Adaptive Path Blog

Known as a leading edge innovator in the use of social media in customer service, Zappos has become a darling of the Business Week set and a case study for those hoping to create a more meaningful customer service experience. Brian Kalma, Director of Web Strategy and User Experience was kind enough to sit down with me for a quick interview in preparation for his talk at MX 2009.

[Henning Fischer] Could you tell us a little about yourself, your team, what you do for Zappos and where you sit in the organization?

[Brian Kalma] I started at Zappos back in 2003 working on developing the Product Photography and Image Processing department. Back then it was a priority to purely represent the product visually. As that department grew to cranking out about 10,000 photos per day, it was in a pretty good place and I was able to move on to new things. Under the umbrella of Creative Services we incubated several sub-departments: Design, Front-End Development, Social Media, and User Experience. Each sub-department grew to be its own entity or merge with others, and I decided to focus on the area I felt we needed to improve on the most, User Experience. I currently head up our relatively new UX department where I am Director of Web Strategy/UX. The team consists of a UX Manager, 2 UX Designers, a taxonomist and a generalist.  We’re not quite at the point where we are the initiators and drivers of all projects, but we have now staked a claim in all projects and are key pieces to projects. The exception is the evolution of our ZETA site, where we are the business owners.

[HF] What does it mean to lead a UX team in an organization that is first and foremost customer service oriented?

[BK] Quite plainly, it drives our focus. Customer service should BEGIN online, not with a phone conversation or a shipping upgrade. This drives us to really focus the ZETA site on achieving the goal of being a service-oriented site, not just a company. We are leveraging loads of customer feedback, user testing and overall intuition. Every employee goes through 4 weeks of customer service training at Zappos, it is instilled in us, and it helps us make better UX decisions on our ZETA site. We have a ways to go, but are in a better place than ever.

[HF] How do you see the role of UX evolving at Zappos?

[BK] Personally, I see the team becoming key drivers and innovators at Zappos. I see us becoming the place business needs and problems are brought to first to solve, the site is our storefront, we have to drive it.  I also see UX evolving to become the data house for web usage statistics on our site as well as becoming the company resource for competitive research analysis. Ultimately, UX should be well enough integrated into the company such that we are less so a department and more so a mindset. Like customer service.

[HF] Zappos had jumped into social media far more enthusiastically than many, and you have spoken about the notion of people planning as being key to the company’s success. A lot of companies want a one size fits all approach to customer service, yet Zappos does almost the opposite. It has a very organic, homegrown effect, yet is clearly complex. How did this approach evolve?

[BK] This is a tough one to answer. Getting the right people with the right mindset is paramount to any notion/concept getting executed as envisioned. But, because you have the right people that vision can guide itself to a place not envisioned. I think Zappos always had a focus on service, it was the vision but it has evolved and has become realized in its own unique way because of the people. What we try to do, because we are confident with the people planning we do, is create as many customer touch point OPPORTUNITIES as possible. Not all customers want to talk to us, but when they do we want to be there in the place they feel comfortable talking to us in. It started with Phone, e-mail and live chat. It has evolved to be many places including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Get Satisfaction… you name it. We have team members who are savvy across many customer touch point areas, we basically tell them “be smart and be real”, then we trust our hiring skills. If a business leader or company owner is not comfortable having their employees talk to their customers then they have the wrong employees!

Join us at MX 2009 in San Francisco March 1-3. Register today using the code BLOG and get 10% off.

Welcome to part 2 of our interview with David Butler, VP of Design for the Coca-Cola Company. Part 1 is available here. When we left off we were talking about the different roles that design fills within Coca-Cola. This part of the interview shifts gears a bit and talks about one of the major themes we’ll be exploring at MX: designing in a down economy.

[Henning Fischer] How do you design with purpose in a down economy?

[David Butler] That’s a good question. It’s all in how you look at it. That sounds kind of trite, but there’s a similar discussion about the value of design. Is part of the value of design driven towards productivity? Doing more with less? Or is designing to do more with less thought about in terms of sustainability? They’re both sort of the same thing. In a down economy, doing more with less is exactly the focus of the company. In reality it’s what we do every day. As designers it’s always about how we can provide more value or more enduring experiences. It’s not that different from what we do in an up economy.

