Posts tagged “freshmeat”

FreshMeat #16: American Girl, Mama Let Me Be

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FreshMeat #16 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh
                \\/  Meat 

FreshMeat? Well, thank you kindly, I’d love some!
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All dolled up, with someplace to go.
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American Girl Place is an astonishing retail environment
in Chicago, a destination for the many fans of the
American Girl dolls. Over 5 million of the 18-inch,
slightly cartoonish American Girl dolls have been sold by
the Pleasant Company (started by Pleasant T. Rowland in
1986, and if that isn’t proof that name equals destiny,
I don’t know what would be) who were acquired by Mattel
in 1998.

The Place itself is a three-floor department store located
just off of Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile. It truly
is a destination retail setting, doing much more than
simply vending the products, it takes the whole concept
even further, with such amenities as a salon, and a cafe.

It is somewhat difficult to separate the wonders of
American Girl Place from the wonders of the American Girl
products, so I’ll describe them together.

The products are extremely well-organized, and highly
structured. The lead offering is The American Girls
Collection: a series of dolls that are each branded
is a consistent set of products (i.e., books about
their adventures and period-appropriate costumes).

For example, Addy is a courageous girl of the Civil War,
from 1864 (Addy – 1864 – A proud, courageous girl – stories
of freedom and family). Josephina is an Hispanic girl of
heart and hope, from 1824. Kit is a bright spark in the dark
depression, from 1934. There are 8 dolls in all, ranging
from 1764 to 1944. In the lower level of the store, they
are each presented in gorgeous museum-like dioramas around
the perimeter of a large room, with product pull-tags
placed directly below. The whole room reeks of heritage,
legacy, quality, and the better times of our past.

The balancing act here is how they depict parts of US
history that were difficult (or oppressive, or racist)
through the eyes of their Girl, without being revisionist
about the past. I don’t know if they succeed in that
balance. I have a gut reaction when I see a smiling doll
who had to deal with slavery, or economic challenges.
“Wait a minute – that was a terrible experience – why are
they celebrating it?” – but I do eventually realize that
there are many stories to any experience. People will
smile, care for a child, fall in love, or whatever,
regardless of the larger circumstances. Wasn’t this one of
the many lessons from The Diary of Anne Frank?

I was fascinated to see that their latest offering is
called “Girls of Many Lands.” It is possibly a response
to 9/11, in the increasing awareness within the US that
understanding the rest of the world is vitally important.
On another level, the text indicates that these girls
are finding their place in a changing world, a reference
to the uncertainty of 2002, and the uncertainty of
pre-adolescence: “As you get older, the world seems both
bigger and smaller at the same time. It’s full of
opportunities – and questions, too. How do I fit in? Who
will I become? What is life like for other girls my age?”
The dolls themselves are smaller, intended for display, not
play, and include Neela from India in 1939, and Spring Pearl
from China, in 1857.

The second major product line is American Girl Today. The
American Girls Collection (described above) times out in 1944,
and is based on specific, fixed backstories. In contrast,
American Girl Today dolls are ready for personalization. The
set of dolls is displayed in a glass case, all dressed in the
same neutral school uniform, posed as if for a class photo.
They all seem completely alike, but upon closer inspection,
one sees the variation in hair, eye, and skin color. Looking
at all these near-identical, smiling, staring dolls was pretty
darn creepy.

The dolls are available in a range of combinations of pigments
(i.e., GT21F hass light skin, curly honey-blond hair, hazel eyes,
while GT2F has medium skin, dark brown hair, and lightbrown
eyes). Rather than defining the backstory, they are creating
a neutral backdrop for the customer to build upon, further
served by identifying the doll with a model number such as
GT3F rather than a name like Kit. The tag line is “What kind of girl are you?”

There are a huge number of outfits available for the Today doll
including: cheerleader, baseball player, soccer player, skier, and baker.

In one of the few product line inconsistencies, there is a
Today doll named Lindsey. There is no obvious reason why
they’ve created a character within this product line. Oh,
and what do these dolls cost? For $135, you can purchase
Lindsey, with the Lindsey book, a scooter, a laptop and
laptop case. This is a $15 saving versus buying each item
separately.

There are also a few supplementary product lines such as
Angelina Ballerina (a mouse), and Bitty Baby.

A number of electronic gizmos (for a person, not for a doll)
are available, including a PDA, a digital video camera, and
an MP3 player. Of anything they sell, this was the least
integrated product line – they all were clearly not your
mother’s Palm, with lots of pink plastic and fun buttons
and so on, but it didn’t seem like they had a complete idea
as to what their design language was for electronic goods.

There are also books, about feelings, school, boys, and
babysitting. My personal favorite was a series of books
about Amelia, who carries around a notebook that she fills
with interesting facts and observations. She was the only
character who’s hook was that she was smart. She seemed
reminiscent of Harriet the Spy, and her products seemed to
be ignored by shoppers during my visits.

The store features a salon, where there are options between
$10 and $20 that include brushing out the doll’s tangles, a
misting, styling, and a hair accessory such as a barrette.
There are also books for sale that give styling tips for
the doll’s hair (and for your hair).

There is a cafe with a parodic Art Deco look, thick black
and white horizontal stripes run around the room, with lots
of hot pink and enormous “buttons” serving as drapery
clasps. The menu is a prix-fixe affair, offering a 3-course
lunch, and a similar tea. It’s the ultimate “ladies who
lunch” environment, for young ladies, of course. A poster
outside the store advertises the cafe, showing the empty
restaurant, with just a doll sitting at a table, alone. This
was definitely a disturbing image.

In the basement is a theater, with live performances of
the second American Girls musical, “Circle of Friends.”
Soundtrack CDs are available for purchase. The soundtrack
to the American Girls Revue includes “The American Girls
Anthem” in which the characters declare their intention
to be the very best that they can be.

Overall, a key here is how they have created multiple
customers, all experiencing a different vicarious
experience, yet all of them compatible. The dolls are
rooted in the past, suggesting an authenticity and history
akin to an original Teddy Roosevelt bear (versus a modern
day Gund or Beanie Baby.) The store plays host to young
girls with their mothers, and their grandmothers, each
taking this in from a different perspective. Grandmothers
remember their childhood, and raising their own children,
mothers can continue a legacy, and the girls are into
something tuned just for them. The extra dollop of genius
is in the next step of recursion: the child can play
mother to her doll through these products (certainly,
allowing a young girl to play at motherhood has been part
of the appeal of dolls forever, but American Girl taps
into that incredibly well, for example the Dress Like
Your Doll department with matching girl-sized and
doll-sized outfits). The result is three-and-a-half
generations of customers!

Playing this game further, near the front entrance is a
rack of souvenirs available for both girls, and their
dolls. There are girl-sized and doll-sized umbrellas as
well as caps, t-shirts, and jackets that read “American
Girl Place.” My doll went to American Girl Place and all
she got was this lousy T-shirt?

Or consider the photo studio, where shoppers can get
their own copy of American Girl magazine, with their
photo on the cover. Which begs the question – who do they
suggest the American Girl actually is? The doll? The girl?
Or, both? American girls buy American Girls. Another subtle
but powerful play with identity.

