bells and whistles, you’re going to feel it on your bottom line sooner or later.
It may be old news, or even obvious to some, that poor usability can hurt customer relationships and hold back sales. But what isn’t obvious to business leaders is: How do I tell if it’s happening to me?
Before I get right to answering that, consider customer service for a moment. The adage “the customer is always right” has been uttered many times, in many languages, for many years. Long before the cash register was even invented, businesspeople intuitively knew that cultivating relationships with loyal customers was key to long-term success. Yet still, even in 2012, there is no end of companies who find ways to pull short-term profits out of their customers, at the expense of the longer-term customer relationship. (Example: So-called free three-month magazine subscriptions that you have to remember to opt out of before you get automatically charged.)
As the service economy continues to evolve, more and more companies are working to measure and improve their customer-service performance as a key indicator of success. And to this end, a minor revolution occurred in 2003, when the corporate world was introduced to Net Promoter Scores (NPS). In only a few years, NPS had become far and away the leading measure of customer loyalty.
Here’s the beautiful thing about NPS: Organizations get results from the data, but it’s amazingly simple to collect. You simply ask your customers, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely they are to recommend your company/product to their friends and colleagues. People who give high marks are “promoters,” (i.e., will recommend you) people who rate low are “detractors,” (i.e., will bad-mouth you), and in the middle are “passives” (i.e., don’t care enough to do either one). The theory, which has been backed up by evidence, is that companies who have more promoters than detractors (i.e., a high Net Promoter Score) will win. They will acquire more customers and make more money.
Critics of the metric say it is a blunt instrument, and maybe it is. But if your NPS is -20, and your biggest competitor’s is 80, you had better do something about it. It could certainly be argued there are better ways to measure customer loyalty; but the success of the Net Promoter Score was closely tied to being the most usable way to measure customer loyalty. This is all by way of saying that even one of the oldest goals in the business world–to keep the customer happy–has only recently been armed with a really useful, usable metric.
Now, back to usability. I suspect that even if you believe wholeheartedly in the power of usability, you probably aren’t measuring it in a useful way and making it a key part of your business strategy. I am willing to bet that one of the major reasons people don’t effectively measure usability is that they don’t know how. One of the other major reasons is that the established usability metrics take a lot of effort and analysis to get anything out of them, so ironically, the usability measurements themselves aren’t terribly usable. So here’s my thought. Let’s apply the broader lessons of the Net Promoter Score to usability. No complicated metrics, no long surveys, just one “ultimate question for usability” that lets us know if we need to invest more in making our products intuitive.
What, then, should that question be? When I was in college, we were taught that the quantitative measures of usability are efficiency (how long a task takes), effectiveness (whether or not a subject can complete a particular task), subjective satisfaction (whether or not the experience is enjoyable), and error rate (how many times the subject makes a mistake, even if they eventually complete the task). All good stuff to know, but too low level for this purpose.
The famed usability expert and evangelist Jakob Nielsen says that quantitative measures of usability are low bang for the buck; he favors qualitative evaluation instead. When it comes to making a product better, I also firmly advocate qual over quant. But qualitative evaluation is just too much work to answer the simple question, “How do I know if I need to invest in usability?” I asked all of my “usability guru” friends, dug into the existing metrics, and came up with some of my own ideas; and the one I came across that most succinctly captured it was “How confident are you using this system/product/service?”
Unfortunately for me, this wasn’t one of my original ideas. It is a question I poached from the System Usability Scale (aka the “SUS”), originally published by John Brooke at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1986. It’s actually a nice survey in and of itself, but it takes several minutes to complete and doesn’t overtly tie to business goals, and I’ve never actually seen it done. Put another way, it’s usable but not usable enough to actually ever get used.
I settled on that notion of self-reported confidence, because it captures two important factors from both a human and business perspective. First, technology is supposed to work for people, and not the other way around. Second, as my uncle Fred once told me, “The worst thing you can do to an adult is make them feel stupid.”