[Brandon Schauer] Design is easily seen as a cost center in a tough economy. What advice would you give to people who are feeling that?

[DB] When I got here, people asked, “What do you do?” and I worried a lot about trying to define design and tackle everything that we could impact. Soon I realized we should just focus our design efforts on the things that really matter for the company and provide the most value: the way people are going to actually touch the package and experience our brands. Most of what we do focuses on retail and the retail experience and that is never going to go away in an up or down economy. What I have done and what we continue to do is focus on the highest value that our function and capability of design can provide to the organization.

One more thing…let me say it in a different way. Everyone is tightening their belts, right? What that means, simply, is that we need to design more accurately, and we need to leverage our scale more proficiently. The projects we work on have not changed dramaticaly, they’ve just become more important.

[HF] I like the phrase designing with accuracy. In some ways it’s what we’re going to be struggling with over the next couple of months as well. We’re seeing changes in our business and I think we will have to increase the accuracy of the things and the engagements that we step into as well.

[BS] Yeah, if budgets are smaller and you’re doing fewer projects, you need to raise the chances of each project’s success that much more.

[DB] Linking projects directly to the value to the business is critical. If you can prove that value, it’s not a big discussion. You can see the impact.

[BS] Can you give is an example of ways you have helped to explicitly connect to that value? Have you been able to get down to bottom line dollar impacts and things like that with some of your projects?

[DB] Let me answer that in two ways. One is around cost avoidance. We can design something and talk about the scale and hypothesize what the cost avoidance could be. Another way is through the pure, old fashioned business case- the levers that drive the value and provide the return on investment that we have. Nothing new, just a straight-ahead business case. For example, if we design something to be durable over time, we can avoid a lot of the costs in the future. A great case study is the Coke contoured bottle. The basic form was designed in the 1920s. It has been basically untouched since then. Imagine all the costs that we have avoided around that design by designing a classic, enduring design.

[BS] You didn’t even have to create a new icon. You’ve just had to embellish something that was already in people’s lives. How about partnering within Coke? How have you worked with others in the organization to make design more effective?

[DB] As designers we’re intuitively equipped to adapt and integrate than perhaps other functions or parts of the organization. For us we have never had a problem integrating. It has always been the opposite. The demand has far outstripped the supply from day one. Once people understand the value that designers can bring to their part of the organization, it’s not a sell in at all. It becomes more about capacity discussion.

[BS] You’ve had a great career going on from brand director at Sapient to some really successful years at Coke. Who do you look to for inspiration and insight for where you’re going to take things next?

[DB] I’m actually very passionate about design theory. I’m a big fan of the publication, Design Issues. I’m really motivated by theory. I’m interested to see how design theorists are creating the idea of public policy around design in mass culture. That links into sustainability and other issues that we’re facing as a society. Keeping up with the thought of having this culture of design rather than focusing just on the profession of design. When you have a global view, you see the developing economies of China and Brazil and Russia. All these economies are advancing a global middle class and are seeking to develop into something that we here in the United States are familiar with. You see the opportunity and future for design and its almost overwhelming .

[HF] I don’t know if you have seen the recently published design manifesto that was sent to the Obama Administration…

[DB] That’s exactly where my fascination is. That’s where I see design going. For me personally, that’s exactly the path that I see before designers. It’s quite fascinating…

[HF] We’re definitely a few years behind people like the UK Design Council.

[DB] Not just that. If you think about it- I just saw this statistic the other day- roughly speaking we have about 10,000 students in design schools in the US. That sounds like a lot until you understand that China has over 100,000. You quickly see that Asia is going to be the source for design strength and leadership in the not too distant future. When you look at India and China, it causes you, as a Westerner, to rethink where design is going and your influence on that.

[HF] One last closing question: what will you share with us at MX?

[DB] I’d like to share how we developed our strategy and how we’re executing that design strategy here at Coke.