So what are some of the lessons here?
– Understand the multiple players in a purchase process,
and ideally sell to them all
– Organize and structure your products consistently
– Create products that tell stories
– Create accessories and product extensions that tell
more stories and help your customers tell stories
– If you want to create a destination retail for your
brand, don’t do a “theme park” – take the core
experience you offer further

Of course, this is nothing but a first pass. Observation,
and analysis, and all of it IMHO. There are several
obvious next steps:
– look at the actual customers to test these hypotheses
– understand other aspects of doll culture (consider
collectors as a “lead user” community, for example)
– consider American Girl Place as a metaphor, and being
to apply the lessons learned from the process to other
business situations beyond selling dolls.

As a final thought, we always find it horrifying to see a
company being effective in marketing to a target, especially
if that target is a child. I was prepared for that (ridiculous and
personally hypocritical) reaction myself, but I think it’s relevant
to look at the overwhelming positiveness of their message, and
how sincerely and consistently they present it.

Update:

Dolls as Role Models, Neither Barbie Nor Britney
By STEPHEN KINZER

Published: November 6, 2003

CHICAGO, Nov. 5 – Surrounded by exuberant girls, including her own 8-year-old, a Wisconsin resident named Jean Carter seemed positively thrilled as she paid $650, more than twice what she had planned, at American Girl Place here.

To start, she had bought two of the store’s $90 dolls, each representing a character from a different era in American history, and then novels about each doll’s character. Then came high tea, the musical theater show and finally some of the endless stream of tie-in merchandise that has made American Girl a huge marketing success as well as a cultural phenomenon.

“It’s a racket, but it’s a good racket,” Ms. Carter said. “The kids get strong historical role models and stories that teach them a lot about life. You actually feel good spending the money.”

Update:

The Baffler, #15, an article by Terri Kapsalis that offers up some of the same observations of the American Girl Place (does she read FreshMeat?) but brings in an interesting comparison to the way prospective mothers interact with the catalogs of sperm donors.

FreshMeat #15: Free Agent Irritation

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FreshMeat #15 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

Reach out and touch some FreshMeat!
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Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
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From the Internet boom came several new iterations of the structure, symbols, and meaning of work. Casual Fridays evolved into casual day every day, and that became you’re-lucky-I’m-even-wearing-pants day. Dogs in the office and unisex bathrooms became common reference points (although relatively uncommon experiences for most workers).

Perhaps one of the most over-hyped notions was the dawning of the Free Agent era – the independent professional of the future, someone who worked with others only as needed, rapidly shifting organizational "structure" in a dynamic and tantalizingly post-modern setting. Daniel Pink and Fast Company launched the movement in 1997 and the Free Agent Nation became one of those concepts (just like the paperless office and smart appliances) that we all like to imagine even though we don’t really believe they will happen.

And then the boom faded, burst, crashed, and recessed. Suddenly, large numbers of workers were figuring out what was next – many of them from the Internet industry, where the classic norms of work had been most dramatically tested. And the Free Agent path held some promise for them.

(Full disclosure – as of this writing, I’m nearing the end of my first year of self-employment, although I don’t describe myself as a Free Agent necessarily).

And so, bold experiments were launched – alliances, strategic partnerships (without being business partners), quid pro quo deals, visions for unbranded groupings, branded groupings, everything imaginable, and then some. Although if you look closer, you’ll see a bunch of folks with home offices, DSL connections, and cell phones, imagining that there’s some middle ground between this and life in cubicle-land.

Although it is tempting to identify with the romantic notion that the Free Agent movement puts forward, I really just see myself as someone who works at home, making good use out of technologies like DSL and the mobile phone. It’s been interesting to see how people react to me as a professional, since I present without many familiar corporate trappings. And it’s been a learning experience for me to realize how and when to move a little closer to that "corporate" image. For example, an answering machine is a home technology, but voice mail (which answers calls when I am on the phone) is a work technology. Eventually I realized this was essential, and switched to voice mail (although, the fact that my answering machine broke down may have had some amount of influence over this shift).

Or, consider the role of the web site. I believe my web site articulates my background and offering well (although if you disagree, please tell me!) but I also know that the level of visual refinement was somewhat less than corporate standards. Not something mission-critical, but a part of my business identity that I could obviously improve on. And so, several months ago, I set out to do just that – find someone to help evolve my web site.

Here in Silicon Valley, there are obviously fewer Internet professionals than before, but there are definitely plenty of unemployed and underemployed designers, coders, HTML jockeys, FEDs, and what-have-you. And many of these folks were now working on their own. I sought to capitalize on this, and reached out to my network for referrals. I got a wonderful list of names – people that were highly respected by those whose opinion I held in great esteem.

I sent out messages to these folks, describing myself, my business, and the scope of the work as I saw it. Surprisingly, the response was incredibly lackluster – many never responded, others took weeks to respond, others promised to follow-up with me later but never did. One person gave me an assignment of sorts to complete before I was to initiate my next contact.

It really seemed that they didn’t want my business. Of course, the job was small. But that seems awfully short-sighted. I am a free agent (note lack of capital letters) – I provide services to my customers by partnering with others who possess skills that I don’t. From my way of looking at it, it would be worth getting on my list of partners.

Now, maybe this experience was specific to the particular type of service I was looking for (I have had much better experiences in finding vendors in other categories, although the budgets were more significant than lil’ ole me). But really, who (especially in this market) can afford to turn up their nose at possible work, and who can afford to be so short-sighted?

My learning is this: there is a big difference between offering a service and being "in business." The people I dealt with probably have great design and implementation abilities, but they clearly lack the business skills required to build a relationship and close a sale. Someone might be the best translator, web designer, or pet walker, but they will need more to be a free agent – they must be able to listen well, ask questions, make commitments and follow through on them, articulate, negotiate, deliver, and a million more essential competencies.

I imagine many of the people I approached had worked very successful experiences on project teams in larger organizations, with project managers, sales staff, admin support, billing, and so on. I just don’t believe that everyone can make the shift to doing that all themselves. And that’s fine, I think our economy needs free agents, and it needs people inside corporations. But clearly, the notion of us all becoming free agents is just silly – just because you have what it takes to create breathtakingly usable and beautiful web pages doesn’t mean you can operate a business that delivers those services (and let’s not forget that many people have the business skills but would rather spend their time doing other things)

I see the next shakeout being in the Free Agent Nation – as more jobs in companies become available, those of us who aren’t cut out to be CEO, president, janitor, accountant, etc. head back to the traditional work environments. Those who remain independent will be the ones with the staying power, the interest, and the broader skills. And that will benefit everyone.

Epilogue: The person I found was someone whom I was already working with; since we already knew each other he had a leg-up in understanding what kind of face I wanted to put out there. We’ve had a creative partnership, and the new-and-improved web site is up. Check it out – https://portigal.com.

Check out Free Agent Nation at http://www.freeagentnation.com, Harriet Rubin’s book on soloing is here and Daniel Pink’s Free Agent book is here.

FreshMeat #14: Get Down Off The Shelf

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FreshMeat #14 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

FreshMeat – It’ll heat you up and it’ll cool you down…
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Here’s an assemblage of books that have caught my eye.
I own most of them (at least one was a library book),
I’ve started to read most of them, and I’ve even
finished a quite a few. Some of them I’ve probably
had for a few years, even.

