- Pre purchase experience
Visibility of store
Reviewers /costumer experience
Advertisement
Web site

- Purchase experience
Store
Sales person
Packaging
Product

- Post-purchase experience
Ease of recovery
Service desk person
Return money policy
Product
Printed picture
User manual
Guarantee

We identified these 5 categories of disciplines that are involved in the overall experience of the costumer journey.
Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary
1. Product design/Mechanical engineering, Material engineering
2. Communication Design, Social scientist
3. Environment Design/Environmental Engineering
4. Interaction Design/Computer Scientist, Illustrator, Artist
5. Service Design/Manager, Social Scientist , Marketer

By placing all the touch point into the touch point wheel and drawing the connections and conflicts we are able to understand what disciplines didn’t work effectively to give the user the experience the company aimed for. Re-orchestrating the weak steps of the costumer journey means enhancing the disciplines involved in the problematic sub-sections of the experience.

Touch points that correlate to only one discipline appear less conflicts between each other. For example the packaging design is enhancing the guarantee touch point. One of the reasons is because if the packaging is durable the product wil arrive safely to the costumer. As a result 1-1(discipline) relation between touch points are less complex.

On the other hand when a touch points is correlated with more than one disciplines and is conflicted with another touch point that also correlates with one of the previous disciplines we believe that this is a clear indication that the discipline didn’t work normally (we don’t have the results we were aiming for) and needs to be redesigned or enhanced. For example in our touch point wheel the product and the sales person which both belong to the purchase experience sub-category correlate with 2 disciplines each. They also appear to have a conflict and additionally we identify that ‘Interaction design’ discipline appears to both. This means that we have to search more what were the decisions that the interaction design team didn’t took into consideration and can lead us to a conflict.

Nature of Innovation

Portable Spot Cleaner consist a transformative innovation in cleaning services.

What makes it special

The Portable Spot Cleaner is built on a very solid consumer insight and it is highly relevant.It is an instant laundry device that has a positive impact on the environment by reducing consumption. Its usage and interaction are very intuitive. We all want one. The Portable Spot Cleaner is built on a very solid consumer insight and it is highly relevant.

What has been the purpose of the innovation

The theme in the competition’s ninth year was ‘Intelligent Mobility’ . The purpose of innovation has been the ease of use on instant cleaning, creating a portable device that can be used anywhere in the world. The brief particularly requested ideas that offer personalization and inspire users while utilizing existing technology to offer support and guidance.

Internet stories

Instant laundry device wins Electrolux Design Lab 2011 award
(source: http://www.pdesigni.com/innovations/consumer)

Portable Spot Cleaner wins Electrolux Design Lab 2011
(source: http://www.electroluxdesignlab.com/2011/09/portable-spot-cleaner-wins-electrolux-design-lab-2011/)

User cycle

The first stage is a very hands-on approach depicting a classic purchase scenario of buying a book through bol.com, as seen and experienced by the consumer.

Process

During the previous stage, we addressed the user’s experience and perspective. However, the process contains underlying stages that aren’t visible by the customer. Exploring “behind the scenes” will bring us to new levels of understanding of the big picture. In our case, we have to include the logistic and financial aspects which are fundamental in online shopping.
Including these new aspects bring new players in the process, linked through partnership. They all are elements of the process, sharing different responsibilities and strategies towards a common goal. Therefore, they evolve on different design levels and functions.
Studying these different stakeholders and strategies allows us to reveal and further understand the underlying structure of the organization. We are then also able to estimate their contribution as a company in the process; consequently evaluate the fulfilled and underperforming roles of design carried by each company.

Synthesizing

Eventually we managed to address and categorize the different design approaches into clusters over the whole purchase experience. These clusters correspond to the elementary blocks of the process. This new organization provides us with a rational and synthetic view of the previously complex sequence. By doing so, we realized we could distinguish different levels of commitment and involvement of the process. Furthermore, this synthetic organization allows us to be more efficient at addressing precise design guidelines to each stage. We believe that reaching higher levels of abstraction helped us grasp the fundamentals of the strategy implemented by Bol.com. (See Graph A)
Having previously analyzed the roles of design in the process, we were able to produce a synthetic list of the roles of design in the bol.com organization and convert that list into design statements for each elementary block. Therefore, we have now addressed the satisfying and/or improvable qualities within the process.