[HF] David, thanks for your time. We’re looking forward to seeing you at MX.

Register for MX 2009 here and use the code BLOG for 10% off.

Brandon Schauer and I recently sat down with David Butler, VP of Design for the Coca-Cola Company and MX 2009 speaker. Here’s part 1 of “Designing on Purpose.”

[Henning Fischer] Could you tell us a little about yourself, your team, what you do for Coca-Cola and where you sit within the organization?

[David Butler] We have a global design function and that entails four design centers around the world: one in North America, one in Europe, one in Asia and then on in our corporate headquarters. I personally sit in our corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

It might be interesting to understand a little more about the company. We have over 450 brands in our portfolio, operate in over 200 countries, the largest in the world, 900 plants (7x Procter and Gamble), 500,000 trucks (5x UPS), 20 million customer outlets (McDonalds, etc.), 10 million coolers and vending machines, 1.5 billion packages sold every day and almost 1 million employees world-wide.

Another thing that’s sort of interesting is the relative state of our global brands. For instance, the Coca-Cola brand has been in China for less than 25 years, which creates a different scenario when we’re designing for a lesser known brand in that market versus a market like the US or UK, which is a very established market. The challenges that we face as a design organization really vary depending on the area that we are taking about.

[HF] There was a big Business Week article on you a while back. You were given a mandate early on that you needed to “do more with design, go figure it out.” Where did that mandate come from?

[DB] At the time, the directive came from the Chief Creative Officer as well as the CEO, indirectly. We have a long legacy of design as a company but it had lost its focus without a clear vision, strategy and plan. I was fortunate enough to be tapped to figure out what to do with design.

[HF] That’s a hell of a question to get in a career.

[DB] Yeah. The Business Week reporter asked me the question and I said it sort of jokingly, but it’s true: the objectives I got were literally on a Post-It note, and they basically said “I know that you can figure out what we need as a company, so go figure it out.” Not a lot more direction than that. It was literally, “walk out there and figure it out.” So that’s what we’re doing.

[HF] The article talked a little bit about a manifesto for design that you laid out. Can you tell us a little bit about that and the vision that you sketched out and perhaps a bit on how it’s changed? It was four CEOs ago. Has it evolved and changed since then?

[DB] The manifesto was more of a reaction, which led to a strategy. The reaction was very Jerry Maguire like. Once I had been here for a few months, I wrote this manifesto. It was simply called “Designing on Purpose.” What I meant by that was that we as a company design literally millions of things all around the world, but a lot of it was without purpose and really not driven by user needs and opportunities that would build our business. That was a really new concept for the company—to think about design as a business strategy. I sent it out, and honestly, I wasn’t trying to do anything, but it stuck a chord, and everyone resonated to “designing on purpose,” even if they didn’t know what it meant. At least they got the phrase, and we built on that. That led to the strategy, which was written shortly after that. We have been implementing it since then.
The strategy circles around three areas: brand identity, user experience and sustainability. We have hired people and have expanded our teams, capabilities, and our process in those three areas to push design forward.

[HF] What does user experience mean for Coca-Cola? We have our own interpretation of it here on the West Coast and in the digital community, but I imagine it’s something quite different for you guys.

[DB] For us it has to do with the usability of packaging and equipment and as well as communications through clear information hierarchy, etc. We’ve brought new focus to ergonomics and the use of our packaging, which is how people touch and experience our brands and products.

[Brandon Schauer] In those activities, how do you give the rest of the Coke organization a feeling for the value of what your design group does and brings?

[DB] Around here, and I’d venture to say around the world, the word design has virtually lost its meaning. Strangely enough, I never use the word design or usability or phrases that we are used to as designers. I really try to communicate in terms of the people we are talking to inside the organization. A simple way of talking about the way the thing work versus the way things look. I use basic ways of communicating usability and try to shy away from anything that would cause dissonance or confusion.

[HF] Has design become any less of a dirty word?