Note that the year listed may be inaccurate - between 
different editions, paperback, reprints, or releases in 
various countries, it was difficult to be completely 
accurate (well, it didn't seem like it would be of any 
benefit to formulate a consistent date system).

+++++++++++++++++++++

Litter Only
Alexandra Martini

2001

Neat little photo essay of public garbage receptacles
from around the world. Too tightly bound to really get
a good look at a lot of the pictures, however. The kind of
book that makes many of us think "hey, I could have done
that…"

+++++++++++++++++++++

Walker Evans: Signs
Walker Evans, Andrei Codrescu

1998

A personal fetish of mine is photographing signs,
especially old ones. This is a book of wonderful
(and old) pictures of wonderful (and even older)
signs.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design
Paul Mijksenaar, Piet Westendorp

1999

This is a beautiful collection of illustrations that
explain how to use products. How, where, and when to
pull, push, insert, twist, spin, shake, connect,
remove, and so on. A celebration of the ephemeral.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud

1994

Presented as a comic novel, an exploration of the
"user interface" of comics – how a page of framed
illustrations with captions and balloons works as
a narrative form. The author places himself as a
character in the book, explaining his theories with
plenty of examples. A very non-threatening format for
dealing with some complex stuff. Something about his
visual style is kind of annoying to me, too much
"Sunday Funnies," with the veneer of underground
comix.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Reinventing Comics
Scott McCloud

2000

Again, a comic novel format, some furthering of the
same theories, taking into account new methods of creating
and consuming comics (i.e.,the Internet).

+++++++++++++++++++++

Art & Fear
David Bayles, Ted Orland

2001

An earnest if repetitive piece of encouragement – Art is
work, allow yourself to fail, "practice, man, practice…"
and beyond.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress
Debra Ginsberg

2001

An enjoyable memoir about a woman who spends many years
as a waitress. She interrupts her narrative to offer up
interesting mini-lectures on the world of food service
the kitchen romances, the politics of tipping, etc. The
narrative was more engaging than the information, however.
I was hoping for some proto-anthropological insight, but
I didn’t find it.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Big Hair: A Journey into the Transformation of Self
Grant McCracken

1996

A very readable and provocative book that documents the
cultural bringing you along for quite the ride, provoking you with experiences and opinions regularly. I was sad when it was over.

+++++++++++++++++++++

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell

2000

Required reading. You can even just pick a chapter and
cruise through it. Seems to be written at a slightly lower
level than his New Yorker articles (some of which are
integrated into the text of this book).

+++++++++++++++++++++

Uncommon Wisdom
Fritjof Capra

1989

A big thinker documents his intellectual explorations with
other big thinkers.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Soloing: Realizing Your Life’s Ambition
Harriet Rubin

1999

More than a guide to freelancing, the attempt here is to
pave a pathway to self-discovery, illumination, and of
course, self-actualization. All while pulling down some
pretty mean coin.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Leading at the Speed of Growth: Journey from Entrepreneur
to CEO
Katherine Catlin, Jana Matthews

2001

Based on a study of 500 business leaders who made it,
looking at how to lead, and how to grow.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Work Hard & You Shall Be Rewarded: Urban Folklore from the
Paperwork Empire
Alan Dundes, Carl R. Pagter

1992

Ever see an office with a "you don’t have to be crazy to
work here (but it helps)" sign? Or a round TUIT? This book
is one in a series that assembles this widespread yet
hard-to-trace form of urban folklore.

+++++++++++++++++++++

The Experience Economy
B. Joseph Pine, James H. Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine II

1999

"Goods and services are no longer enough," and "work is a
theater & every business a stage."

+++++++++++++++++++++

Star-Spangled Canadians
Jeffrey Simpson

2000

The Canadians in the U.S. – what brought them here, what
are they doing here, and what is their sense of national
identity? The author interviewed me (a Canadian) when he did
a pass through Silicon Valley in researching this book. And
no, I’m not in it. Damn!

+++++++++++++++++++++

Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places
Dave Bidini

2002

The author travels around the world to play hockey,
comparing his own imperative to learn and play the game
in 1970s Toronto with what he finds in Hong Kong, Dubai,
and Transylvania.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Inventing Desire: Inside Chiat/Day: The Hottest Shop, the
Coolest Players, the Big Business of Advertising
Karen Stabiner

1993

The author spent a year inside Chiat/Day (before they
were TBWA), studying the creative process, the egos,
the innovative office environments, the ad campaigns,
and the clients. Very engaging, but a little too
positive.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Truth, Lies and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning
Jon Steel

1998

Account Planning is the process of creating advertising
that connects with consumers. As opposed to? The writing
style makes Newsweek seem like Umberto Eco.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign
Randall Rothenberg

1995

An incredibly revealing document of how Subaru put their
account up for review, considered several agencies, and
selected one. And then how the agency (and their client,
Subaru) screwed it up.

+++++++++++++++++++++

My Life As a 10-Year-Old Boy
Nancy Cartwright

2001

The woman who does Bart Simpson’s voice details her
career as an actor, a voice actor, and most interestingly,
as Bart. Good document of the process of making an episode.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Have Not Been the Same: The Canrock Renaissance 1985-1995
Michael Barclay, et al

2001

An extraordinarily detailed (and thick) document of the
radical in Canadian music (the bands, and the business),
in the post-Adams/Hart/BTO/Loverboy era.

+++++++++++++++++++++

PCAT: Preparation for the Pop-Culture Aptitude Test: Rad ’80s Version
John Sellers

1998

I spent the 80s watching a great deal of TV, music videos,
and listening to the radio. And I am blessed/cursed to
remember most of it (not just the recycling-friendly bits
that VH1 has chosen to exhume). This book is a detailed
and challenging review of those (and other) elements of
80s pop culture.

What are YOU reading?

Aesop Meta Tag Spam

I got this strangely targeted spam today:

For FreshMeat:
Hi Steve,

Here’s an article I wrote that I think might work well in your
newsletter.

Please let me know if you decide to use it.

Shelley

Shelley Lowery
http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=bl1

>>>>
New Meta Tag Driving Targeted Traffic to Websites

By Shelley Lowery

The Aesop Meta Tag is a new standard that is dramatically
changing the way we search the Internet. This new Meta
Tag not only returns highly targeted search results, but it
also provides website owners with highly targeted traffic.

The concept is simple. The Aesop Meta Tag provides website
owners with a standardized method of classifying their web
pages into one of six categories. The Search Engine matches
the search terms with appropriate web pages according to
the classification. This enables the Search Engine to return
fast and relevant results for users — while at the same time,
driving highly targeted traffic to the websites.

When classifying a website, webmasters can categorize each
page within their website rather than just one general
classification. This allows for precise targeting not only for
specific search terms, but also for each page of a website.

The new classification categories are as follows:

Sales

The “Sales” classification signifies that the purpose of a web
page is to sell a product or service. This includes any web
page that plays a role in the sales process or leads to a sales
page. This classification will provide those selling a product or
service with highly targeted traffic, as the search results will
display a sales icon. This icon will immediately let the user
know that this particular page is selling a product or service.
If they’re in the market to buy, they’ll click through.