In our modern world of automated interactions, the usability of your product or service is an important part of your relationship with your customers, and it had better not suck. If people knew that the complexity of their products was causing serious brand damage, they would surely make the investment to prevent it. But by no fault of their own, people outside of the design and usability world just don’t necessarily know when there is a problem. So even if this one question is under-nuanced, over-generalized, and does not tell you how to fix your usability issue, it does answer the question, “Do I have a problem I need to address?” with a yes or no.
So I propose that we all ask one simple question of as many potential users of our products as we can. The question I asked above was “On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you feel using this system?” But in truth, the question itself is less important than making sure you ask it. It’s a well-understood quirk of human nature that we tend not to take things seriously unless we’re measuring them. Whatever you ask, pay attention to the percentage of scores that are under 7. Those are all the customers you’ll lose, customers you’ll keep without delighting, or customers you’ll perennially frustrate, and for an embarrassingly fixable reason. It’s easy to do, and it might just move us toward a more usable world, which I know my mom would appreciate.
If you live in a city, you pass by thousands of strangers every day. Many of these strangers have problems. Maybe you have problems that one of these strangers could resolve, if only you knew to talk to them. The problem is knowing who to talk to. You can’t bother them all. At the same time, many people are leaving information trails, posting their hopes, dreams, and problems to Facebook, Twitter, and similar services.
Created by designer Itai Miller as part of a speculative class project, Opportune is a concept app that addresses this situation. The idea is that it scans your Internet activity for clues as to your current desires. At the same time, it is scanning everyone else’s activity. By coordinating location, needs, and offerings, Opportune can act as a matchmaker. Ultimately, it would guide you to a face-to-face meeting with a stranger who can help you out.
“For example–I’m looking for an apartment. I’m looking in the relevant websites and posting on Facebook (or even Twitter).” says Miller, “The app knows that I’m looking for an apartment, and it will find me people who can help me–landlords, roommates, real estate agents–and they will be notified that I’m also in their area.” Whether you find this intriguing or horrifying probably depends a lot on your attitudes towards privacy online and information overload.
Of course, if you are going to have a butler that anticipates your every need, it must know everything about you. Discretion is key in human servants. When it comes to your life stored in data centers, this is a privacy nightmare. “I know that the concept raises questions about privacy, but people already share their entire life on Facebook and such,” Miller points out. We share a lot online. Perhaps more than we realize. Think about apps like Please Rob Me (for a more benign version, there’s We Feel Fine). These work by surfacing and aggregating information that people are giving out publicly.
The cleverness of Opportune is that it recognizes these realities and harnesses this information for individuals. It accepts that a great deal can be deduced by gathering together public threads and turns that into a feature. “I think that the biggest experience is actually the ‘no experience,’” says Miller. “The app guesses what you want and gives it to you. It is like another way to search ‘on the way’ without the actual act of searching. The app is based on the idea that face-to-face meeting is still the most powerful interaction, and it ‘pushes’ you in that direction.” The challenge with these kinds of things is that, so far, software tends to be exceedingly socially dumb. For example, Facebook used to keep suggesting that I might like to be friends with the guy that my girlfriend left me for because we had so many connections in common. Socially stupid, but logical given the social graph.
Similarly, here, the idea is that you give yourself over to extreme surveillance by the network in the hopes that it’ll do a good job of networking for you. But how do you let it know that you don’t want to be bothered? Most people are busy all the time and interruption isn’t welcome. What happens if the poor real estate agent just wants a coffee and five minutes to themselves? “I thought about it,” says Miller, “What if people don’t want to be approached. But as this is only a proposal for an app and not a whole app, I chose not to deal with the minor details such as availability.” And yet a key part of social life in the city is that we spend a lot of time discretely not noticing each other. The danger of social agents that go out and start trying to introduce you is that they miss that point, like an overly gregarious friend at a party dragging you from conversation to conversation when all you want is to get a drink.
The global production of oil has remained relatively flat since 2005 and peaked in 2008, declining ever since even as demand has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system.
In Wednesday’s issue of Nature, James Murray of University of Washington and David King of Oxford University argue this sort of volatility is what we can expect going forward, and we’re likely to face it with other fossil fuels as well.
