Posts tagged “auto”

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from Dan_Soltzberg] Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years: A Half-Century of Automotive Eyesores [BusinessWeek] – [Interesting to look at design from a "greatest misses" rather than a greatest hits point of view. Can't say though that I agree with all of the selections for ugliest car – I do have love in my heart for the AMC Gremlin]
  • [from steve_portigal] Pampers offers Rowley-designed diapers [The Associated Press] – [Interesting to hear a story about this trend on NPR's marketplace, suggesting that this was designed to appeal specifically to the mothers. Obviously since the chooser isn't the user here, that's nothing new in itself, but these brands are making explicit the idea of the product design being a reflection of the mom instead of a projection by the mom – here's who I am instead of here's who my kid is] Popular designer Cynthia Rowley has designed 11 styles of Pampers, including pastels, stripes, madras and ruffles. P&G says they'll be offered in Target Corp. stores beginning in mid-July. Jodi Allen, a P&G baby care vice president, says in a statement Wednesday that diaper performance comes first, but parents consider the look important, too. Pampers is the No. 1 worldwide brand in sales for the Cincinnati-based consumer products maker. Dallas-based competitor Kimberly-Clark Corp. last month launched U.S. sales of Huggies Jeans Diapers, giving babies' bottoms a denim style for the summer.
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ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from Dan_Soltzberg] Swedish Artist Michael Johansson’s Shipping Container Art [Inhabitat] – [What makes this 3D collage so appealing: is it the scale? The playfulness? The clever conversation between shapes?] Shipping containers are often repurposed as houses, apartments and studios, but Swedish artist Michael Johansson sees them as building blocks for his sculptures.
  • [from Dan_Soltzberg] Saad Mohseni Is Afghanistan’s First Media Mogul [NPR] – [Afghan Star producer Saad Mohseni is seeding culture change in Afghanistan by broadcasting shows depicting alternate social mores] Through reality TV, dramas, and soap operas, Afghans are able to see things they hadn't been able to watch for years. Women talking to men, for instance.
  • [from Dan_Soltzberg] Tesla Raises Shocking Amount in NASDAQ Debut [Fast Company] – [Tesla takes it public. I have only anecdotal evidence as to the performance of their vehicles – the last time I was on the road next to a Tesla Roadster, it effortlessly smoked my turbo Miata – but Tesla seems like they're doing things right] For all its ambitions to revolutionize the electric car industry, Tesla Motors has only posted a profit once, back in July 2009. It has released just one car (the Roadster), and sells 10 vehicles per week. And yet Tesla's first day of public trading on the stock market has been an indisputable success.
  • [from steve_portigal] Nicolas Hayek, 82, Dies – Introduced Swatch – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com – By the 1970s, the vaunted Swiss watch industry was in jeopardy. Japanese watchmakers had begun to undercut Swiss prices. And public tastes were shifting from the finely wrought analog timepieces in which Swiss artisans had long specialized to the pale flickering faces of mass-market digital watches. In the early 1980s, with no apparent remedy in sight, a group of Swiss banks asked Mr. Hayek to compile a report on how the watchmaking industry might best be liquidated. Instead, he merged two of its former titans, Asuag and SSIH, which between them owned brands like Omega, Longines and Tissot. Mr. Hayek bought a majority stake in the reorganized group, known as SMH. In 1983, SMH introduced the Swatch. Lightweight, with vibrantly colored bands and breezy novelty faces, it was remarkably inexpensive to produce. (with 51 parts, as opposed to the nearly 100 needed to make a traditional wristwatch.) It retailed for less than $35 when it was first marketed in the United States later that year.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • Don Norman on Ethnography and Innovation – Some great commentary on Norman's piece (discussed here as well) including the very exciting revelation that Edison did something very much like ethnography!
  • General Motors – The Lab – It’s a pilot program for GM, an interactive design research community in the making. Here you can get to know the designers, check out some of their projects, and help them get to know you. Like a consumer feedback event without the one-way glass.

    We work on ideas that will influence our future vehicles. We want to share our ideas, inventions and pre-production vehicle designs. We want to build the right cars and trucks for your future. We want your opinion.

  • Iceberg Digital Book Reader for the iPhone – Digital books as content, as hardware, as a platform, as an OS, as an app? Interesting to see a range of approaches appearing. Iceberg use the iTunes store to sell the books, which seems like a brilliant strategy, leveraging a storefront/distribution platform that already exists.
  • Steal These Books – From Wikipedia page about book theft, a set of articles that describe what books get stolen from bookstores (independent, chain, and campus) and libraries.
  • Archaeology’s Hoaxes, Fakes, and Strange Sites – A large set of links to articles about fake archeological-type stuff (discoveries, artifacts, and the like). How and why.
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ChittahChattah Quickies

  • Mini places last in J.D. Power quality study – but mfr. thinks this is a good thing? So what is "quality"? – Mini says it deliberately engineers quirks into its cars, like oddly placed dashboard controls or unusual interior lighting, that drag down its ratings in such studies. But Jim McDowell, vice president of Mini's U.S. operations, said those design features are central to the brand's personality.

    "Mini has some idiosyncrasies that we engineer into our cars. We want to make our cars remarkable little cars." McDowell attributed Mini's poor performance in J.D. Power's most recent study to design quirks like the windshield wiper control. In the Mini, it's a button that presses rather than a knob that turns. Its cars feature adjustable ambient light colors ­ not an option you're likely to find in your standard Dodge Ram pickup.

    J.D. Power says the top five problems reported in the overall study were wind noise, air conditioner or heater control problems, interior scuffing, audio control problems and brake noise.