[snipped because who wants to read the rest of the thing?]

Anyway, here’s my reply. We’ll see what happens!

Thanks for your article Shelley. You obviously have taken a good look at FreshMeat, because you’ve hit right on the core of what I’m communicating to my readers.

I’m sure they’ll get a lot of pleasure out of your article.

Thanks again,
Steve Portigal

And yeah, I’m being sarcastic. FreshMeat is so completely unrelated it’s barely even funny. Check it out.

FreshMeat #13: The Name of the Game is the Name

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FreshMeat #13 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

Gimme gimme gimme! Gimme FreshMeat, Gimme FreshMeat!
=========================================================

Over the last couple of years, the Safeway grocery chain
has attempted to improve their quality of service by
addressing customers by name. You see, if you use their
loyalty card, or if you pay by debit or credit card,
they retrieve the text of your name and print it on
your cash register receipt. Checkers are required to
thank you by name, which they read off the receipt,
before they hand it to you. This doesn’t work so well,
because it takes more than a few seconds for some
checkers to read some names, and that delay at the
conclusion of your service is intolerable. Add to that,
an increased likelihood of having one’s name mispronounced,
and you’ve got a customer service failure. I mean, if I
had a dime for every time they’ve called me “Mr. Portugal,”
well, I wouldn’t have to shop at Safeway!

(This customer service problem was parodied by Saturday
Night Live back in 1992. You can read a transcript of that
sketch here.)

Recognizing the long-frustrating problem of
mispronunciation of names during commencement ceremonies,
schools like Baylor and Worcester Polytechnic Institute use
the web to collect phonetic spelling info from their grads.

The need is clear, and the technology is ready. Products
like Espeech and Orator II can begin to solve this problem.
The technology that translates text to speech actually
builds a sequence of phonemes (the basic speech sounds
used in a language) that could be spoken (by a speech
synthesizer) or output as phonetics. Just add another
field to all those databases of customer names. Let the
software take the first stab at guessing how to pronounce
the name. Checkout clerks and telemarketers would be
shown a pronunciation key at the appropriate time. If
the customer offers a correction, update the field.

If the companies that consumers do business with (airlines,
grocery stores, phone companies, banks, etc.) are going to
be addressing them by name, is it really so crazy to spend
some money getting those names right? Safeway obviously has
an inkling that they could deliver better service and forge
the right relationship through judicious use of their
customers’ names, maybe they need to step up their efforts
just a notch or two, and get it right.

If you are interested in ideas for products and services,
check out http://www.idea-a-day.com/ (updated daily, as the name implies, or available as a daily email), or
http://www.halfbakery.com/ (looks cool, but kind of
impenetrable UI.)

Update:
Received February, 2002 from Steven A. Burd, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Office of Safeway, in response to a faxed copy of this issue of FreshMeat.

Dear Mr. Portigal:
Thank you for suggesting that we use some of the new software that translates text into speech, in conjunction with our ongoing customer service initiatives. We appreciate your interest as a good customer whose name has been mispronounced occasionally by our clerks.
It’s an interesting idea, one we have considered before – but using voice recognition technology, the opposite of what you propose. To be honest, we haven’t pursued this since our initial research, because the applications available at the time were expensive, slow and ineffectual. While we have similar concerns about the technology you mentioned, our industrial engineers may wish to visit the two web sites cited in your newsletter.
Meanwhile, we’ll review our stores in your area to be sure any employees who are having difficulty thanking customers by name receive remedial training. If our clerks are unsure of how a name is pronounced, they are to ask the customers. Admittedly, this is a low-tech solution, but it seems to work well.
Thanks again, Mr. Portigal. We value your constructive criticism, and the friendly spirit in which it is offered.

Update:
As we automate our lives, swallowed in a bottomless maw of voice-mail, it’s hard not to heed that little voice telling us to listen

Susan Sward
Sunday, October 18, 1998

Mother used to say that by the time people die, the world around them has often changed so much that death does not seem so terrible. I thought about her comment off and on when I was growing up — partly because I wished that the world where I had played in the 1950s would remain unchanged forever.

Soon enough, I realized that wouldn’t happen. There were the darkened, tree-lined streets of Santa Monica, for example, where my sisters and I ran barefoot chasing after the neighborhood boys. The magic of that mysterious realm was lost forever when the city installed street lights and switched them on one evening. Lately, though, my mother’s observation has been haunting me — because I fear the inexorable march of the machine.

News item: Bank says it will introduce cash-dispensing machines with new software to recognize customers’ faces.

News item: Three industry giants are pioneers in using speech-recognition technology for services such as quoting stock prices over the phone, switching a caller to the right department and reporting the whereabouts of a lost package.

News item: Later this year, many callers wanting flight information from an airline will not speak to a person but to a computer that acts like one.

News item: The Mill Valley Public Library installs an electronic checkout system removing the need to deal with a library assistant when borrowing many of the facility’s books.

FreshMeat #11: A Load On Their Mind

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FreshMeat #11 from Steve Portigal

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If you aren’t addicted to FreshMeat, well, why not?
=========================================================
Dive deep into the mundane; find fascination and humor
=========================================================

Not too much to say about the following news article,
most every toilet joke imaginable was crammed into it,
so there’s no real need for me to add more (yes, this
takes enormous restraint on my part). I think the point
is that for just about anything that we consume (and
as consumers, take for granted) there is some subset
of a brand manager, a designer, a committee, a
conference, a product manager, and who knows what –
someone who is concerned with some combination of
business success, usage, and meaning.

——

By John O’Callaghan SINGAPORE (Reuters) – It’s something
people use every day but organizers of the World Toilet
Summit in Singapore hope to bring the taboo topic out of
the water closet. Some 200 delegates from Asia, Europe and
North America are swapping ideas on design, public
education and sanitation under the theme “Our toilets the
past, the present and the future.”

The new World Toilet Association wants to spread the word
with its Web site — www.worldtoilet.org — as a nerve
center for researchers, designers, makers and vendors of a
device that is mundane to many but an unknown luxury in
much of the world.

“The proliferation of this movement worldwide will
inevitably lead to improvements in toilet environment
everywhere,” Jack Sim, president of the Restroom
Association of Singapore and organizer of the two-day
summit, said in an opening address on Monday.

Wash your hands and always flush was the message from a
mime troupe that kicked off the event with a graphic but
silent demonstration of the good, the bad and the ugly in
the bathroom.

Delegates, including Chinese officials preparing for the
Olympic onslaught in 2008, will also be treated to a tour
of some of Singapore’s most technically advanced commodes.
The latest and greatest loos will be on show at the four-
day Restroom Asia trade fair at Singapore Expo starting on
Tuesday.

The World Health Organization estimates 40 percent of the
world’s population does not have access to adequate
sanitation, leading to the spread of disease, higher
healthcare costs and the death of two million people each
year — most of them children.

“Up to now, it’s an area that has been very much
neglected,” Lim Swee Say, Singapore’s acting minister for
the environment, told reporters on the sidelines of the
summit. “You can’t avoid talking about the kind of
challenges we face.”