The notion of peak oil is fairly simple: Oil is a finite resource and at some point we simply won’t be able to extract as much as we once did. There is no getting around that limit for any finite resource. The issue that has made peak oil contentious, however, is the debate over when we might actually hit it. Murray and King are not the first to conclude that we’ve already passed the peak. Even as prices have climbed by about 15 percent per year since 2005, production has remained largely flat.
The strongest argument against this being a real peak is the increasing volume of petroleum reserves many countries are reporting. Even assuming those estimates were reliable (which Murray and King aren’t certain of), those reserves clearly have not brought increased production. In the United States, for example, production as a percentage of total reserves has dropped from 9 percent to 6 percent during the last three decades.
“We are not running out of oil,” the authors argue, “but we are running out of oil that can be produced easily and cheaply.”
This creates significant delays before new reserves can be tapped, and limits the amount of oil that can be economically extracted from them. Non-conventional sources like oil sands have the potential to contribute to the global supply but so far haven’t done so and current production estimates indicate they won’t anytime soon.
The struggle to mobilize supplies has taken place against a backdrop of falling production and rising demand. Most established sources of oil are seeing declines in the area of 5 percent annually. Given that decline, it will be extremely difficult to meet demands projected for 2030 — in fact, we’d have to add the equivalent of our total current production. In a fit of understatement, the authors deem this “very unlikely to happen.”
What are the consequences of being stuck at or near peak oil? The authors have produced a graph showing that, while supply is elastic enough to meet demand, prices stay stable. Once demand consistently exceeds supply, prices swing wildly. Murray and King term this a “phase transition” and suggest we’ll be in the volatile phase from here on out.
That has some significant consequences. Of the 11 recessions the United States has experienced since World War II, 10 have been preceded by a sudden change in oil prices. The United States isn’t alone, either. Italy’s entire trade deficit, which has contributed to its financial troubles, can be accounted for by the rise in imported oil. The world, it seems, has allowed its economies to become entirely dependent upon fossil fuels.
“If oil production can’t grow, the implication is that the economy can’t grow either,” the authors write. “This is such a frightening prospect that many have simply avoided considering it.”
And it’s not just oil that poses problems. U.S. coal production peaked in 2002, and the global peak has been predicted to hit as soon as 2025. The last time global coal reserves were evaluated, in 2005, the total was cut by more than half compared to previous estimates. Fracking has boosted the production of natural gas dramatically, but even here the authors find reasons for concern. Recent reports suggest shale gas reserves have been overestimated, and many fields that have been in production awhile have experienced large declines in production.
The commentary concludes that we simply can’t rely on any fossil fuel to provide a stable and economic source of energy for more than a couple of decades. And, given the economic shocks that result from rapid changes in energy prices, that’s a serious problem.
“Economists and politicians continually debate policies that will lead to a return to economic growth,” the authors note. “But because they have failed to recognize that the high price of energy is a central problem, they haven’t identified the necessary solution: weaning society off fossil fuel.”
This weaning will require a large deployment of efficiency measures, nuclear power and renewable energy sources. This will take time, which is why efforts need to be started now, the authors argue. (Not mentioned, but equally true, is the probability that taking these measures will smooth out the impact of reaching peak fossil fuel production.) Unfortunately, since most governments are unwilling to admit the prospect of indefinite economic stagnation due to our reliance on fossil fuels, they’ve been unable to generate the political will to even begin these efforts. Murray and King clearly hope their commentary will help get the ball rolling.
One way for a candidate to change the conversation around her candidacy: have her followers pelt the opposition with waffles at every public appearance. Eggos in particular are lightweight and their shape makes them easy to toss.
Particularly in primaries, simplicity and certainty are rewarded. The waffling candidate, the one who hesitates to give a clear yes or no answer to every question is seen as weak.
(Worth noting that the word “waffling” didn’t start appearing in books much until after the 1960 elections).
Of course, this post isn’t about politics at all. Customers and employees and vendors and regulators almost always prefer simplicity and certainty.