[DB] Design was never a dirty word, just meaningless in the sense that it’s difficult to understand in the worlds of marketing, finance and science. As soon as we start talking about value, things that have or build value for brands, people get it. You don’t have to use the word design to talk about making something more legible or making something more usable. Up until then no one had associated these types of phrases or expressions to the word design. We don’t use the word very much around here, but we talk about the value and what it can do.

Our intention is to build a design thinking organization. To distill that type of knowledge into people, we shy away from anything that would cause confusion or impede that progress.

[HF] Design thinking—there’s a loaded phrase. Could you elaborate how Coke views it and where you are trying to push it?

[DB] The thing that I found out quickly was that this company and many other global companies have the opportunity to leverage massive scale. Not only do they have billion dollar brands, but also the scale they operate in is crazy. When you’re talking about the impact of design, you quickly see that it’s not just about designing the perfect label for something like Fanta, it’s really about helping this organization see differently, think differently and leverage design as an integration or synthesis capability along with making sure the label is right. That’s what we do: we focus on the highest value opportunities to build value for our company and our brands through redesigning vending machines, packaging labels or whatever. But we also use our time to build the capability of design in the company. The more popular phrase used today is “design thinking,” even though Richard Buchanan and others have been writing about that for 10 to 15 years. It’s interesting to see how that idea is moving into the popular culture of design.

[BS] Can you give us an example of helping Coke see the world in a different way for perhaps synthesis or integration?

[DB] Sure. Again, it comes back to the word design. If you come into a situation thinking that design equals aesthetic values or balancing aesthetic elements then it’s difficult to get past a sort of “applied art” scenario. A lot of times inside this company and I’m sure a lot of others, we talk about design in terms of innovation. To get to an innovation or to solve a problem that would speak to innovation requires a cross functional synthesis of things. In other words, our supply chain, brands, communications, markets, etc. all have to come together to get to an innovation. That’s just another way of designing toward a solution. We’re taking these elements and synthesizing them. We can leverage what we do best looking at multiple concepts, quickly prototyping them and reducing them down to the most useful solutions.

[HF] I love the fact that you’re taking about synthesis and bringing together disparate parts of the organization. How much time do you find yourself playing the role of a facilitator as opposed to the maker of things?

[DB] It goes back to the scale of the organization. Depending on the market, or the brand or the group that you’re working with it can really vary. I’m not trying to avoid the question. In some instances, all we really need is to improve the communication value of something so it’s much more tactical and it becomes more about information hierarchy or something like that. That’s more design as a function. Other times, it’s more about design as a discipline—more about “wicked problem” solving. It’s the problems that we can’t figure out, that we have no clue as to how to design a product or it hasn’t been done before. That’s when we tend to get brought in as facilitators and integrators across different functions.

Part 2 of our interview with David will appear February 3. Register for MX 2009 here and use the code BLOG for 10% off.

I recently had a chance to speak with Scott Berkun — designer, author, contrarian and MX 2009 conference speaker about something that has interested me for a long time, but we don’t generally talk about in the design community: failure. We build whole conferences around speaker programs that showcase success, yet learning from failure is something that is less commonly addressed, but arguably far, far more valuable in the long run. Scott’s thoughts on failure in design have stood out, and that’s why we asked him to tell us a little more in preparation for his talk at MX.

Henning Fischer [HF]: Scott, welcome and thank you for joining me. My first question for you is: What inspired you to look into the reasons why designers fail?

Scott Berkun [SB]: Hmm. Let’s see. FAILING. I’ve worked on many projects and many of them didn’t work out well, or up to my expectations. And in talking to other designers over the years, I’ve learned it’s rare to find a designer who can point to the finished product and say, “This is exactly all that I hoped it would be.” More important, perhaps, is I’m a teacher and I study teaching. It’s clear failures are more instructive and provide more lessons than successes, yet stories of failure are harder to get people to share.

When you get a story of failure from a great designer who has many successes under their belt, you’re getting a true gem of wisdom. Hearing Picasso, Steve Jobs, or Frank Gehry talking about the lessons learned from failures is way more interesting and instructive than hearing about their successes.

