Thursday June 02, 2005

Broken windows = broken business

Michael Levine has posted a potent preview of his upcoming book Broken Windows for Business / How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards (due this fall). This baby could have legs -- if the book delivers as promised in its downloadable introduction, Levine may build the most digestible business case yet for improving customer-facing spaces. A few snippets follow...

The broken windows theory states that something as small and innocuous as a broken window does in fact send a signal to those who pass by every day. If it is left broken, the owner of the building isn't paying attention or doesn't care. That means more serious infractions -- theft, defacement, violent crime -- might be condoned in this area as well. At best, it signals that no one is watching.

Broken windows indicate to the consumer that the business doesn't care -- either that it is so poorly run it can't possibly keep up with its obligations or that it has become so oversize and arrogant that it no longer cares about its core consumer. Either of these impressions can be deadly to a business, and we'll see examples of both as we proceed.

A broken window can be a sloppy counter, a poorly located sale item, a randomly organized menu, or an employee with a bad attitude. It can be physical, like a faded, flaking paint job, or symbolic, like a policy that requires consumers to pay for customer service. When the waiter at a Chinese restaurant is named Billy Bob, that's a broken window. When a call for help assembling a bicycle results in a twenty-minute hold on the phone (playing the same music over and over), that's a broken window. When a consumer asks why she can't return her blouse at the counter and is told, "Because that's the rule, that is a broken window" ... They're everywhere. Except at the really sharp businesses.

Looking forward to the release.

( Jun 02 2005, 02:10:34 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Think sexy -- at every point along the way

Want passionate users? Integrate sexiness into every aspect of your experience. Kathy Sierra makes a compelling case for holistic sexiness in any customer-facing interaction. It's something that designers of every stripe -- from product strategists to interaction designers to architects -- should heed.

Take the nearest computer book on your shelf and open it to a random interior page somewhere in the middle. Can you tell who the publisher is just by looking? Can you tell who the author is? Go a little further and start reading a paragraph. Now can you tell?

That's the problem.

The books might be easy to differentiate on a larger scale like, say, the level of a chapter or the whole book. A book from author "A" might cover the whole of the topic in a very different (and substantially better) way than author "B", but at smaller scales... can you tell the difference? Is there anything distinct about the look and feel? About the writing?

Physical products and experiences work the same way. I'm working to ensure that Sun's guest-facing environments benefit from a very similar treatment. Looking forward to seeing the fruits of these efforts realized.

( Jun 02 2005, 10:42:37 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]