Singapore already is at the forefront of enforcing toilet
etiquette with fines for not flushing and automatic devices
that sense when to send the water surging. But the city
state is not taking the future sitting down by spending S$7
billion ($3.8 billion) on a deep-tunnel sewage system and
millions more on upgrading public toilets in hawker
centers, housing estate coffee shops, parks and schools.

“We are adopting an end-to-end approach in looking at our
sanitation requirements,” Lim said in a speech.

FreshMeat #10: Beaming Up Scotty

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FreshMeat #10 from Steve Portigal

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Three out of three doctors subscribe to FreshMeat!
=========================================================
How or when does technology reduce distance? Increase it?
=========================================================

A recent article in the New York Times describes
a new service from Teleportec – live transmission of
holograms. It’s the ultimate in videoconferencing; rather
than watching on a video monitor, you can see a full-size,
3D image of the person, right in your meeting room.

Cool, huh? And you can have a facility in your office for
only $5000/month, or you can rent offsite for $500/hour.

Teleportec is hoping to sell this to executives (is that
because of the value of the tool, or the price of the
tool?) and real estate companies to do property
walkthroughs.

A few years ago there was a company called Teleport
(hmm…) developing a virtual dinner table, a half-circle
against a large video screen, so each party would believe
they were sitting at a round table, with half of the
participants being remote.

Like many other products in that category, Teleport sought
to recreate the informality of a meeting, but I believe the
opportunity is in recreating the formality of television.
Although Teleportec seems gimmicky, self-indulgent, and
inappropriately high-end for this economy, they may have
brushed up against that formality.

The best videoconference experience I’ve had was one where
a colleague and I gave a presentation. We had a camera
operator who would pan and zoom between the two of us. We
had a monitor so we could see how we were framed on screen
and moderate our body language appropriately. We even built
a simple backdrop, and when the camera was on, we
performed. We acted like news anchors crossbred with
motivational speakers. It was a total success. The client
believed it was nearly as good as us being there (we
suspected it might have even been better).

The default assumption seems to be that we want to use
technology to simulate reality – that it’s going to put us
right in their office, and it’ll be just like being there.
In fact, it put us right on their office, onto their
television screen. If you’re going to be on television,
make it look like television, and act like you are on
television. That is the context within which your audience
experiences your content (and thus judges it). The frame
shift is from simulated reality to theater. Obviously,
great for presentations, maybe not so good for meetings.

Another story – at the 1994 Computer-Human Interaction
conference in Boston, they set up a video portal between
remote parts of the facility, and left it to see what would
happen. On its own, not too much. People mostly hustled on
by and ignored it.

After a couple of days, I went and stood in front of one
station, and began calling out to the people on the other
end. (Note: This was after David Letterman started taking
his camera out to the street but before Tom Green developed
a middlebrow art form out of this). “Hey you with the bag!”
I’d yell. Most people did their best to ignore me, but some
would stop. So I’d interview them, faux roving reporter
persona and all. I had enormous leeway to break cultural
norms (i.e., act like a jerk), because I was on TV, after
all. Of course, I drew a bit of a crowd, because there was
live theater (better than TV, supposedly) right there!

It seems like the opportunity for the folks developing
these products (and they are ultimately products, not
just raw technologies) is to understand the context, not
simply improve the fidelity. What do people holding video
conferences need to do differently from simply having a
meeting? How can the product better support that?

It’d be pretty exciting to see some of the results that
might come from a fresh approach.

FreshMeat #9: Got Zeitgeist?

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FreshMeat #9 from Steve Portigal

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Cultural stories of the day — more than meets the eye
=========================================================

Just the other day a colleague asked me what I thought
about the near-term effects of the Current Situation
on advertising and marketing messages.

I replied that I had observed a complex, contradictory,
and divergent set of cultural themes going by, and it
didn’t seem to be as simple as the articles in the Times
and others were making it out to be. We explored some
specifics, and so I’m sharing my next rev of those
thoughts here.

Just the fact that terms like “Current Situation” are
appearing on blogs (that term is defined here)
points to the complexity of the issue – there is no name
for it. Of course, the choice of phrasing here brings
to mind the media coverage in the film “Starship
Troopers,” or a short story by Philip K. Dick.

I think we want to believe that it is an easily understood
series of events, perhaps a monolithic notion, but there
are a range of contradictory cultural stories being told.
As cultural stories, all are equally “true” and I’ll review
some here more as exploration than as social crit.

Let’s look at “issue conflation” – what exactly are we
concerned about now? About two weeks ago there were a
number of high profile “tribute” concerts:

* Allegiance of Neighbors, a benefit performance for
New Jersey victims and survivors of the 9/11 attacks,
featuring Springsteen, Joan Jett, Jon Bon Jovi
* United We Stand, Michael Jackson’s concert in Washington
for the Red Cross and other charities
* The Country Freedom Concert, in Nashville, with Trisha
Yearwood, for the Salvation Army relief effort
* Paul McCartney’s “Concert for New York City” paid
tribute in content to the firefighters, police and
rescue workers of 9/11, but where the money is going is
less clear (to me)
* Neil Young’s Bridge Benefit – the 15th year running,
this concert raises money for a local school to help
special needs children. Yet the musicians dealt with
issues of loss, peace, war, America, hope, freedom,
and love
* Music Without Borders, held in Toronto, featuring the top
Canadian performers, to benefit the United Nations Donor
Alert, detailed the plight of Afghan refugees between
musical performances

Who are the victims we are helping out? Americans? Afghans?
Firefighters? The overriding story is “Donate! Help out!
Stand up!” – but is it to reward bravery, to protect the
innocent, to care for the survivors? Already, it becomes a
bit more complex.

Another “issue conflation” appears when business people
speak of the economy, they can be heard referring to
“the downturn and September 11th” in one breath, speaking
out one indivisible atom, presenting them as one unit, one
factor in the business climate.

Another theme is what I call “transnationalism” – the
American flag being adopted by other nations as a symbol of
their support for the U.S. In Canada, long vigilant to
avoid being perceived as Americans, the American flag was
flown across the country, and now appears on buses (for
example) with the words “United We Stand.” This would not
have happened before 9/11. (Nor would it have happened
without an increase in Canadian nationalism that has been
percolating for a couple of years, and in case you think
this isn’t relevant to business, that particular trend was
capitalized on, if not generated by, a brewery).

“Back or forth:” When people speak of their hopes, or
expectations for an unclear and perhaps scary future, they
speak of two different things – moving forward, and moving
backwards. Some express a yearning to return to what was
once good and simple, before our society lost sight of what
was important, moving to the inevitable events of 9/11.
Others describe moving ahead, getting past the tragedy, to
find a new place ahead where we’ve learned some lessons,
and things are good and simple, and the focus is on what is
important. The endpoint is the same, but the perceived
direction is opposite. Advertisers can use Norman Rockwell
to tap into one of these themes, but it doesn’t come close
to addressing the other theme.

“Security first:” Apparently, both gun sales and enrollment
in self-defense classes are on the rise. It’d doubtful that
anyone expects to protect themselves from anthrax or
hijacking in this manner, but general feelings about
security are leading people to respond. Even issues around
computer security seem to be receiving more media
attention, somehow under the same general concern.

