Beyond | IT : consumer value stream

Use technology to make life better

john.mullinax — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:20:00 GMT

Use technology to make life better – for your family, friends, neighbors, customers, suppliers, partners, and yourself.

Sounds obvious, and yet sometimes it’s not. Take the so called “mobile web”, which excels primarily in sucking. So often people try to do the wrong things with mobile devices. Perhaps it’s human nature to take what we know from the web and try to move it directly to the latest new screen. In any case, it doesn’t do much to make life better, IMHO.

Here’s some advice on how to re-think the so-called mobile web (and thanks to Steve Clayton for the pointer).

An Internet Watered Down

View more presentations from John Pettengill.

Some really excellent advice in there! Also: the basic concepts are not limited to mobile devices. Whatever you’re designing, think about how you can apply technology with broad context of what users are trying to accomplish in their lives. I sometimes talk about this as understanding the consumer value stream (which this great cartoon helps illustrate).

To re-use an example from my post here: when my wife asks me to pick up milk on my way home, I’m not really shopping – I’m commuting. Any shopping experience I have exists within that larger context of my commute. My local Kroger store recognized this and now puts milk at the front of the store – which means it’s more likely I’ll choose Kroger the next time my wife calls and says we’re out of milk.

Creating a positive impact in people’s lives with technology often means spanning boundaries between compartments that exist in their lives -- showing those boundaries to be artificial -- and doing it in a way that helps them achieve things they value. This might require experience designers to expand the way they think about the business they are in.

A few good examples..

The car didn’t always have a radio – bringing entertainment to driving a car was huge!
iTunes figured out syncing, organizing, and acquiring new music are best done together.
Live Search on Windows Mobile brings together searching for a business, and then finding it’s location (and me) on a map. Plus, it lets me speak the search, and read the results. (And yes, this was copied on the iPhone, too, but original credit goes to TellMe and the Live Search folks).
Ford Sync lets me control my media experience in the car with steering wheel controls or voice controls, and yet also take my media with me on Zune (or ipod, or Sensa) when I leave the car.

And a few examples where things could be better:

My car tells me when it needs service, and my phone (with calendar) is connected… why doesn’t my car propose actual service appointment times that matchup when I’m free and when the service shop has appointments available?
On the grocery store front, here’s a sampling of opportunities… (and see here for a lot more thoughts on improving the shopping experience)…

Why do some grocery sites have up to 3 different online shopping lists – none of them connected to each other?
And even though the grocery store knows everything I’ve previously purchased, why is that information not available for me to create a shopping list?
And why is there not a task-oriented version of that list automatically on my phone so I can check things off as I buy them?
And when I get an idea for something to cook off of Food Network, why can’t I just click a button to send the ingredients to my shopping list?
And if my regular store is out of stock on an item, why doesn’t the grocery chain tell me about another store in the area that has what I need (or suggest an alternative ingredient)?

Why can’t I check rates/availability for hotels from within my Outlook calendar -- where I do my trip planning and store travel itineraries?

I’m not saying any of these examples would be easy to implement (but neither are any of them technically that hard, I suspect). And I’m sure other folks have better ideas and better examples than what I’ve listed here (and I’d like to hear them).

All of this is just my 2 cents, of course. My sincere hope is that the slides above, and this little post, will help at least a few folks think about how to enable and empower users in ways that make their lives better. :)

Technorati Tags: innovation,mobile,consumer value stream

Social graph analytics for the benefit of users

john.mullinax — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:55:22 GMT

Angus Logan, a Product Manager on the Live Services team, came out with an interesting post recently on address book portability between social sites/services. The thrust of his argument is that the various address book repositories in the world (Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live, and others) have been very focused on sharing information in order to lower cost of user acquisition – and perhaps have missed an opportunity to enable users themselves in new ways. Read the post – it’s worth a think.

What I really like about the concept Angus raises is this:

It starts from the perspective of what creates value for individual users in a holistic way – that is, it’s not about Windows Live, Facebook, or LinkedIn, it’s about what an individual is trying to accomplish in their lives, and may often span any single repository or site-based capability. This is a perspective I’ve called the Consumer Value Stream.
It extends an existing trend with significant momentum – that is, sharing data and/or capabilities between entities as “services”.
It turns the topic of user analytics on its head – putting social graph analytics to use in practical way for actual users (instead of limiting social graph analytics to be a tool for only advertisers)

The example Angus gives around inviting someone to go to a concert is just one of many things that could be done… the limit of use cases may be bounded by what information people will share with a service when they recognize that the info could be put to use in future mashups that are not yet defined.

For example, I might share GPS data on where I drive that would be very useful in matching me up with carpools. That same info, when mashed up with methodone clinics or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings might be embarrassing for some folks.

Just a guess, but I suspect most people would *NOT* share something like GPS data with a service that could be tapped for any future purpose, but would want the ability to say specific data can be shared for some specific purposes and not for others.

There’s a lot of ground to cover on privacy topics here. But also, a lot of potential for new, value-creating experiences. Why should social graph analytics just benefit advertisers?

Technorati Tags: social graph analytics,consumer value stream

steelcase blog: Docs for Change…, The Tao of OBA and S+S

john.mullinax — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:06:00 GMT

Saw this today. Mark Greiner, who runs Steelcase's "Workspace Futures" team spoke at a Transformation, a Symposium on Innovative Health Care Delivery recently at the Mayo Clinic. Among the speakers that stood out to Mark was Michael Howe, CEO of MinuteClinic. Here's an excerpt of what Mark had to say about Michael's presentation:

"What caught my attention was the how cost effective and accessible MinuteClinic,… it’s been referred to as the 7-Eleven of patient acute care. It proves that you don’t have to be everything to everyone to be valued. MinuteClinic makes a few procedures available to large audiences, by integrating their service into the consumer’s lifestyle. They locate where people frequent such as shopping areas,… how brilliant is that. Get a Starbuck’s cappuccino and a flu shot as you shop for a new pair of shoes" (emphasis mine).

With this, Mark neatly sums up in a short paragraph a good chunk of what I was trying to get at with my posts here and here on the consumer value stream! :-)

At the same time, his comment about MinuteClinic encapsulates a spirit that I would call the "Tao of OBA and S+S" (well, at least one version of S+S). The notion that you can integrate your services into a consumers lifestyle, or an employee's workstyle, is really at the heart of the OBA and S+S philosophy. Rather than, "If you build it, and spend a ton on marketing/training, they might come" (to your web site or to ERP/LoB system), the mind set is to bring capabilities direct to the customer and enable great experiences that empower them while fitting seamlessly into their existing lives and habits.

Technorati tags: S+S, Software + Services, . OBA, Consumer Value Stream

Surface, Popfly, Photosynth, Silverlight, Windows Live Platform, and consumer value stream links

john.mullinax — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 05:39:00 GMT

Was talking to some folks the other day about some of the cool stuff emerging from Microsoft, and after mentioning to folks they could learn more on this blog, I got request to consolidate some links together into a single post. Voila! :-)

Technorati tags: Surface, Popfly, Photosynth, Seadragon, Silverlight Streaming, Windows Live Platform, Consumer Value Stream

The consumer value stream mind set

john.mullinax — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:47:00 GMT

I saw this today, and it cracked me up. It's an insightful (and funny!) one-panel exposition on the importance of understanding consumer motivations -- the things that are important to them, what they are trying to accomplish. In microeconomic terms --...(read more)