HF: Do the reasons for design failure vary across industries or does the frame that you described (psychology, skills and organization) apply broadly?

SB: Definitely broadly — I’m all about universal design. There certainly are traits unique to interaction design or abattoir design (also a kind of interaction, I suppose), but listen to any group of designers talking over beers after work and you hear the same things: Either they’re failing because of their attitude, lack of a skill, or something to do with their organization.

HF: Are there people outside of design asking this question?

SB: Absolutely. Henry Petroski deserves credit in modern times for spotlighting the value of failure, and his original focus was engineering. Dietrich Dörner has studied failure in decision making in his book “The Logic of Failure,” and there are many books about failure in software design, my favorite is “Digital Woes: Why we should not depend on software,” by Lauren Ruth Wiener. And for all the UI people out there, a must have book is “Set Phasers on Stun,” by S.M Casey, which is a collection of, quite literally, death by UI.

HF: You are pursuing this topic further. Any surprises since you started this line of questioning?

SB: Some people hate the idea. They do not want to hear about failures. I guess they’re afraid it might force them to ask questions about their own work. Others find it depressing. I’m not sure why. I find it illuminating. It’s FREE experience. I get to learn a better way of thinking about making things without suffering for it. And then there are some designers who employ a self-limiting kind of pseudo-therapy where they spend their career mostly blaming other people. A study like this that points to the fact there are always things a smart, motivated person can do to minimize failures, challenges that habit. And they don’t like that.

HF: Given the economy, this next period is going to be a tough one for designers. Failure seems like even less of an option than befre. Understanding the reasons for failure is critical, but to many this might seem like opening a can of worms. Why is this even more important now?

SB: Recessions are tough on everbody. However, I wouldn’t say it’s a time to fail less. There are many different kinds of failure, a subject I explore in my talk. Design sketches and prototypes are a kind of failure — they are not complete designs — but they are essential for increasing the odds of getting to one. On a super important mission critical recession era project, where the margins for error are tighter than ever, it means more iteration (again, a kind of deliberate failure) is even more important to ensure the final designs are high quality. A recession might force changes to the kinds of projects available or how many resources you have, but you still need to introduce failures and experiments to successfully design anything. And then of course, if you really can’t afford to fail, you’d better read up on how others in your line have screwed things up on similar projects, so you can safely avoid those mistakes.

Something like the southern Italian code of silence, the omertà, cloaks much of the work that goes on in design studios like Adaptive Path. It’s something that we struggle with every day. Project rooms must be locked, and occasionally certain clients even have code names assigned to their projects. This isn’t exclusive to client relationships either. When we were developing Measure Map, the alpha was known internally as Milhouse, after Richard Nixon’s middle name (ask Jeff Veen).

Fortunately, there are times when you can talk about your clients and their projects. Today, we’re very pleased to announce that we are working with Ashoka’s Changemakers to redesign and relaunch the world’s leading community of social innovators, Changemakers.net.

Ashoka’s Changemakers is one of the pioneers in the field of social entrepreneurship. It is building the world’s first global online “open source” community that competes to surface the best social solutions, and then collaborates to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions. This is truly heady stuff, and Changemakers’ competitions are remarkable proof of how much more people can accomplish on the Web with a little generosity and transparency.

We’re just getting started right now, but watch this space over the next few months. We have the rare chance to talk a little about project work as it’s happening, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you.

Although UX Week is coming up, it doesn’t mean things are all quiet for our other events. We have a slew of new speaker videos from this spring’s MX Conference up for you this week. These aren’t just excerpts, these are their full presentations.

Ryan Armbruster, Chief Experience Officer for OnCURE Medical Corp.: How Emotion Transforms Experience

By the way, Ryan is hiring service designers.

Björn Hartmann, Stanford University & Microsoft Research: New Interactions: Enlightened Trial and Error

Stephen Anderson, VP of Design, Viewzi: Leading the Rebellion: Turning Ideas into Reality

At the end of the conference, Brandon challenged everyone to take one idea that they had heard and to try it out in practice. Inspired partially by Brian Cronin’s talk about Earth Day, the Designer’s Accord and going green, Thomas Obrey and our friends at PixelMEDIA in Portsmouth, NH are taking steps, both internally and with clients, to make a difference.

