Serendipity and Learning

 Every company claims to be customer first. Yet, they bombard you from day 1 on cross selling, upselling, notifications (check the types of notifications on any app), phone calls, spam emails.  A grocery app has decided to add ads before the customer starts adding to the cart. It also sends me useless information on nutritional value of cabbage (yes, it does). Plus sends me useless offers on a continuous basis. I finally silenced notifications.  The ecom app sends me more scratch cards than I can ever itch. And I have not managed to use a single one yet.  Ditto with the payment app that sends me off on useless collections - stamps, tiles, destinations and what not.  The bank, has spammed me so much I have auto blocked most numbers.  And oh, the grocery app which got taken over a conglomerate, has suddenly offered me a personal loan.  If you are customer first, can you please stop it? Point being: How do you know when to stop? Is it so difficult? Put yo...

We upgraded our washing machine. After nearly a decade and a half or thereabouts. For good measure, we purchased the same brand and roughly the same capacity - since, well, we were used to the machine and as change averse as we are when it comes to washing clothes, we decided to stick to the brand. But little did we realise that the world has changed. From simple washing machines to fuzzy washing machines - nowadays they also use AI and IoT - to wash clothes. I think by the time the next generation of machines hit the market, we will have to offer it crypto coins, biometric scanners and use blockchain to identify the clothes and modes.  Jokes apart, after using it for a few days, I am fairly convinced, washing machine designers do not use the washing machines they designed.  The washing machine does not allow me to put wet clothes into it. Why do I put wet clothes, you ask? (Because I am a user and I have my quirks). But rational explanation - Some times clothes need to be scr...

 We replaced our washing machine after 15 odd years. In those 15 years, we had used exactly one setting of the machine. Everything else was pointless (and not for lack of exploring).  The older one had 4 options. This one has 8.  Water level options are the same though (I suspect you cant do much with it) - there seems to be a mapping of the level to the wash program - I havent cracked it yet. But the automatic function has been messing up things. It apparently weighs the load and then decides - but almost always its decisions seem to be wrong with the result that the clothes were not washed properly.  The beeps of the older machine were different - this one sounds odd (for now) We are still getting used to this machine.  So, ultimately, it is a washing machine. What would make it more user friendly? (No, please dont think IOT and app driven sms, notifications for a wash). I somehow feel it can be far more intuitive.  Clothes are X. Water level has to be Y ...

 The Hanyama puzzle is a puzzle I have been looking in vain to lay my hands on. Finally thanks to a friend, we got our first Hanyama puzzle. The image in blue is what is written on it. The puzzle offers no solution, except asking to work with your logic and intuition. Sure, you can search on youtube and crack it, but the kids are at it so far. One has been cracked thanks to one fellows intuition. The second one has been dissembled thanks to one persons perseverance - but it awaits reassembly.  The second image is the image of the Exploding Kittens rulebook. Earlier, in the pre-internet days, one had to read through the rule books and understand a game. Not any more. Youtube has videos by the makers and the players explaining the game. But I suppose one has to still have a rulebook, so the game has the rulebook with this message on it. 

Why would Lego want to build a Bugatti ? Because they can. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZQdlCQmzUAM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe> Build for Real, it says in the end. Lego is one of those brands that takes user engagement to a totally different level. The little one had already watched the video by the time it has reached the likes of me. Imagine the boy who is building a little car and he sees a huge, real car being built by Lego that actually runs - among other things. It catapults the imagination of the user to a level that is unachievable by others. Yes, therefore, why does Lego do it - because ONLY they can. When I build with Lego, I may build my own Bugatti (and even if I dont, it is still my Bugatti). Thats the user experience brands crave...

I had a chance to attend the first Experiential Training Summit in Bangalore today - thanks to the good people at Ozone . Organized by Center for Experiential Education , the conference, true to its name was all Experiential. The keynote by Vijay Padaki was good - only he can pull of what he did - combining esoteric theory into a simple package with timing and wit. It was followed by workshops - which were real, experiential workshops - where every participant got to do something or other. Whether it was by Satish of Somethings cooking or by Rajeev of Knolskape or by Ashley of Graphic Facilitation  or the Pankaj of Center of Creative Leadership or Anirban of Painted Sky . (I had to miss the last couple of workshops, but they did promise to be interesting - they were on storytelling and theatre). But that experience made it really worth it. Of course, its obvious that for an experiential training summit, the workshops would be experiential, but to pull it off is somethin...

The new Apple ad exemplifies this. Nowhere does it talk about the RAM or the OS or the Gorilla glass - it talks instead of the user. The person with the iPhone and what you as user can do with it. It is not about the greatness of the phone, but the power that the user has with the phone. It sounds obvious, but most often people talk about products and their greatness and not so much about about what a user can do with it. And linking this back to work - do you talk about your projects and programs or do you tell the user how it makes them powerful. Putting the user in the centre, as it were..

The little one was talking with passion about the Lego bricks that he has. He has a ton of them - and enjoys playing with them. The things he makes cannot be imagined by anyone - like it is for any other child. Every child goes into his or her own world when they play with these blocks. No other toy ever has sustained his (or any other childs) enthusiasm for such a long time. Lego knows - after all it has been in business for nearly a hundred years. There are new toys, fads, gimmicks, extensions, but Lego rules the roost. Yes, Lego is a consummate marketeer - they create new bricks, new themes, new ideas and they are as consumerist as they come - after all, kids WANT Lego. And Lego is a premium brand. But think about it, what makes them tick? For one, it is a premium brand - their products do not fail. They deliver what they promise - often much more than that. So, customer delight is almost a given. Second, their customer service is exemplary and I have experienced it myself - it is ...