“The elasticity of inconvenience:” In the first days
following the resumption of air travel, the media showed
the effect of new security measures on travelers, each of
whom said something to the effect that it didn’t matter how
long it took, as long as they were safe. In the following
weeks, every time there were new measures put in place, the
news would do a similar story, but the tone began to shift,
as people began to imply their frustration with losing
their nail clippers, and having to wait at the same time.
The news stories still would feature the disclaimer about
preferring safety to inconvenience, but something had
changed – the travelers mouthed the statement as some
truism that they felt socially obligated to say. It now has
the same flavor as the Jerry Seinfeld “not that there’s
anything wrong with that!” disclaimer that must be said
quickly whenever someone is described as gay.

“Symbol devaluation:” American flags are so in-demand that
companies can’t make enough of them, one of the greatest
memes of the last little while. Millions of individuals
seeking to announce…something…with the flag. Then a
week later, NBC has changed their logo (appearing in the
bottom right corner of every program) to a red, white, and
blue version. Local auto dealers cover their showrooms with
red, white, and blue balloons. Are they doing what they can
to help out, or are they cashing in on a crisis? Or both?

Further to this, cars began to sprout antenna flags. What
happens when a car with a flag on it cuts you off in
traffic? Or the driver yells something angry or impatient
at a pedestrian, the flag whipping in the breeze and they
speed away? What does the act of posting a flag imply about
neighborliness, kindness, or brotherhood? Should it be any
different than it was?

Other stories which point to some complex and contradictory
experiences and perspectives:
* Bill Maher censured for saying that the terrorists
weren’t cowards (and that firing missiles from far away,
as the U.S. does, is cowardly)
* Public opinion polls suggest U.S. citizens willing to
surrender privacy rights in order to prevent future
tragedies
* University of British Columbia professor Sumera Thobani
saying that the history of U.S. foreign policy is “soaked
with blood” and facing extreme criticism, and pockets of
support for either her opinion, or her right to express
her opinion
* The Canadian government moves to override the patent on
Bayer’s anti-anthrax drug Cipro
* Increasing enrollment in Arabic language classes

In each of these, some basic principles that our cultures
assume are fixed and permanent are being questioned. And
for each, there are responses, columns, ads from the ACLU,
debates, etc. But issues are more complex than before, new
thoughts are being voiced, and old beliefs are being
challenged.

Again, these are cultural stories. They appear in the
media, at dinner parties, in email, around the photocopier
at work, etc. They are all happening simultaneously, and
we’re all participating to some extent in each of them. And
obviously, it’s all far more complex than this space would
allow for, but the goal here is to at least point to some
of the themes, to illustrate the complexity, and to provide
some food for thought.

An updated version of this article was published in LiNE Zine

Update: ‘Air rage’ is back

By JESSICA WEHRMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
January 14, 2002

– In the months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, airline travel was primarily populated with placid, patient customers who braved long lines, applauded flight attendants and, on a few flights, burst into “God Bless America.”

Months later, most passengers are still patient, despite a few muttered complaints at security. But in a handful of cases, the bad behavior – also dubbed “air rage” is back – and it has led to arrests.

Most recently, an airline pilot was arrested after making what authorities called “inappropriate” comments at an airport security checkpoint. Elwood Menear, 46, a US Airways pilot, was released from jail Monday after being charged with making terrorist-like threats and disorderly conduct. Officials would not give specifics on the comments.

FreshMeat #8: Everyone Remembers Their First Time

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FreshMeat #8 from Steve Portigal

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FreshMeat. It’s free as a bird now, so join in!
=========================================================
A lazy journey through mistakes made and lessons learned
=========================================================

It was a hot Toronto summer, late in the 1980s. I was
wearing shiny dress pants and a sock tie, sitting in a
big downtown office tower. I can’t imagine it, but I may
very well have been fresh-faced.

Yes, I was a summer intern.

I worked in the computer support department of a bank
that had offices across Canada. I provided technical
support for anyone who had a computer problem, be it
hardware, software, DOS, what have you. This was
pre-Internet, so there was no way to know anything
about the state of their system except what they were
able to tell you. It was a challenging job, and gave
me a real sense of user empathy.

As part of my internship, I was asked to develop an
application for one client, a woman who was using a
spreadsheet to manage data for her investment
customers.

A spreadsheet, for those that haven’t used Lotus or
Excel (or VisiCalc), is basically just a bunch of
columns of data. Across the top may be headers such as
name, date, opening balance, etc. For example, I use a
spreadsheet to manage my collection of live music
recordings, so I have headers such as band, date, venue,
number of discs, comments. Each row, therefore, is a
different “record” in the database. It’s quite cool
because you can sort it by any field, or look at certain
subsets of all your data (originally, spreadsheets were
described as “what-if” programs).

We decided to move the program from Lotus (a spreadsheet)
to dBase IV (a database program that had the ability to
write programs that would add, delete, sort, search, etc.

The client sent me her spreadsheet (I guess she must
have put it on a floppy disk and mailed it to me) and
I sat down and spent several weeks putting together my
dBase program (to be really trivial, I think we used
something called Clipper that made actual “programs”
out of dBase code). I built in all the great functions.
ADD a new record. DELETE a record. And, the good ol’
standby, CHANGE an existing record.

I did a really nice job. The program offered you three
choices (ADD, DELETE, and CHANGE) which you could
select by pressing 1, 2, or 3. I think I was wise enough
to include a function that would let you quit the program.
When you made your choice, you would see a new screen
that said something like “Enter the number of the record
you would like to delete” and had a little space to type
it in. I’m sure I even had confirmations before deletes,
and feedback to tell you that your record had been added.
All this without a single course in user-interface design!

A few days before the end of the summer, I delivered it
to the client, still never having met her, or discussed
her expectations. I got a very nice phone call a few days
later. She was very appreciative of all the effort, but
she politely informed me that it wouldn’t be much use to
them, because of the way they used their current solution,
the spreadsheet. They would typically scroll very rapidly
through the data, looking for “flags” that they had
embedded – two or three character codes they placed in
front of the customer’s name to help them anticipate
certain actions. My wonderful front-end made that entirely
impossible.

And thus endeth the summer. Many successes and one failure.

But it was to be more than a year before the reasons for
the failure really became clear. Back in school, I
encountered my first course that considered the human part
of software – the user. I was struck with a ton of bricks
when shown that the people who make any kind of stuff
(revolving doors, stairway railings, library searching
software) are responsible for ensuring that their intended
users can actually make use of the thing.

Whoah.

And then my software development experience came into sharp
relief. I had made dozens of assumptions without realizing
it. I had never before grasped my own responsibility to
step outside myself in order to understand how that program
was going to be used. This second ton of bricks hurt just a
little more. But it changed forever how I looked at the
process of designing anything.

FreshMeat #7: If I Had A Hammer…Would Everything Look Like A Nail?

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FreshMeat #7 from Steve Portigal

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If you build it, will they articulate their user needs?
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Many years ago, some friends and I climbed a hill
overlooking the Pacific Ocean and talked about the future.
We talked about the Internet – this technology that was
going to likely change something, somehow. This could have
been a scene from a Douglas Coupland novel, but we were
more of a cynical bunch than the introspective protagonists
he favors. In sneering giggles we hypothesized various
ridiculous uses for the Internet.