1. Selecting and browsing the website
Facilitate finding and discovering new books
The easy to use interface allows the consumer to find the book he is looking for, and also develop his curiosity, by suggesting new products.

2. Purchasing the product
Simulate a tangible shopping experience
The website provides tools to the users that help them simulate real life shopping habits.

3. Identification and confirmation
Centralize, process and transfer information
The website helps to create a seamless purchasing experience for the user by

Provide a more user centered and relevant service
The website doesn’t provide an insightful relation with its customer, but a mechanical one instead

Transfer the client to TNT
The Bol.com order is now TNT cargo.

4. Processing delivery
Creating a visible bridge between a virtual seller and a physical buyer
TNT allows people to visualize the commercial exchanges

5. Transmitting to end user
Transmitting the product to the user
TNT brings together a product and its user by making internet shopping a tangible and concrete experience.

One way and single serving interaction
TNT doesn’t establish a followed and in depth customer relation, instead it provides a superficial and one way interaction from the deliverer to the receiver.

Transfer to user
The TNT cargo is now in the user’s book.

6. Product user experience
Satisfy needs and expectations
The book should provide fulfilling experiences that satisfies expectations
The packaging reflects the purchase and delivery process

Problem identification

Having processed the overwhelming amount of information into graspable elements of the organization, we managed to clarify the sequence and address the required improvements.
Our observations suggest that the overall process satisfies the expectations set by the different design layers. However
As it turns out, our findings suggest that the field of improvement is to be found in the field of interaction between the user and Bol.com, when personal information is asked; and between TNT and the user, when the product is delivered.
In the first case, research area A, we reckon the method used doesn’t comply with the rest of the experience, where Bol.com is trying to provide an easy to use and enjoyable shopping experience, trying to relate it to a real bookshop. We believe this stage engages the customer to fill in personal and important information about address and bank details in a mechanical, cold and opaque way.
Secondly, research area B, we believe the delivery and reception of the product conditions a lot of the future experience. Here TNT can improve on the ease of use of receiving packages, which usually occurs when people aren’t available to receive them, which then involves a lot of time to retrieve a non-delivered package.
We believe these difficulties arise in those stages because of the changing state of information and products. Physical information (an address…) is transferred onto a virtual data base, which will then become a physical task (delivering); An order becomes cargo, then becomes someone’s book. A service becomes an interaction and then a product. All the shifting occurring in the process adds complexity.
In that respect, we think interaction design can be considered as a vast field of research in improving and innovating online shopping. Therefore, and in the light of our analysis, our problem formulation would be:
How to improve the online shopping by developing tighter and more insightful interactions?

Conclusion

Exploring a user experience as simple as buying a book online in depth revealed a very complex system that expanded as we got deeper in our analysis, to finally identifying the building blocks of the strategy and the design implications within. This assignment also provided us with a method to effectively expose a company’s core qualities and weaknesses by confronting ourselves with its complexity and then discovering its underlying rationality.

Stepping a little back, we see that the IKEA Catalogue is delivered periodically to its regular customers, right in their post box. As regards the website, there is facility for Free Online Planning and Stock Availability Information. Such high level of shopping convenience is sure to make anyone a loyal customer. Once you are set with your shopping list, you can just let yourself flow with the IKEA experience after reaching the store!

What makes this high level of coherent experience possible? – The synergy of different disciplines under a common goal defined by the brand values. Architects, Interior Designers, Software Engineers, Graphic Designers, and Logistics Experts et al come together to work till the fine details in order to ingrain the true brand experience in every aspect.