There are two ways to begin an answer to most questions we face in organizations:
“It’s simple” and
“It’s complicated.”
Both are usually true. At 10,000 feet, most challenges are simple. But actually making something work is quite complicated.
Nuance is the sign of an intelligent observer. Nuance shows restaint and maturity and an understanding of the underlying mechanics of whatever problem we’re wrestling with. After all, if the solution was simple, we would have solved it already.
On the other hand, resorting to nuance early and often can also be a sign of fear, of an unwillingness to go out on a limb and make a difference. Hence the reactions of boards hiring consultants and CEOs, or of passionate primary voters. “Don’t tell me it’s complicated. Just show me the guts to make something happen.”
My vote: your goals and your strategy must be simple. You must have passion and certainty in order to make a difference as a leader. Your tactics, on the other hand, should be layered, multi-dimensional and reflect the patience of someone who cares about reaching a goal.
When Howard Schultz talks about coffee or Jill Greenberg talks about lighting or Cory Booker talks about education, they can impatiently demand clear and simple results. At the same time, successful leaders see the nuance they’ll need in executing to get there.
The paradox is that the simplicity we often seek in search of solutions rarely leads to the patient leadership we need to get them.
The irony is not lost on me… the decision on when to be bold is a nuanced one.
It’s a new year and a new set of predictions to set goals and expectations for 2012. I won’t bother you with the top 10 emerging social networks or apps to focus time and resources. Nor will I gaze in the crystal ball to reveal the five secrets to viral marketing and user/customer acquisition. Instead of adding my forecasts to the endless sea of debatable prophesies, I chose a more aspirational path.
2012 is the year of transformation as digital Darwinism threatens rigid and traditional practices everywhere. Regardless of industry, digital Darwinism is a phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than the ability to adapt.
Indeed, this is a time when organizations will invest in change to better adapt to emerging market opportunities, to more successfully engage with customers, employees and stakeholders, rethink systems and processes, and ultimately, revive the company’s vision, mission and purpose. The result is an adaptive culture that signals an end to business as usual. Without doing so only expedites the inevitable journey towards irrelevance. For 2012 and beyond, the following trends serve as beacons for not only survival, but leadership.
Trends for Transformation
Leadership: As technology continues to evolve & permeate work and life, behavior, expectations and communication evolve. Someone must look ahead, see where we need to go and lead the way to relevance. Leadership is something that must be earned. Without a top-down charter toward a direction everyone can march behind, leadership is relegated to operational management. In the age of empowerment, those who march blindly will follow a path not unlike what Steve Jobs envisioned in the infamous Apple Lemmings commercial.
Vision: The stated outlook of organizational direction needs review. When’s the last time you read your company’s vision or mission statement? If you did read it recently, would you Tweet it proudly? In a time when brands are not created, but instead co-created, if vision is unclear or underwhelming, alignment, community and camaraderie will prove elusive.
Strategy: With new media and emerging technology creating a groundswell of customer empowerment, new strategies must focus on the alignment of objectives with meaningful experiences and outcomes. All too often, emerging technology is confused with either disruptive technology, where is impacts how companies work or how customers behave, or that of yet another channel or platform for traditional marketing or selling. Far too much emphasis, budget, and time is placed in new media channels without an understanding of why or what it is that customers expect or appreciate.
Culture: This is a time of change, which requires coalescence and solidarity. We can’t change if the culture is rigid or risk averse. We can’t innovate if those who experiment are not supported. Organizations need to focus on cultivating a culture of adaptation rooted in customer- and employee-centricity and more importantly, empowerment. Culture is everything. It is and should be intentional. It should be designed. Those companies that invest in the development of an adaptive culture will realize improved relationships that contribute to competitive advantages.
People: The 5th P of the marketing mix, “People,” will take center stage. Organizations that embrace the spirit of intrepreneurialism will empower employees to experiment through failure and success to improve engagement and morale. And, by embracing customers, insights will inspire relevant products, services and processes.
