Month: October 2017

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FELIX KRAUSE

Felix Krause

check out this post on You Can’t Always Get What You Want, But If You Try Sometimes You Might Find Technology Gives You What You Need

Whether the retail industry realises it or not, it stands at the forefront of the technology revolution.

One only needs to go to an industry show these days to see that the sheer number of tech firms in attendance trying to sell into that market is staggering. These tech firms, however, are all offering to do the same thing, provide data analytics to retailers about their customers.

This is all aimed at ensuring that people are exposed to more targeted and more effective adverts depending on past behaviour, preferences and what consumers may be interested in buying next. In effect, we have a multitude of companies who I assume make a profit as they still exist, serving up to retailers the answer to the question: “what do my customers want to buy next?”

This is in an attempt to reach what many consider the Holy Grail of retail – to know exactly what an individual wants. Leaving aside the dangers and ethical issues in collating such a huge amount of personal data on people, is this really the right direction for the tech industry to be going?

Retailers naturally want to sell. That is why they exist. On the surface, the collection of data on their customers makes perfect sense: The ability to know what the people they are targeting want should dramatically improve sales.

However, there is something wrong about the basic concept of data collection that is leading retail to a dead-end and, by extension, much of technological development. If all the focus is on giving people what they want today, is there any place for innovation? In other words – looking at what they will need tomorrow.

As Henry Ford said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

From the iPhone (more than 516 million sold) and iPad (more than 68 million sold) to the Rubik’s Cube (more than 350 million sold) and the Ford Model T (more than 15 million sold) the great success stories of retail came from innovation. It is what Peter Thiel called the “zero to one” moment, the creation of something that fulfils a need we didn’t know we had.

It is the fulfilment of need, not chasing wants that should be driving technology in this sector and all others. Technological development in this area is woefully lacking across all areas.

Take the example of selling ‘smart’ technology to the hotel industry. There is a multitude of companies offering smart doors, smart blinds, smart everything. All built around the idea of ‘isn’t this tech cool’ while seemingly all offering basically the same thing. Except one firm I have come across.

This company started from a customer-centric approach and considered what the hotels they targeted actually needed. The answer was to end one of the biggest costs for hotels the world over, with just $5 of technology. Their solution, an IoT system with motion sensors, timers and the like, stops the flow of water from hotel taps. This may sound like something small, but when a cup dropping into a sink and blocking the drain can lead to flooding that destroys 13 floors and costs millions to repair – as happened at one hotel – and flooding is the biggest damage cost to hotels the world over – it is a solution hotels need. Not shiny, not ‘exciting’, but needed.

This all poses the question, how do we get out of this blind alley of finding out wants, and get back to servicing needs?

The answer is to bring the person back in. People are not a collection of data points, no matter how much some may wish they were so. They are individuals who possess, as shown by Abraham Maslow, a hierarchy of needs. Rather than finding new and better ways to collect data on their customers, thereby allowing for them to be pushed more things they might want, retailers should find new and better ways to make their customers happy by fulfilling their actual needs.

One example comes immediately to mind: I was recently shopping for a new buggy for my daughter. As any parent will know, there is a monumental amount of choice in this area, with different qualities and price points. However, I only really ever considered one company, John Lewis. While at the more costly end for the type of buggy I wanted, I was happy to spend the extra. From start to finish in buying something and beyond the transaction itself, John Lewis cares about keeping its customers happy. To them, I am an individual that is treated as such, not just a set of data points to sell to.

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check out this post on When Will We Accept That Smartphones Are Addictive?

If you fail a university course or lose your job because you are so distracted by your smartphone then is the phone manufacturer to blame? Is addiction the problem?

It sounds like a stupid question, but think about it slightly differently. The tobacco and alcohol industries both invest heavily in programmes designed to prevent and treat addiction – likewise with the gambling industry. Any industry selling a product that could potentially be addictive is forced to take measures to prevent addiction, such as funding awareness programmes or treatment charities.

You can argue that the measures are not enough. Gambling companies want to encourage gambling, not stop their customers logging in and placing bets, but most organisations are responsible. The gambling companies don’t want a wave of online poker addicts meaning their entire industry is more heavily regulated or closed completely. The drinks companies want you enjoy a good night out, but not to the extent that you rely on drinking their products every night and sleeping rough. Addictive products have a place in society when they are used responsibly.