What would we do differently in IKEA’s case? For years, convenient store layout and product display has been IKEA’s hallmark. What could possibly be the next level of experience? In our opinion, it could be ‘pleasantly surprising’ the customers, which is akin to bringing in an element of fun. This we think can be done by re-doing the current two dimensional layout of store into three dimensional [Environmental Design + Interaction Design]. By three dimensional layout, we mean making the customers walk not just on flat surface but to enable them to move in 3D, by means of bridges, stairs, slopes, ladders etc, and displaying the product in 3D as well. The current website is very functional in appearance and it needs to be upgraded to the level of pleasantly surprising the customers. Our idea does not conflict with the brand essence of IKEA. We just propose to take the shopping experience from the level of convenience to fun!

Considering the other example, Turkish Airlines, we are of the opinion that the brand is evolving quite fast and over the past few years it has done pretty hard work in bringing its touch-points in line with the brand essence. During our discussion we clearly saw the synergy of different design disciplines in delivering a coherent experience at most touchpoints. But since, for an Airline company, not all parts of the system are under its control, therefore there were some loose ends.

What would we do differently? The current brand campaign of Turkish Airline is ‘globally yours’. To us it means that the company is trying to address the needs of globe trotters. In line with this thought, we feel that there is scope for improvement in Service Design. The company can add a new dimension to its services by providing extensive information to its customers about the travel destination in several ways – by providing interactive information [interface design + service design] about the travel destination, by setting up help desk in waiting lounges where waiting customers can acquire detailed information about their travel destination and do some bookings as well. It must be noted that the company is presently providing several Istanbul City Tour packages to its customers during their change-over in Istanbul. And this according to us is a very welcome move.

Team Coffee-break (Group 12)
‘get set for fresh perspectives…’

3. The discussion originated by the 1st exercise, (where in our post we designed a tree) was an intense one but also very enlightening for everyone.
We found the book dynamic, with a very good structure. We really enjoyed the case studies and the tools and techniques!
Regarding the less useful parts, we must say some visualizations were not very clear and useful: and some exercise briefs were too descriptive and not objective.
It would be also more efficient if we had lectures directly based on the book, to better develop what we are learning in the book.
Finally we would like to have a deeper understanding on how to explain, convince or even sell brand driven innovation to the client. And last but not least something related to ROI, like a case study.

4. Concerning the theoretical parts and the practical, we believe they supported each other very nicely. The combination between the two worked, after all that’s what we did all the time! Moreover, this combination makes the readers work for a longer period on the more abstract concepts, transforming them into more concrete.

5. This was not unanimous in our group since referring to the issue from point 3, some people believe they would find it difficult to sell this method to clients, they lacked more objective techniques on that. But in terms of didactics, everyone agreed it worked really well.

6. It drew our attention to the importance of innovation and therefore broadens our perspective on the subject.

The following concepts are the core of the brand’s values and are used to attract and build costumer relationship: tradition, honesty and transparency. For example, on the packages the consumer besides seeing all the ingredients that are in the product, is especially made aware when there is an ingredient that isn’t considered so healthy by some people.
The office’s interior design follows the brand’s values: there is a lot of wood and a sort of “natural look”.
The brand is strongly represented by its original owner, a pharmacist, even after he made a partnership with the 2 other partners: a designer and an architect.
But as a new employee one lacks a clear guideline for the brand usability. This kind of knowledge is distributed in the minds of the more experienced employees. We believe an efficient way to solve this would be creating a brand book with the core values of the brand, deeper insights, history, and so on. This would avoid the trial and error approach employees need to have when dealing with the brand . A nice example is Holland’s brand book below.

Korres faced a recent problem when people started to loose faith in the brand since it was starting to get too big and with a too wide variety of products, making consumers lost and lacking focus.
This led us to 2 paradoxical questions:
1. How to innovate but still the keep the tradition, the faith people have in this tradition?
2. How can a company still be friendly, trustworthy, locally based while becoming a huge corporation?
Consumers start loosing trust, as well as employees, since the daily routines end up changing.
A brand needs to be inspiring, based on stable values, coherent and above all clear for all those involved with the brand. That way when these paradoxes arise they are easier to handle.