Yes, hello, everything!

Look! Nice to have?

 

In every product specification there are a plenty of design details that would make the product better, but are not really needed for providing the critical functionality. Not a must, nice to have, they say.

And in every product team, there are people who then need to implement these features, knowing that the typical user will never use the results of their work. 

When you connect a trailer to our car and try to reverse, the parking radar warns about the fact that the rear sensors are not in use. Instead of the normal animation, a picture of a car with a trailer is shown on the screen.

I don’t know if this feature is available in every Korean car these days, but I am quite sure that the majority of car users will never experience it. Yet, when you do, it feels great to see that somebody somewhere has thought about a less common use case and managed to convince a cost-cutting manager that the idea should be implemented. It is what premium is made of.

The design award of the week goes to all designers and engineers who work on details that are rarely seen by the end user but give the product that last little touch of premium.

Nice to have, indeed.

 

Light marketing

 

 

It is getting colder here now, but it is not the cold that kills you (you can always put more clothes on), it is the darkness. 

In the war against the dark side, every idea, device and placebo measure is appreciated and needed. The local electricity company, Umeå energi, has seen the light and provided the city commuters with therapy on the bus stops.

I am sure that they are trying to sell me something, but a company that helps people fight depression in the midst of dark times can’t be all bad. It is worth a design award.

 

About customer loyalty and keeping your marketing promises

 

Had a less than perfect air travel experience last week.

Because of poor ticket availability, hearing the warning bells ring, we had to book a route with two relatively tight connections. The first leg went fine, but then little by little it all started to fall apart.

Firstly, the second plane boarded late “due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft” (doesn’t it make you mad when they say that?), but we figured out we’d still make it if all else goes well. It didn’t. We rolled for fifty meters and then returned to wait for a mechanic because of “a technical failure”. To inquiries about how people could still make their connections, the purser replied that he is not a magician. A night in an airport hotel it was, then.

That wasn’t the most annoying thing on the flight, though.

On the plane there was extensive marketing going on about free Internet onboard. On the back of every seat they had stickers like this:

 

This gave us hope that we could at least make a witty social media remark about the world’s most punctual airline later.

What we got, however, was this:

Unable to connect to the server, that is. I would have been perfectly happy without wifi on the flight, but after frequent trying with similar error messages I felt really disappointed and somehow even more mad about the delay too. It was a prime example about how not to market a new service to an end user.

But all this doesn’t matter in the end. I know we will be taking the same airline next time again. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, we don’t have too many options from our town. Secondly, this airline deals out this:

This bait for the children onboard has resulted in our son becoming the most brand loyal airline customer I have ever seen. Every time we fly, he checks which company we will be using, because “the other one does not give you toys”.

So as a consequence of a one-euro bag, our whole family ends up preferring the same carrier time and time again.

How is that for a return on investment?

The Internet makes me appreciate creative work

 

Since the post about my creative block a couple of weeks ago, I have considered recognition of creativity in the Internet age.

We all know how anybody today can be an author and how amateur videos online get publicity like never before. The only thing you need for publishing a creative deed is an Internet connection.

A common claim is that because of all this, the Internet generation no longer understands the value of professional creative work. You won’t need newspapers when you can read free blogs, and there is no point of paying an expert for high quality photographs when you can ask the crowd to provide a cloudful of shots.

What I have been thinking about is the exact opposite.

Writing this blog has made me admire professional writing even more. It takes time and dedication to do this well and I no longer have fantasies about becoming an author (well, I still have, but I can now better assess how realistic they are...).

I also enjoy quality journalism more. Finding interesting topics and investigating important phenomena is hard work. Writing captivating articles about them is even harder. A knowledgeable well-written article on a burning matter is a rare luxury these days.

Similarly, comparing mobile snapshot art (like the one above) with high quality pictures and films in the Internet can make people acknowledge the work and vision behind great photography. I simply can’t do this with my camera.

I assume the same would apply to an aspiring garage band. It may be easier to approve the role of an experienced producer and professional marketing when you have tried distributing recordings from the band’s own website with little success.

So if you are journalist doing background research for a large reportage, an author struggling with a new novel, a professional photographer working long nights to get that perfect shot or a producer fine-tuning the next hit single in a studio, I guess what I am trying to say is: Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

Building blocks of innovation

 

For the past few weeks, our home has been a construction site again.

This time, we have been building various things of Lego. My role has mainly been a block digger for the three-year-old chief architect.

The amount of imagination and diversity in his grand plans never seizes to amaze me. The product can be of any size, shape and colour – and be combined with pieces of any size, shape and colour.

The roadmaps are flexible too: When something does not fit in the plan or the supply chain is unable to deliver a block in time, he just builds something different, in no time. And the customer always seems to be happy. Talk about agile development!

In a world of weekly reports, long-term CRM templates, mile-long product specifications and product backlogs, this is a merry factory. 

The only thing that makes me a little sad is that I can’t help wondering what makes little boys that build this:

 

 

drive this when they grow up:

  

 

Anyway, the design award of the week goes to Lego for providing the building blocks for dreams.

Apparently, some people keep the spirit when they grow up and keep building their dream Lego installations. Not having the time or the space is surely just an excuse...

While being a professional Lego builder might not be a viable vocation for everybody, I believe we all would benefit of a dose of similar attitude in our work. You know what the standard answer from my son is when I ask why he decided to build what he is building?

– Why not?