“Oh, in the future, you won’t pay money to people, you’ll
just send it to them…through the INTERNET.”

“Yeah, yeah, and in the future, well, you’ll be able to
do ANYTHING. On the INTERNET. People who do research with
consumers will do their research on the INTERNET!”

Ahem. Does wisdom = attitude plus time, or is it simply
that there are no ideas so bad that someone won’t try
them? Because that skeptically envisioned future is here
now.

In fact, the largest consumer of market research, Procter
& Gamble, held a press conference back in May to announce
their plans to do even more research, much of it
ethnographic. The best article I saw on the topic was in
the WSJ (“P&G Plans to Visit People’s Homes To Record
(Almost) All Their Habits,” May 17, 2001), describing P&G’s
history with this type of research, and the scope of their
plans.

Almost as an epilogue, the article described P&G’s ultimate
goal, the creation of an online library of indexed,
searchable video that could be accessed by marketers
from the comfort of their own desks.

And now, from September’s Fast Company comes an article about the future of online customer research, suggesting that eventually, all qualitative and quantitative research is going to move online. Quicker, cheaper, and more convenient, apparently.

Really?

Who said that getting closer to your customer was
supposed to be EASY? It’s hard, it’s very hard. If it comes
easy, that can be very dangerous, giving an organization a
false sense of empathy without really requiring anyone to
see something new, something beyond the unspoken assumptions
about their customers. This is often delivered as video
ethnographies turned into rock music videos, a collage
of quick cuts of “everyday people” chopping broccoli,
layered deliciously with a stirring P. Diddy soundtrack.

But at least there you get some (albeit false) version of
empathy. How much empathy can be created when you only
know your customer as Jeff_The_Best, SuperDiva, or
sexygirl2041? Online focus groups as qualitative research?
Say goodbye to all the rich unspoken cues – the body
language, the nervous laughter, the false starts, the eye
contact.

So video is better, right, it’s richer? It’s got all that
cool visual stuff. You can see how customers chop broccoli.
But anyone who’s ever watched a video ethnography knows the
insights are not simply flopping around waiting to be
scooped up – it requires inference, extrapolation, and
synthesis, more than simply watching. These are special
skills. If it were that easy, people like me would simply be
video camera operators – shooting some video of the clients’
customers and handing the tapes back to them. Innovation in
a box.

The truth is that there are a variety of tools to get at a
variety of data, to solve a variety of problems. Early
adopters of new methodologies would do well to keep a suite
of tools at their disposal. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow,
(or was it the Indigo Girls?) “If it seems too good to be
true, it probably is.”

FreshMeat #6: Take Pictures, Last Longer!

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FreshMeat #6 from Steve Portigal

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Serendipitous discovery of the customers marketing forgot
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Over the past few months I have been attending a local
photo club, held in a small room in the City Hall of a
small Bay Area town. The group gathers about once a week
to share techniques and images.

I am by far the youngest member of the club. I would
put the next youngest person at about 20 years older
than I, and I’d put the average age at 30 years older.

This has made the whole experience interesting, and
very useful. My fellow club members not only have photos
that are 50 years old, they have 50 years of expertise
in taking photos. In a recent meeting, the discussion of
archival materials took on an interesting slant as each
of several men in their seventies dismissed the whole
notion with great bemusement. “Archival materials? But
I’m already archival!” joked one.

The pacing of the meetings is very gentle, and at
first I found that jarring, but I’m learning to ride
with it. As a newcomer to the club, I’ve had the chance
to do a microethnography of the meetings, and I’m going to
share a few of my findings here.

The club provides value to its members by providing a
forum for sharing consumer information: what products
to use (say, for mounting a print), where to find them
for a good price, and so on. A typical exchange might run
something like this (all names have been changed):

Bob: …so now you take the edge cutter here…
Gene: Say, Bob, where do you find a cutter like that?
Bob: What, now?
Gene: I was asking about the cutter.
Marion: Gene is asking about your cutter, Bob.
Bob: Oh, the cutter.
Hugh: You can pick ’em up at any photo store.
Bob: I ordered this one online.
Hugh: Or you can order ’em online.
Bob: Or you can get one at that store down towards…
[pause]
Bob: Oh, I guess down near Belmont. What’s the place?
Gene: The place near the Safeway?
Bob: No, it’s by the store, there…
Marion: By the Safeway?
Bob: I say what, now?
Doug: By the Safeway?
Marion: By the Safeway?
Bob: …No, it’s down near Belmont.
Gene: Photo Paradise?
Marion: The Precious Frame?
Bob: No…down near Belmont, there, where Hap got his
press last month…
David: Oh, Linda’s place. The Darkened Room.
Bob: I say what, now?
David: THE DARKENED ROOM.
Marion: THE DARKENED ROOM.
Bob: That’s it. Down by Belmont, The Darkened Room.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but not that much. But beyond my
gentle mocking is a great example of a social network
exchanging consumer information.

I am also fascinated by the level of computer knowledge
many of the individuals possess. There’s not a lot of web
surfing, or email usage. Club admin info is shared by
telephone, by snail mail, or by handing out photocopied
sheets at meetings. In fact, there is no way any of these
folks are going to be buying a digital camera. But the
computer is a tremendously important tool when it supports
and extends their existing photographic behaviors, namely
scanning and printing of images. Several club members have
invested a great deal of money in color printers, paper,
and ink. And remember, these are not the “grandmas” that
marketeers drool over, the one that will invest in anything
that might provide better connections to children and
grandchildren — these are photographers and artists. They
are wrestling with the technology to make it serve their
needs.

One woman came in and presented the results of a
benchmarking study she had done to get the truest black and
white image output. She built a matrix that varied the
paper (manufacturer, grade, matte/glossy), the printer,
the image source (slide, print, color, black & white), and
some software settings that affected the type of printing
being done (I think it was black ink or color ink). (Side
note: if you think the discussion about the store location
was crazy, you should have heard the discussion of how to
change the printing settings in Photoshop…) For each
cell in her matrix, she had a different printout, and we
could see the green shift, the blue shift, and so on. It
was quite excellent.

I’m not suggesting this is a huge market — my evidence is
purely anecdotal. It may not be cost-effective for the
manufacturers to better understand these customers, to
develop and market products especially for them. I don’t
know. But what is provocative is how easy it is for anyone
to stumble on a market that is clearly not well understood,
that absolutely flattens the beliefs about others that
marketers have foisted upon us, for better or worse.

FreshMeat #5: Cleaning Up On Aisle 5

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FreshMeat #5 from Steve Portigal

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FreshMeat has the power to charm and seduce. Surrender!
========================================================
The process of getting a good idea shelved can be tricky
========================================================

Have you seen that commercial for new “Special K Red
Berries?” It shows a woman shopping in the produce section
of a grocery store, walking from pear to papaya, picking up
the fruit gently, sniffing it reflectively, and placing it
in her bag. Beyond the pomegranates, she encounters the
new cereal product from Kellogg’s. Okay, we get the point.
The cereal is so fruity and so fresh that it belongs in
with the real fruit.

I guess this ad made me think of something lurking behind
the main story – the way that advertisers have started to
use the hidden parts of product development in their ads,
perhaps to better bring the viewer into the commercial.
For example, videogame companies, Rolaids, Levi’s, and
Kellogg’s have developed commercials that borrow from or
parody user testing and ethnography.