Innovation: The ability to recognize new opportunities is perhaps the greatest challenge rivaled only by the ability to execute. Emerging and disruptive technology is now part of the business landscape and customer lifestyle. Innovation, trends, and hype is not going to stop. In fact, it will only amplify. The capacity to identify and consider new solutions and responses is critical. It must be supported by innovative collaboration and decision-making processes and systems to assess and react. Innovation must be perpetual.
Influence: Digital influence is becoming prominent in social networks, turning everyday consumers into new influentials. As a result, a new customer hierarchy is developing forcing businesses to identify and engage to those who rank higher than others. There is no future in any business model that is cemented in reactive engagement. Organizations should identify and engage all connected customers to extend reach outside of problems. Businesses must engage when touchpoints emerge, during decision-making cycles, when positive experiences are shared, or to proactively feed the results who search for insight and direction. Contributing value to people and investing time and energy into networks of relevance will also earn any organization a position of equal or greater influence.
Localization: For global organizations hoping to connect with customers around the world, localization & contextualization are king in any engagement strategy. This is also true for any engagement strategy regardless of local. Many companies are jumping on every bandwagon imaginable, syndicating content, thinning resources, and investing no more in each network than what’s necessary to maintain a pulse. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora become broadcast channels for one-to-many strategies and programs that do very little for cultivating dedicated and engaged communities.
Intelligence: One of the biggest trends in 2011 was the development of social media command centers. At the heart of these sophisticated data gathering silos were conversations and tools that allowed community managers to listen, respond, and promote engagement within the company. While social media is introducing the art & science of monitoring to marketing and service teams it is the organizations that invest in technology, teams and processes that will translate activity into actionable insights.
Philanthropic Capitalism: Customers expect values to match their own core values. What used to be a necessary checklist of community focus, such as corporate social responsibility or CSR is now rebooted. Philanthropic capitalism is a business model where companies contribute to worthwhile causes on behalf of customers as part of the transaction. Additionally, customers are expressing that they will also invest in companies where employees are “treated well,” pledging trust and loyalty as a result. The empathetic business model on the horizon requires charitable and sustainable decisions as part of everyday business where customers naturally become stakeholders.
These pillars will serve as the foundation for an adaptable business model where opportunities are readily assessed and innovation is regularly practiced. The reward is relevance, affinity and advocacy. As Leon C. Megginson once said in paraphrasing Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
The business practice of brainstorming has been around with us so long that it seems like unadorned common sense: If you want a rash of new ideas, you get a group of people in a room, have them shout things out, and make sure not to criticize, because that sort of self-censoring is sure to kill the flow of new thoughts.
It wasn’t always so: This entire process was invented by Alex Osborn, one of the founders of BBDO, in the 1940′s. It was motivated by Osborn’s own theory of creativity. He thought, quite reasonably, that creativity was both brittle and fickle: In the presence of criticism, it simply couldn’t wring itself free from our own minds. We could only call our muses if judgments didn’t drag us down. Osborn claimed that this very brainstorming process was the secret to BBDO’s durable creativity, allowing his ad guys to produce as many as 87 ideas in 90 minutes–a veritable avalanche. “The brainstorm had turned his employees into imagination machines,” writes Jonah Lehrer in a long, excellent article in The New Yorker. But as Lehrer argues, the only problem with all this is that brainstorming is total bullshit.
You’re More Creative Working Alone
As an opening salvo, Lehrer lays out a devastating experiment, conducted in the 1950s, which found that when test subjects tried to solve a complex puzzle, they actually came up with twice as many ideas working alone as they did when working in a group. Numerous studies have since verified that finding: Putting people into big groups doesn’t actually increase the flow of ideas. Group dynamics themselves–rather than overt criticism–work to stifle each person’s potential.