Ordinary and happy

 

 

I have been reading quite a lot of books lately. What strikes me is that in most them people are unhappy. Things go wrong, then turn to worse, before – sometimes – there is shimmer of hope in the end. 

I find it depressing. Why can’t a nice, easy life make a good story? I understand the dynamic powers of sunshine after rain and love after grief, but that is mostly not what life is about. Life is mostly ordinary. With some highs and lows of course, but mainly average. And most people are quite happy with that.

The same applies to businesses. Yes, there are a few examples where people believe in their dreams, have it hard for awhile and then become billionaires, but most business struggle, manage and grow modestly at best. Most people are happy with that too.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think most people aim for anything more. Doing OK most of time and running a local business that doesn’t fail is just fine.

Quite many are happy to be ordinary. Ordinary, but happy. Ordinary and happy. I think it is a great target.

Yet, when you look at what people post in social media, you see exquisite dinners, beautiful scenery, exotic drinks, incredible success stories and massive investment rounds. Not reporting the normal has become the norm. 

We need more stories about boring people that are doing well. About small things that made someone feel good in the middle of the grey and the bleak, success stories about people in small offices content with managing the daily routines without suffering heavily in the process. Stories about happy ordinary people.

Forget Rags to riches. I hereby declare Ordinary and happy the new cool ideal. One does not have to be terminally ill to appreciate the simple things in life.

 

Blogger's block

 

 

It has been a while since the last time I published something on this blog. In fact, it’s been almost three months, so it is hard to call it just a summer break anymore (which in deed it was in July and August). 

I have been thinking about it, though, and meaning to post something for a couple of weeks now, but somehow never really got round to it. Clearly, I have no obligation to write so it should be OK to leave it until it feels fun again, but I started wondering why I have ended up postponing this.

Is it just that going back to weekly routines after the holidays is always difficult and the first weeks often less productive?

Or could it be that I have now, after 46 blog entries (it doesn’t sound that many, but it has taken me seven months to write them), reached a crisis moment? You know, something similar to the seven-year itch in relationships and the culture shock one gets after a couple of months in a foreign country? Or the moment in a new start-up when you realise after all the excitement that it is actually hard work, even slightly boring at times.

Is there a block that every blog artist reaches after 46 entries?

For the blogger, this is the time to wonder what the point of the blog is. Contemplate a moment what makes one write when only a few good friends and relatives read the pieces, what drives the work when the early enthusiasm is gone. What do you get? Is it worth it?

Would I be better off not writing? I guess not. Having the blog has been fun and it clarifies my thinking. The blog keeps me alert and observing my surroundings as I try to find things to note down. It also serves as a nice material archive for business presentations. So I definitely want to go on. 

What do you do then, when it is tough to find the motivation to write the next entry, when the local people around you all act strange and don’t seem to understand it, when a new job in that great start-up feels dull for the first time?

You just keep going. Left, right, left, right, one more, one more, and now together, keep on trying, keep on trying...

There you go. 47.

Holidaze!

 

I am on holiday now. It is cold and it is raining, but I am doing fine as there is beer in the fridge and the Internet connection is good.

To continue still a bit on ECPS and how tough it seems to be these days to take time off, I want to share a hilarious product detail that I hope gets everybody to the right holiday spirit:

Holiday jackets now have pockets with metal shielding so that you have a place where your mobile phone certainly has no coverage.

Thank you, Social Suicide, for fighting boring menswear etiquette and for clothing details that make me laugh. You get this week’s design award.

Enjoy your summer!

3G makes my holidays better

 

Summer is upon us. You know it when all newspapers seem to be writing articles that warn of not relaxing during the holiday season. The evil in the stories is always the all-encompassing, pervasive and exhaustive mobile technology that does not allow for breaks. As an example: the latest story of this kind I just saw in Taloussanomat (in Finnish).

Oh, puh-leeze! This kind of thinking should have died with the dinosaurs.

I am now working from our summer cottage and I have two laptops, several tablets and a bagful of mobile phones with me. There is now a 3G mobile network too. And you know what – it is just wonderful!

All the devices have On/Off buttons and email that can be configured not to connect automatically so that I will not be interrupted when I have more important things to do (such as starting the barbecue or throwing stones to the sea with my son), but they allow my to follow work just enough not to worry.

I understand that it takes a dose of self-c (control and confidence) to do this right, but we should give up the old ideal of perfect holidays being a block of four weeks totally disconnected in the woods. I believe most modern people find that more stressful than being disturbed a few times during their holidays.

Could somebody please write a summer feature that commends mobility for providing us the possibility to expand summer holidays to a two-month long relaxing fiesta at the summer cottage?

 

Smoke gets in your head

 

After last week’s UID event, we ended up having a whisky (maybe two, or was it three?) at our place. One of the sips was of Smokehead.

In a way, they have done vodka marketing on whisky. The packaging is distinctive in its contemporary style and the product is clearly segmented, not for everybody but for individual and modern peat lovers. This is refreshing in the midst of the a-bit-too-traditional whisky market.

A search in the Internet gets you a lot of discussion about the origins of the water of life in question. The trick is that they don’t tell what distillery the whisky comes from. It is only marked as an Islay single malt.

All this works, because in the bottle you find the authentic stuff. It is definitely smoky and characteristic, and the quality is there, so you get what the story promises.

Add to that the nice packaging and a little bit of mystery and there you have it: a good whisky UX. At the least, it gives you a good discussion topic – and that is, after all, what whisky is all about.

Smokehead gets the design award of the week for provoking a good discussion.