Fun with bar codes

You might think that, by now, every millimeter of packaging would have been exploited for its design and communication potential. But you'd be wrong--new opportunities still emerge. In this case, it's the barcode, described by the Wall Street Journal as "the style runt of product labeling" which is getting a creative makeover.

Perhaps it's been left alone all this time because manufacturers (or retailers) worried that messing around with them would affect their readability. But, if those were the fears, it seems like they are now being put to one side. I love the Juicy Juice execution from my old colleagues in the Nestlé Beverage Division. And there's more examples shown both in the WSJ and this post by John Moore.

Update: Even more examples at Bar Code Revolution. Design Barcode Inc. has been responsible for many of new fun bar codes and their work was recognized by a Titanium Lion at Cannes in 2006.

Keepin' it real: Whole Foods and Trader Joe's videos

People love their Whole Foods and Trader Joe's even though (or maybe because) they're not perfect. These fantastic consumer-made videos show the love even as they share the frustrations of the shopping experience

1) Whole Foods Parking Lot

Frustrations: Too few parking spaces, high prices ("$80 for six items"), annoying fellow shoppers who block the aisle while they are on their phone, "fools with clipboards" (people taking surveys outside the store), little shopping carts, out-of-stock items (Humboldt Fog Cheese), discontinued items (Kombucha), slow lanes.
Key quote: "This buster’s on his iPhone talkin to his friends/ Pickin up some cayenne pepper for his master cleanse./ “You’re the most annoying dude I’ve ever seen, brah./ Could you please move? You’re right in front of the quinoa.”

2) If I Made a Commercial for Trader Joe's


Frustrations: Too few parking spaces in the parking lot, discontinued items, poor sample rotation, organic sugar that won't pour, small coffee cups, the electronic field that locks up shopping carts, ripping paper sacks, people using the express lane with too many items, empty shelves at dinner time
Key quote: "It's aloe chunk juice, whatever that is..."

Anyone shopping at either of these stores (at any location) shares at least some of these frustrations yet we all come back for more. Yes, of course, the pluses outweigh the minuses but I think there's more to it than that. These frustrations actually make the stores more endearing. Why is that and what does that mean for customer experience design?

Brands we're stuck on vs. brands we're stuck with

Photo by Stefan Gara on Flickr

There are some brands we are stuck on, others we're stuck with. Brands we're stuck on are those where we've developed a relationship out of our own free will (Apple, Starbucks, Zappos). Brands we're stuck with are those where we've become enslaved through contracts (phone carriers, cable companies), switching costs (banks, software) or incentives (airlines via their loyalty programs). Consumers may be loyal to both types of brands if loyalty is simply measured in terms of repeat business but their feelings about the two types brands is very different.

For brands we're stuck on, the social media world is their oyster--social media presents an opportunity for them to tap into the wells of existing consumer passion and spread the love around. If you ask passionate consumers for their help, they will give it and become even more engaged as a result.

For brands we're stuck with, social media is a troubling and inhospitable environment. If you hold your consumers captive, you can hardly expect them to be that friendly. Social media gives them an opportunity to vent. The marketing activities of brands we're stuck with should be more about pacification—making sure that the prisoners don’t get so restless that they try and escape. Or wall-building—further strengthening the contracts, switching costs or incentives that keep them under lock and key.

Reference: Post inspired by reading some of the work on branded relationships by Susan Fournier from Boston University

The Apple of my "I"

Photo by Ninja M. on Flickr

Is the secret of Apple's success a lot more simple and verbal than we think? Forget about design, innovation, Steve Jobs. Is it all to do with the "I"?

Hits: iPod, iPad, iPhone, iTunes, iMac, iOS
Misses: MobileMe, Power Mac G4 Cube, Apple TV, MacBook Air, Apple Lisa, The Apple Newton MessagePad
 
Bodes well for iCloud.

Companies as living organisms

People have compared companies to living organisms before. People like Arie de Geus have argued that, just like organisms, companies learn, evolve, and eventually die. Now there's data to suggest this comparison is not just New Age and metaphorical. It's scientific and mathematical.

Geoffrey West, a physicist who has studied quarks and dark matter, has been looking to see if any of the scientific principles that apply in astronomy and physics also apply in the worlds of biology and the social sciences. He has zeroed in on "scaling" phenomena, taking a look at how the various characteristics of a system change when size changes.

What he's discovered is that, for all their inherent complexity, both companies and organisms scale in a predictable way, actually according to a simple power law. Size predicts growth rates, metabolic rate/profitability and life expectancy.When you compare an elephant to a mouse or an ExxonMobil to a Twitter, you see very consistent scale effects.

West has also determined that organisms and companies do not scale linearly with size--they scale sub-linearly. For every x times bigger an organism or company is vs. another, its system characteristics only change at a fraction of  the size increase. For companies that means that operating costs only increase at a fraction of the rate of increase in the size of the company, leading to economies of scale benefits for large companies over smaller ones. That sounds good but the same formula also suggests that companies, like organisms, are eventually doomed to die. (Death for companies comes from the fact that profitability will decline towards zero.)

An important difference between companies and organisms is that the company data show a lot more variation than the organisms data. There are many more outliers, suggesting that companies have more control over their destiny than organisms do. If large companies are aware that the natural scaling laws are dragging them down and they look out for and react to the warning signs, they may be able to stop and even reverse the aging process before it's too late.

Photo: Paramecium by cesarharad.com on Flickr

Meme of the Week: Grand Rapids sings American Pie

When Grand Rapids Michigan saw that it was listed on Newsweek's America's Dying Cities list, it decided to do something about it. So they produced this incredible single-shot LipDub featuring hundreds of very-much-alive Grand Rapidians that Roger Ebert has called the Greatest Music Video Ever Made.

Just goes to show that data don't always tell the real story.