Lehrer doesn’t quite explain why that happens. But in a nice coincidence, Susan Cain tackles that very problem in her upcoming book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. As she explains in The New York Times, groups don’t encourage creativity because of the social pressure they bring to bear:
People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”
Criticism Improves the Brainstorming Process
Those findings all probably make sense to anyone who has sat in a brainstorming session and wondered why Debbie from accounting suddenly became the world’s most vocal expert on car design. (Here, I’m referencing a real-life experience I got sitting in on a brainstorming session for a major car company.) But Lehrer goes on to point out that other studies have shown that the presence of criticism actually increases the flow of ideas. One experiment compared two groups: One which brainstormed with a mandate not to criticize, and another which had the license to debate each others ideas. The second group had 20% more ideas–and even after the session ended, the people in the second group had far more additional ideas than those in the first.
Why is that? Lehrer doesn’t really say, and neither do his sources. But this idea makes sense. The problem with traditional brainstorming is the assumption that good ideas can spring up unbidden. But the process is really more interesting than that. Usually, inventions often begin when an inventor spots a problem. Good ideas usually don’t hang by themselves, unattached. They come about as solutions. Thus, allowing criticism into a room full of people trying to brainstorm allows them to refine and redefine a problem. Adding more and more complex problems to the mix doesn’t stifle creativity–it actually gives the mind more to work with, simply by demanding that we find better and better answers.
Creativity Is About Happenstance, Not Planning
Lehrer then goes searching for better models of the creative process, and finds a couple. One comes in the form of a professor who was able to study how the relationships within a group affect the quality of their work. Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern, found that on Broadway the worst-performing productions were the work of two groups: Those that had worked together too much, and those that had worked together too little. Too much familiarity bred groupthink. Too little meant that they didn’t have enough chemistry to challenge each other. The most productive groups were those with a baseline of familiarity but just enough fresh blood to make things interesting.
But there’s a serendipity involved that you can’t fake: Studies have shown that the most successful groups of scientists also work in extremely close physical proximity. Just being around another creative person is vital to the process, because so many ideas happen as a result of water-cooler chatter and passing contact. The best support comes by anecdote: Building 20, a famous hothouse of ideas on the MIT campus. It worked because its design was so crappy and haphazard. It was nothing more than a sheetrock box, but in its maze of corridors and cramped offices, scientists of all stripes often found themselves happening upon conversations with others from wildly different fields. It’s no accident that so many breakthroughs came from that building, including radar, microwaves, the first video games, and Chomskyan linguistics.
Increasingly, companies such as Vitra are designing workspaces designed to blend intense solitude, shown above, and relaxed, freewheeling sociability.
Can We Rework the Brainstorming Paradigm?
I laid out all of these details from Lehrer’s article because each of these findings suggest that the brainstorming process might not be totally hopeless after all. We know that breakthrough insight likely requires intense, individual reflection. We also know that criticism unlocks creativity. And finally, we know that creativity can be fostered by a certain type of physical space.
Each of these findings, taken together, is cause for hope. For one, the brainstorming might work better if it focused not on finding solutions, but rather identifying problems. What if, during a brainstorming session, people weren’t asked to simply throw out ideas, but rather problems as well. Granted, you’ve still got the annoying problem of groupthink. But the fact is that people are usually better at finding fault than they are at finding answers. Properly harnessed, that could be a good thing. Let’s say, for example, you’re trying to invent a new computer UI. It’s much more productive to find what drives people nuts and the features that keep them from doing what they want to do than it is to find out what sort of computer they’d like to have in some idealized fantasy world. Solving such a complex problem as UI design demands a certain subtlety and depth of thought. But those solutions only begin flowing when the problem becomes interesting enough to demand new ideas.
Finally, the fact that office design can so dramatically affect the work we produce means that designers have the wherewithal to affect a company’s core mission. Designers really can make a company smarter, if they embrace the chaotic reality of creativity, rather than trying to create spaces where every last function and possibility has its place. In other words, there might be room for a new design paradigm that embraces both limitations and flexibility. You can create offices where accidental encounters are the rule. And you can create offices where nothing is ever fixed. The smartest office isn’t perfect, and it isn’t permanent.
Paul Baldwin is the chief marketing officer of Outfit7 Inc., a subsidiary of Out Fit 7 Ltd, the leading entertainment app developer. Paul has more than 17 years of experience developing, marketing and monetizing digital entertainment content.