But are we ignoring the addictive nature of smartphones? Try taking away someone’s phone today and see how long they can cope without it. Look around on a train or bus and see how many people are lost to the real world, gazing blankly into their phone. Phone separation, or battery status, is now a genuine source of anxiety for many people.

The Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive recently said that constant use of an iPhone is actually misuse. He uses an Apple Watch to filter the number of notifications he personally has to interact with. What he is implying is that most people are constantly distracted by their phone. The product is being misused and this is the man who designed the iPhone.

When Tim Cook was asked if the iPhone creates poor social behaviour he dodged the question, but now we are a decade into the smartphone era the data is starting to arrive. The Wall Street Journal recently published research indicating that college students who left their phone outside the lecture theatre – and therefore were more focused on the class – scored a full grade higher. Academics believe that the intellectual reliance on smartphones is having a seriously adverse effect on our mental skills, such as problem solving and creativity.

Apple and Samsung do all they can to encourage us to use our phones even more. Researchers suggest that the average American interacts with their phone at least 80 times a day. When the Financial Times profiled how British teenagers relate to their phones, they found that 13-year-olds feel a closer relationship to their phone than to other family members. The phone has become a family member. What happens when we move beyond smartphones to wearables and implants?

I’ve talked for several years to corporate leaders about how they need to change the way they talk to customers because the way that customers talk to each other has changed. It’s obvious really. When is the last time you called a family member for a catch-up? In fact when is the last time you called anyone or answered a call from a number that isn’t in your contact list? Voice calls feel disruptive today when compared to texting. It’s a lot to expect the recipient of a call to drop everything they are doing so they can focus on a conversation with you.

Conversation is now largely through text and social networking platforms. Families are held together by Facebook. Kids share activities from their day via Snapchat. I’m not an anthropologist, but I can see that in just ten years there has been a complete revolution in how humans interact and communicate. There must surely be an effect on how we process information and learn – we just don’t know what will change at this point. It’s still too early and change is coming so fast.

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check out this post on Busting The Myths About Technology For Seniors

There is a sobering thought from telecoms giant Ericsson: “Technology will never move as slowly as it does today”.

This is good news for companies which want to sell faster internet connections, devices which can do more things and be more connected, but what about those people who are left behind?

It’s often thought that almost no-one is. Talk to social workers who look after the homeless and drug addicted and you’ll learn that even those who have nothing, have a mobile phone. But there are some people who are locked out by technology.

They are those for whom technology has passed them by. It’s important to remember that they are old, not stupid. It doesn’t help that many of the devices designed for older people are labelled “simple” with the negative connotation that the word might have when you think of a person being simple.

The two big myths about technology for older people are that the products need to be “simple” and that the customers need to be taught to use technology.

The thing which is missing here is familiarity. It’s not technology which is intrinsically difficult, it’s how you understand it. I collect typewriters and took my 1930s Imperial over to my mother so that she could teach me how to set the tab stops and margins. Hand a twelve year old a cassette recorder or millennial a slide projector and they will struggle.

What older people need is technology they feel comfortable with. It’s easy to think that double-tapping and swiping are “natural” but they are not. They are a learned behaviour. Indeed someone used to a mechanical world will press harder on a screen when an icon fails to react because they are used to having to force metal contacts together to make a connection. Pressing harder used to work.

There is a vicious circle of not making products older people can understand, because older people don’t buy them and so the customers get left further and further behind. The chip manufacturer MediaTek produces reference designs: recipes for how to use its chips so that phone manufacturers can make products with minimal research and design. The reference design for its ‘old people’ phones is appalling, but the majority of Chinese factories unfortunately follow the recipe to the letter.

It is not worth most manufacturers’ time in doing the raw research and developing the right solutions because the phones sell in comparatively small volumes and at very low prices. It’s worth making your £200 Android phone better and different when you will sell tens of thousands, but the low volume senior phones get unwanted and confusing features like microSD card slots and dual SIM, when deeply concave buttons would be of more use to a customer with shaky fingers.

A fantastic guru on accessible technology is Ian Hosking, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge’s department of engineering. He’s done a lot of work on the design and technology curriculum for A level students, for mobile phone companies and the National Health Service. He says that a familiar way of providing technology for older people is through providing an operator style system they can call. There are now services available which do this and he described them to me as “spot on as everyone knows what an operator is”.

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