In this case, the development work being (inadvertently?)
spoofed is the placing of a product into retail. This is a
significant barrier to innovation. If Kellogg’s really
wanted to get their new cereal in the produce aisle, they
couldn’t possibly do so. Retailers tightly control what
type of products go in what aisle, as well as what brands
go where. Deals are struck, money is exchanged, products
hit the shelves. Promotions, discounts for consumers,
discounts for the retailer, special end-cap (the end of the
aisle) displays are all part of the negotiation. Even the
stocking and maintenance of the display (and special
hardware such as refrigeration units) may be part of the
deal.

This is neither entirely good nor entirely bad. Retailers
need to provide a coherent and consistent environment for
their shoppers. But today’s retail completely puts the
lie to the “better mousetrap” approach to product
development.

Many manufacturers regard this problem as hopeless, and
throw up their hands in frustration. Getting the product
in the store in a way that the store can sell it is most
certainly a problem. Manufacturers who have taken on this
challenge have often found themselves embraced by their
channel – the realization that their common goal is about
placing stuff in the customer’s hands can alleviate some
(not all!) of the contentiousness that may exist in those
relationships.

The NYT just did a story about consolidation in the
grocery industry and in the broker industry (firms that
work for food producers to handle much of the negotiation
around placement). The article is here/

FreshMeat #4: Reading FreshMeat Declared Safe

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FreshMeat #4 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

You’re gonna have to serve somebody…serve FreshMeat!
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Tune in, log on, drop out, uhhh, drop in, uhhh…
========================================================
In Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” Miles Monroe wakes up in the
Year 2173 to discover (among other things) that tobacco
and hot fudge sundaes are commonly regarded as the
healthiest substances for the body. As they say, it’s
funny cuz it’s true. Just look at today’s example…

Recently, Robert Kraut (a CMU social psychologist in the
field of human-computer interaction) has begun to make
public his ongoing findings into the effect of computers
and Internet use on personal well-being. The first
results of the study, from 1998, showed us that usage led
to poor social involvement and feelings of stress and
unhappiness. And the media had a field day with those
findings.

Going back to the same subjects, and conducting other
studies, Kraut now retracts that finding and says that
Internet use does not lead to detachment or alienation.
Indeed, life imitates life, and extroverts make more
connections online, while introverts may make fewer.

It’s interesting that as the business viability of the
Internet falls lower still, it turns out to be not so bad
for us after all. And the media has not made anywhere near
the fuss over the latest study. In 1998, the Internet being
bad for us was a bang – an incredible story that permeated
our culture, but the retraction in 2001 is merely a whimper.

This is a highly summarized version of some complicated
research. Read abstracts of Kraut’s papers, or request
copies of the full papers here

An article in the New York Times that describes how
our web habits have shifted can be found here.

FreshMeat #3: We Love To See You Smile

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FreshMeat #3 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

Give the gift that reeks of love…give FreshMeat!
========================================================
Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the cheese
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Recent news reports state that McDonald’s
“now has another problem: customers turning away in
droves because they don’t like the way they are
treated…the problem could be responsible for $750
million in lost sales every year.”

Now, if this were a talk show instead of email, I could
slowly lower the paper from in front of my face, and
raise my eyebrows in a look of sardonic significance.
But we’re stuck here, aren’t we, so rather than defining
a new emoticon for the reaction one has to really obvious
news stories, let’s look a little deeper.

I don’t think any of us are surprised. Customer service
at McDonald’s (indeed, all QSR chains — Quick-Serve
Restaurants, industry jargon for “fast food”) is
terrible. If we’ve patronized those places, we know the
story. The frightening question is how can McDonald’s
seemingly just be figuring this out?

In my work, I’ve interviewed QSR staff, store managers,
regional managers, and corporate folks. The higher up
the organizational ladder you get, the less focus there
is on the customer, and the more there is on the food.
They gauge their own success by such factors as speed
(kitchens feature overhead countdown timers and alarms),
temperature, and consistency. The customer focus may be
as simple as “clean.” One regional supervisor told me
that their best employees work in the kitchen. All a
counter employee has to do, they said, was be able to
count (since they handle the money).

In the space we have here, I think the point is this:
There but for the grace of God go each of us. Every
company has made specific, often implicit, choices about
what to be excellent at. And neglected others. McDonald’s
chose food over customers. Now they are realizing that
they have been paying a price for that. Many
organizations never get to that point of self-awareness,
and may continue to neglect something crucial that is
holding them back. The humor in the news story comes from
the fact that we could see what McDonald’s wasn’t able
to. Have the laugh, because you deserve a break today,
but maybe we can apply the lesson here to our own
companies.

Postscript: check out “The Deep End” starring Tilda
Swinton to see a current portrayal of customer
service. Often it is played for comedy, but here
the difficulties of getting help over the phone turn
into horror.

FreshMeat #2: Every Product Tells A Story (Don’t It?)

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FreshMeat #2 from Steve Portigal

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               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

If you know someone that should read this, send it to ’em
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There really are eight million stories in the naked city
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I just completed a six-week class in improv – not
stand-up comedy, but a series of collaborative,
improvisational games or sketches. The TV show “Whose
Line Is It Anyway?” is a good example of improv.

Part of the process of doing improv is to free yourself
from the evil, rule-based domination of our left-brains
and allow play to take place. This approach has been
applied to all sorts of creativity work, from Drawing On
The Right Side of the Brain
to every brainstorming
facilitator out there. So, I won’t go into that…I’m
fascinated by the stories that we have inside us.

Improv is something that anyone can do – it’s not just
for extroverts or people who are “naturally funny.”
The games and sketches produce humor almost as a by-
product. Most of the activities are based on
some trigger given at the last moment (hence the
improvisation) such as an emotion, a headline, a
physical position, a relationship, an environment.

And, incredibly, when given this little bit of info, we
can generate very rich recognizable stories, conveyed
through bits of dialogue, tone of voice, characters, and
so on. We are all in possession of these cliches, or
scenarios, or memes – call them what you want, but they
are incredibly detailed and we’ve all got them inside
us. If anything, improv helps bring them closer
to the surface so they can come out that much more easily.

A rich couple having an argument, a lion tamer who has
lost a job (and an arm), a game show, a televangelist,
a pair of puppies, a politician orating – all these
quickly produce richly detailed stories that are easily
recognized, and added to by the other performers.

Probably while reading that above paragraph you generated
your own visual and/or spoken details, so maybe you don’t
think the improv is such a big deal. Okay – but what
about the fact that you were able to generate so much
detail from a simple phrase?

It’d be interesting to try improv in cultures where
there is not the same amount of media exposure. Bugs
Bunny and Sesame Street seeded countless memes for their
viewers.

Anyway, this really supports the whole notion of how
products participate in stories – imagine the props
for an improv activity – a mobile phone, a rolling pin, or
a Tickle-Me-Elmo. We, consumers, have very specific
stories that those (or any) products will be used to
tell. The companies that make “stuff” need to understand
the stories that are out there already and take care to
make certain their new products (services,
advertisements, and so on) play the roles they are
expecting them to.

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