Spend a few minutes browsing through both the Android and Apple app stores and it’s easy to see the fierce competition for user attention. The number of apps has grown to more than 1 million, each vying for downloads and market share.
The app development world is still very top-heavy, with a very small percentage of developers controlling the majority of downloads and revenue. But that in no way means that a newcomer can’t build a successful app that captures the hearts and minds of consumers, and becomes the next big thing.
Since the app stores themselves control which apps are elevated and highlighted, how can you ensure your app gets time in the spotlight and the attention it deserves? Here are six tips drawn from experience.
1. Focus on Product
The best way to get your app noticed is to build a unique and engaging product. Although that’s an article all on its own, let’s sum it up in a few key points.
Know your exact market and who you’re competing against. This will help you understand your target user — what he expects and likes and who else is offering apps to him.
Great apps are also usually the first in their category, or apps that completely reinvent existing categories. A big sign that you have a great app is when you start seeing copycat apps. Embrace them and use them as motivation to continue.
Another element that great apps have in common is fun. You want to make your app something that users will come back to again and again, rather than a one-time, disposable thrill. Whether that means creating lovable characters or tapping into the human desire to compete, remember to deliver fun the first time and every time after.
Also, great apps are simple. No user guides should be necessary to participate, and there should be nothing to “figure out” from a user standpoint. They are intuitive and immediately easy to grasp.
Finally, the last big hallmark of a phenomenal app product is the ability for users to make the app personal through customization features. Today’s app audience is constantly wondering what’s in it for them. Allow them to make it theirs and they’ll more likely become instantly enamored.
2. Allow Users to Engage Others with Your App
These days, more developers are using social media as part of the app as a major key to its success. Your customers’ word-of-mouth multiplies your network a hundred times over without costing you a dime, so be sure to put mechanisms in place that allow users to talk about the app and share experiences with friends.
For example, if your app enables users to create fun videos, make sure they can share those videos with others. This type of direct experience sharing will go a long way in spreading the word about your app.
Caveat: Don’t “over-viralize” your app with too many social features that don’t make sense.
3. Get Media and Blogger Attention: Make It Simple
Media attention and especially reviews of your app can really help to spread recognition. To get that kind of attention, though, you have to have a solid app to begin with, a great story around your app, and it absolutely must be easy to talk about.
The tendency is to come up with the most ingenious, compelling app, filled with loads of features but none that really stand out. This is called “feature creep” and usually spells disaster. Remember, the launch is just the beginning. Successful apps are always adding new content months after launch. If reporters and bloggers (and users for that matter) have a hard time explaining what your app is, what it does or why they like it, they’re less likely to talk about your app. Keep version one simple.
To make your app easier for media to cover, provide materials like press kits, beta codes (if necessary) and reviewer guides. It also helps to identify technology and pop culture trend stories that your app can fit into.
4. Continue Your Marketing Efforts
When your app launches, you’ll definitely want to have a marketing strategy in place to seize your launch window of opportunity, but it’s also important to continue marketing long after launch.
Many developers find pre-launch strategies helpful for grabbing attention. This includes creating a “coming soon” page that teases your app a bit, collecting emails for those interested in the first look, and even extending first invites to target publication audiences.
Make sure you exhaust every “co-marketing” opportunity out there with other app developers. Some major publishers will trade their app installs for your app installs. Everybody is in the same boat, in the same huge ocean of apps. You might be surprised to find that other developers are more than happy to participate in reciprocal marketing.
The important thing to remember is that app marketing windows are perpetual, meaning you should establish marketing vehicles that you can trigger at your discretion over long periods of time. That means plan, plan, plan.
5. Use Analytics
When developing apps, you have all kinds of data at your fingertips to evaluate how your app is being received. Use analytics to monitor your ranking and as a marketing tool.
Become a student of the Android and iOS category rankings (e.g., entertainment vs. games). Each category has its own nuances for determining “top” rankings, so be sure to evaluate each one. Understand why the app moved up in the rankings in order to iterate and improve your own ranking over time. Additionally, if you have a good sense of what is moving the bar for your app, you can also learn from what the top developers are doing.