Transformers

Most companies would like their products and services to be something consumers have a relationship with; more than just a consumable good. Emotional relationships between people and things are one of the holy grails of product development.

Yet, in our research, we hear over and over from people that they simply don’t think this way about many of the products in their lives (particularly electronic goods).

Cars, however, are different. Cars get discussed fondly, wistfully, and passionately. They get named. They have histories.

As testament to cars’ tremendous resonance, look at the popularity of the Fast and Furious movies. And of the new Transformers film, which features vehicles as both heroes and villains, and which just bagged the highest weekday opening gross in movie history–despite being described (before the opening) by many in the media as a bad movie.

A number of factors about cars–perhaps the way they contribute to our personal histories, the level of complexity that lends them “personality,” the patina they acquire over time–transform them for many of us from mere objects into relationship material.

camaro-t_shirt
Camaro t-shirt, official licensed GM product, bought for $7.50 at Crossroads Trading used clothes

But products that are more towards the consumable end of the spectrum can also evoke emotions and create a sense of relationship. I think about Topps Bazooka bubble gum from my childhood–one of the most literally consumable products–and how evocative it remains, many years after I’ve ceased being a “user.”

bazooka-gum
Topps Bazooka Gum, photo by Sarah Lillian on Flickr

What’s it like for you? What are the ingredients that differentiate between just using something, and having a richer type of experience?

Related posts:

Object Love, Object Lust…
Packaging Surprise
Rage With The Machine
Miata Farewell

Automobile Avatars

familyaboard.jpg

I’m seeing a lot of these lately on rear windows of minivans and similar larger family-sized vehicles: icons that represent every member of the household (including pets).

Seems like a new example of personalization; an untapped bit of car real estate, and a new message to publish (who are the – writ rough – people in our household).

I wonder if this is more common among Hispanics and/or the churchgoing. Any ideas? Do you have one of these? Where did you hear about it? Where did you get it?

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Buying and Using Cars in India

A couple of little cultural tidbits about cars and car users in India. Param writes

the cup holder, that’s now there almost by default in the newer Indian cars, is hardly used for keeping coffee or any other drink for that matter. This is one of those classic examples of how you blindly re-use a concept from the West and include it in your design it in a different country. And what people actually end up using it for in India is, keeping some currency/change or keeping your mobile phone.

and USATODAY tells us that

the head of BMW Asia says the defining characteristic of Indian consumers is their desire to buy every available feature.

“What the Indian consumer wants is the latest technology, and in the premium car segment, they’re looking for a fully loaded car,” Linus Schmeckel says. “They don’t like to be seen as second-class consumers.”

Hispanic Car Salesman

WaPost on a stellar Hispanic car salesman

On the outside, a Hispanic car salesman may not appear radically different from the domestic model. But on the inside, he is thinking about how to bridge more complicated cultural currents. To succeed, he must also sell well to non-Hispanics, while in dealing with his own community, he must decide if he will be their champion — or use their trust to take advantage.

‘I have not received one call saying anything bad about German. That speaks highly of him,’ says Alejandro Carrasco, operator of Radio America, 1540 AM, a dominant figure in local Hispanic broadcasting who crusades against businesses preying on Latinos.

The Hispanic car salesman must also be savvy to differences. Hispanics are much more likely to take the advice of friends and relatives about what to buy and who to buy it from. They seek a guide in a land of dizzying choices and information overload.

If a car has a problem, a non-Hispanic buyer will report to the service department. Not Hispanics.

‘They come and see the salesperson, even if the service person speaks Spanish,’ says Gus Casabe, used-car manager at Alexandria Toyota, one of a handful of Hispanic salesmen in the area as long-established as Vidal. ‘It’s some kind of different relationship between the salesperson and the customer than American people have. . . . Once you get into a relationship with a Spanish customer, unless you do something crazy, it’s almost forever.’

Vidal says this customer loyalty is simply a cultural instinct of Latinos — a triumph of the relational over the transactional. ‘That’s what we are,’ is how Vidal explains it. ‘It’s our culture back home.’

Although the press is mad to talk about cultural and economic changes brought on by India and China, I think as interesting/complex/challenging a story is the globalization of the US through increasing immigration. This here is just one example of many, of course.

Lame Budget practice


I rented a car from Budget earlier this week. I probably won’t do so again. They have a new practice, presented as a time-saving feature. If you drive less than 75 miles, they add $9.00 to your bill as a flat rate for gas consumption.

If you filled up yourself, present the bill and they’ll deduct the amount.

I didn’t pay that close attention upon renting when they asked me in their script-like manner if I planned to drive more than 75 miles. I mean, who the hell knows? I didn’t realize until checking the paperwork later that it wasn’t an optional program. I guess I could have used the odometer in the car to track my mileage to see what was going to happen, and then do some estimating math to see if the price of gas available locally at the car’s typical MPG would be more or less than $9.00. But I didn’t. I filled up the car myself, and remembered to have the receipt handy.

When I pull in to the return and am unloading the car, the usual parking-lot-Borg comes over with all their electronic gear, and when I ask about the charge, they tell me I have to go inside. So they ring me up, effectively charge me the amount including the $9 and then I have to take my bags back inside and wait for the one employee working inside to look over my receipts (one for gas, one for their service) and issue me a new version of the latter.

This is not a time- or money-saving feature for me. It probably makes money for them based on some estimated cut-off level, etc.

It’s not optional; I’m forced to alter a fairly traditional way of managing things to suit them. I’m not doing it. I’ll go somewhere else. It’s pretty much a commodity business anyway.

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