Month: June 2004

Friday, 11 June 2004

Do As Little As Possible

by Garrick van Buren 5 Comments on Do As Little As Possible

How little can I do to successfully reach this goal?

Continually asking youreself that questions is the best ways to minimize rework, reach goals quickly, guarantee sustainable solutions, and design for wear.

This approach creates a functional prototype quickly, keeps stress levels down, and keeps product teams lean.

Johanna Rothman has an excellent post highlighting other benefits of this approach from the product development perspective:

  • Understanding the requirements is a scarce resource, and we should focus our energies towards delivering something that shows we understand the specific requirement and the value it has to our customer.
  • Schedule is critical and we don’t have time to do it again, or build technical debt
  • Project cost is important, and we need to manage it

and another on how this approach specifically addresses rework

See how little you can do, and deliver that much as quickly as possible. The technique I use most often is to break the pieces into groups of requirements/features and then perform iterations within whatever lifecycle the people are used to.

Thanks to NerdHerding for Beginners.

Tuesday, 1 June 2004

Shopping Goes High-Tech

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Shopping Goes High-Tech

Wal-Mart’s aggressive efforts to implement RFID makes the news frequently, and you’ve probably noticed an increase in the number of stores offering self-checkout (Home Depot, Rainbow Foods, K-mart, among others). A number of other stores are experimenting other technologies poised to changed the shopping experience.

The Salisbury Post has an excellent article on Bloom, the new store concept from Food Lion.

Consider the technological changes, such as photo printing kiosks, complete with Bluetooth wireless capabilities, and personal scanners that shoppers can use to keep a running tally of what you’re buying.

Other information areas allow you to do things like scan in a cut of meat or piece of seafood and have a variety of recipes pop up that you can print out and take with you.

Their focus is on making grocery shopping better:

“We want people to feel like they’ve had a good experience.” – Robert Canipe, VP Business Stragety

“…take the pain points out of shopping” – Suzy McIntosh-Hinson, Bloom’s IT Design Lead.

A number of the experimental technologies at Bloom can also be found at the Metro Future Store in Rheinberg, Germany.

The last line in the article…

“There will always be certain areas where customers will not accept a high-technology store”.

…leads me to Stores.org’s May 5 cover story, Prada’s Pratfall. The article describes Prada’s retail technology experimentation gone horribly wrong at their very visible Manhanttan flagship store.

RFID, interactive touch screens, liquid crystal changing room doors all back-firing when they’re functional at all.

Made from liquid crystal panels that darken for privacy, the doors were designed to open and close using a foot pedal and shift from clear to opaque with another. But it turns out that some Prada devotees missed the second pedal, revealing more than intended. Others stomped on the pedals in a futile attempt to open doors that frequently jam.

Paula Rosenblum, Director of Retail Research for the Aberdeen Group declares:

“In an attempt to be as chic about technology as they are about heels and handbags, they misjudged the customer’s acceptance as well as the sales associates’ willingness to embrace it.”?

This is an excellent counter to Mr. Canipe’s quote about improving the customer experience. Prada seemed more focused with looking cool than using technology to deepen the customer relationship. Did Prada conduct the depth of customer research described in the grocery store articles? Doubtful. Otherwise they would have realized that customers and sales associates prefer less technology and better service.

Hotel Room as Showroom

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Hotel Room as Showroom

Hotels are now leveraging their experience comforting weary travelers and giving their guests the opportunity to take the hotel experience home.

Marginal Revolution points to a Forbes article documenting the Regency in Manhattan’s addition of price tags to their bath mats, pillows, and bath robes.

In a related development, Selelect Comfort recently announced a partnership with Carlson Hotels to replace 90,000 guest beds over the next 2 years with a custom-designed Sleep Number Bed.

As much as it’s a excellent way for “consumers to get a better night’s sleep away from home” it’s also a great way for consumer to have more experience with Select Comfort’s products. With the lifetime of matresses in the decades, capturing one more household is definitely benefical.