More importantly, in my opinion, is that you leverage the wealth of analytics available from your app to make your app better over time. Not only will the data help you iterate and improve your app from a technical standpoint, but it will also allow you to create the right content to which users connect. Once the app is live, analyze the data to update your release schedule and product roadmap.
You can also learn when your customers are willing to “rate your app” or be pitched another app in your portfolio. Analytics can shed light on how frequently you should attempt to cross-sale or suggest another item for purchase.
6. Prepare for Success
This tip may seem a little strange at first — who wouldn’t be thinking about success? But in reality, many apps start strong then fade and fizzle. Preparing for success is as much about your product as it is about the team behind it.
It’s crucial to structure your team in a way that supports hyper growth. It’s good to rely on a more fluid and dynamic network of expertise and project teams than a rigid structure.
Think of your app as a brand that will enable you to leverage brand extension opportunities. Build your apps to welcome future cross-promotion opportunities, rather than intrusions on the user experience.
The best way to prepare for app success is to constantly focus on keeping your users engaged. Give them more than just product updates once they’ve downloaded and become fans of your app. Give them instant fun, addictive experiences that they will want to share with friends.
Whatever your secret sauce is or has been, be sure to nurture it to keep your users wanting more — and deliver your app in a way that surpasses user expectations.
I waited in line for two hours Saturday to slip on a pair of hospital booties and spend a few minutes, maybe 5 minutes tops, milling around a white room. And you know what? It was totally worth the wait.
That’s because Doug Wheeler’s new installation at the David Zwirner gallery in New York is the closest I’ll ever get to satisfying a desire I’ve had since childhood: to float on a puffy white cloud.
The installation is called rather unromantically SA MI 75 DZ NY, and it’s precisely what I’ve described–a white room and little else. That “little else,” though, makes all the difference. Wheeler softened the room’s corners to obliterate any sense of where the floor ends and the walls and ceiling begin. I’d seen photos of the thing online, but I was totally unprepared for the physical effects. Step inside, and immediately, you feel like you’ve been smacked in the face by an endless plume of mist.
The effect dies after a moment (turn around and you’ll notice a bunch of mood-killing lights and–eek!–the right angles of a normal room). But hang out a few more minutes (and ignore the lights if you can), and your eyes start playing new tricks on you. My boyfriend obsessed about the little particles of dust in his eyes that the white background threw into relief. “My eyes feel like they’re dirty,” he said.
SA MI 75 DZ NY is Wheeler’s fourth so-called “infinity environment”–expansive, all-white rooms that evoke the sensation of entering an infinite void. The first was built in 1975. Wheeler helped pioneer the Southern California-based Light and Space movement in the 1960s and ‘70s alongside guys like Robert Irwin and James Turrell. Their big thing was futzing around with light and architecture to control, sometimes very subtly, how people experience art. If you want to read a great book about this stuff, pick up Lawrence Weschler’s extended profile of Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. The book details the profound impact the artist’s work had on viewers. In one instance, after he manipulated the transparency of a building next door to his studio, people sat and observed the light change, “watching, sometimes for hours at time.”
I suspect that what drew people to Irwin’s artwork decades ago is the same thing that inspired legions to wait two hours (or more) at the David Zwirner gallery on Saturday. People crave the visceral experience. Our world is even more image-saturated today than it was 35 years ago. A new painting can be disseminated around the cultural stratosphere before it even hits the gallery wall. Everything can be found online. Well, almost everything. The rather plain shots of Wheeler’s installation above just go to show that some things really are still better in person.
“Twitter is not a media company,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo declared on stage at AllThingsD‘s media conference in Laguna Nigel, CA, Monday evening. The statement was surprising given Twitter’s well-publicized role as a platform for breaking news, entertainment and other communications.
Customers are increasingly expecting to get help from companies through social media, like Twitter and Facebook, in addition to traditional channels like phone, email, and web. That’s why Salesforce is launching a new application, called Desk.com, aimed at small and medium sized businesses (SMBs).