You can already register for next year’s MX Conference, March 1-3, 2009. It will be held in San Francisco. Use the code BLOG and get 10% off.

We’re happy to announce that videos of presentations given at this year’s MX Conference in San Francisco are making their way online. If you didn’t get a chance to attend, this is a great opportunity to see complete talks by the likes of Chip Conley (Joie de Vivre Hotels), Matt Jones (Dopplr) and Margaret Stewart (Google). All three of these talks were fantastic. Chip told us how he successfully applied Maslow’s Heirarchy to a fundamental reinvention of his hotel business, while Matt blew our minds with a presentation called “Battle for the Planet of the Apes:  A Perspective on Social Software and Social Networks.” Margaret Stewart’s presentation on “The Manager as Tailor” was highly entertaining and gave attendees some great tools and tips to help them identify their management strengths.

Also, don’t forget to check out the graphic recordings from these three talks, bundled with the rest of the presentations.

On a final note, register for MX 2009 by June 30 to save $700 off the regular registration price. It won’t be this cheap again! Register here using the code BLOG for an additional 10% off the early bird price.

It’s National Bike to Work Day, and the Adaptive Path offices are filled with bikes of all shapes and sizes, from fixies to cruisers to racers. Some of us have been riding for years, other are more recent converts. One person even bought her bike this week.

One of the worst things to confront new bike owners isn’t city traffic, it’s the dreaded trip to the bike shop. What a miserable experience. You’ve just purchased your new (or used) bike and something doesn’t work right. You’re not happy. You walk in to the local shop and the guy (inevitably) behind the counter gives you a look that makes most people’s stomachs drop. Something like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, but with tattoos and three times the attitude (grease coating optional). You feel unworthy. You feel stupid. He unnerves you with the smug condescension that most shop guys have. This is what happened to Rachel. And she’s, um, upset. This scene is played out thousands of times a day in shops around the country. I’ve been hanging around bike shops for the better part of 15 years and this still happens to me all the time.

That’s a giant opportunity.

Over the last 10 years, most of the innovation in the bicycle industry has occurred in the supplier-retailer relationship. Integrated POS systems, concept stores, mass customization, etc. have redefined what’s available. The retail experience has remained stubbornly suck in the stone ages, and a lot of that has to do with the human element.

Why is this important in experience design?

People matter more than technology, process and systems. Something that we see overlooked by a lot of our clients is the impact of the person-to-person experience. It’s the same thing that the independent bicycle retailers of America have missed as well. No matter how good your shop, product or service, if the people staffing and supporting you aren’t focused (or able) to deliver good experiences, you’ll get the equivalent of the bike shop we all know and hate. Nothing is more poisonous. A bad human to human interaction can cut the best product or service design off at the knees.

Think about the human elements of interaction. Move past wireframes, flows and technology. Design not only for the end customer, but also for the people that will support your design. Create personas, tools and opportunities for the people them too. They’re critical and often overlooked factor in delivering truly great experiences. Do that and you’ll be on your way to delivering the “Long Wow.”

Recently I attended Startup School, a one day event put on by venture firm Y Combinator at Stanford University. Speakers included Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, and a bevy of other Valley heavies. Videos of their presentations here. If you only want to watch one, make sure you check out David Heinemeier Hansson’s (funny!) presentation on how to make money. Easily the best and most entertaining of the group.

Generally, they day went much as expected; which is to say “how do we cash out as quickly as possible?!” What startled me more than anything else was the lazy lip service given to listening to users given in almost every presentation. Apparently mentioning listening to users is all you have to do. Term sheets? Check. Sustainable unfair advantage? Check. Iterate rapidly? Check. Listen to users? Check. I can haz fundz now?

Perhaps the only person who really got it was Paul Graham of Y Combinator, who told the audience “make something people want.” And in that company, that’s pretty sad.