Under the hood of Pinterest

Hi there (good folks of Pinterest),

the link that you provided to re-open my ticket did not work, hence the email:


Reactivation did not work this time either. Or it did .. until I tried to log in again:

Oops!
Your account has been deactivated, but your pins are safe and sound.
Please contact Support and we'll get you pinning again soon.

1) So please do something to release this burden of my email/username pajaratorio@gmail.com
2) Why on earth "are my pins safe and sound"? I deleted my account to remove them! Why do you keep that information?! Really!!

Personal touch

Today I received a letter from Gässling. First I had no idea about the reason, but I soon realized. Also pretty soon the letter made me smile. In the end I was laughing despite that they just had informed that their original ambitious design had failed in few cases and they were sending me spare buttons.

I have been writing about how an error in service or product should be mended for the customer.
Attached pic tells a story how personal touch can make a difference when something goes wrong.

Naturally personal touch requires actual use of personality leading big companies being hesitant with that kind of approach. Fresh exceptions can be found among recent web startups. They boldly use language that is both approachable and clear for users.

Mending an error smoothly is proved to create even more loyal customers. I cannot evaluate this case objectively, but clearly I'll be happy to change my buttons in case something really happens to them and will not hesitate to buy my next pair of underwear from Gässling =)

A job too well done?

In the morning I made our regular oat porridge and while rinsing the pot I started to think that how far the qualities of oat flakes are tuned to enable easy washing of the pot.

Sometimes doing a really good work can end up ruining the rest of the process. Lately I been pondering how to open up this paradox with an example. This might not be the best of examples, but I promise to discuss this issue further in the next post about What hit Nokia.


If I ever got an assignment to develop a better porridge, I would probably consider rinse-ability as one of the most important issues to solve. Likely I would find it as a pain point in user research and likely that would be something what I could develop and the management would like it because it could be easily measured..

Totally other story might be that is it wise.
People might appreciate actually more organic, unprocessed flakes.
But that wouldn't be my business - so most probably I'd end up overdoing and ruining the whole point of eating oat porridge.

Keeping finnish industries competitive by design thinking - Herrmans

As a bicyclist I was thrilled to see a Finnish bicycle part manufacturer Herrmans seeking for a industrial designer the other year.
Not only that at some point I had spotted that the company might use some design thinking, but in the end because my good friend and extremely talented designer Mikael Heikkilä got the position.

I have been eagerly waiting to see the results of his design efforts and it really starts to have an effect on the brand previously known for OEM manufacturer.

I just replaced original Specialized grips with these Endorfin 3D grips.
I love the tiny detail and the caring thinking in how he has marked the left and right as well as the up directions. Marking these directions means that I can push them with ease and confidence to the bar and that just makes me feel good. -A feeling that is sometimes hard to justify in the R&D meetings, but makes a significant effect on the customer.

 

Design story - Gässling underwear

Marketing sometimes fails to deliver the original design intent to the customer. Since the contradiction between design and marketing has been intriguing me, I was really exited when I had the chance to discuss with Joakim how a garment that now supports a whole new underwear brand Gässling was designed and is now marketed.

I wish all the best for Joakim and I just checked that you can still order some treats for christmas ;)

The name
In short, Gässling is a Swedish underwear brand that makes premium eco underwear for style conscious men. From the very beginning we wanted to create a brand based on Swedish values that was primarily focused on an international market.

We knew that we wanted to use organic cotton and that they should be manufactured in a responsible manner and we needed a brand name that could reflect this as well as look Swedish. The name should fulfill these criteria; be Swedish but not look strange in English, speak of nature, have a local connection to Malmö where we’re based and to be easy to remember.

We started to analyse different traits of nature and eventually we got hooked on the goose. We thought it was a good animal for us because there are lots of geese in Malmö and it has very sympathetic traits. For instance if a goose gets injured during flight, another goose will stay behind until it gets better or dies. It took about 1.5 months and a lot of debating to come up with the name Gässling, which means gosling in Swedish (goose baby).

The product
It’s usually said that in order to break into a saturated market your product need to outperform the competition tenfold.
I wouldn’t say that our underwear is ten times better than other underwear but we have done our very utmost to create some killer garments. We tried to list all available pain points and address them one at a time. Some details that are worth mentioning are that we don’t have a care instruction tag inside, but they are instead printed for better comfort. The waistband is covered in fabric for a smooth feel and there are no seams in the back or sides of the garment to make it as clean as possible.
Our second - more aspirational product is the first ever (as far as I know) tight fitting boxer with an openable waistband. To give it an extra exclusive look we used fabric covered buttons that were all custom made to match the color of the main fabric.

What’s next
We have now been online a few days and even though we are still very far from sold out we can see that the main traffic is coming from outside of Sweden and predominately from the US. This tells us that we probably made some correct decisions when creating the brand. Now we need to turn those page views into purchases but if we succeed with that is another story. 

Better service through accepting mistakes?

Just like people reveal their fundamental characteristics under stress, so do services. Giving feedback to service provider creates a conflict that reveals how well the service culture is understood and cultivated in a company.

Being passionate about services I usually tell if there is something wrong - because I care. Regular customer do not usually care - they just change company. Giving feedback has offered a front row seat in observing how is feedback taken. Companies operate through individuals and their defence mechanisms usually determine how feedback is received. -This is where service culture steps in.

If a company does not take a stand on 1) how feedback should be received, 2) how and within what limits the situation is settled and 3) how the feedback is eventually processed, the employee falls back on ones own defenses or in best case builds on the self confidence, wits and positivity.

Katja Okkonen writes in Helsingin Sanomat about poor service in the article Saitko surkeaa palvelua? Tästä se johtuu.  She points out that following rules and regulations diligently and being afraid of mistakes often creates poor user experiences:
-Tuulikki Juusela calls finnish culture a culture of regulations, which could be interpreted as bureaucracy. Hiding behind rules and regulations has become common and common sense is used less and less.
- It is easy for me to agree when Juusela assumes that finnish people have gained a significant fear of mistakes. We are highly cautious for our manager or coworker to give negative feedback. Current economical turbulence has also made the fear of losing one's work very real. When customer gives negative feedback, the fear of mistake and fear of losing one's work is combined and that can create a strong need to be right.
-Janne Löytänä has written that the best way to receive negative feedback is to response promptly and personally. Löytänä further reminds that compensation is actually cheap marketing for a company. If a company is able to turn negative experience to a satisfactory, the customer becomes a 15 times more loyal than a regular customer - and that must create a lot of good reputation.
-While Juusela mentions that Finland is a true self service culture with all possible technical innovations to support it, Camilla Reinboth takes another perspective reminding that engineering culture might also lead thinking that errors in product can be fixed when they occur. With services employees need to know how to deal with mistakes before they occur.

Consumer complaint case: Talisker whisky with a fly

When I poured a glass of Talisker whisky last autumn and found a partly dissolved fly from my glass, I had a romantic vision about small distillery and scotts and I though that I'd better inform the guys in Talisker that some part of their process is not bulletproof.

After a long search for contact information I managed to get an email address through discussion group in Talisker Facebook group and I sent my mail with these pictures.
After three months of email discussion with Diageo (owner of Talisker) I was requested to send the sample with the fly AND the remaining bottle to UK to be studied.

I have to say that all the romance about Scotland and small scottish distilleries being proud of their products vanished: Diageo representative quite clearly implied that I had put the fly into my glass to hoax a replacement bottle. Any kind replacement was not even discussed, although I would have been happy for that in the beginning.

Conclusion: When you find a fly in your Talisker whiskey - don't even bother to complain.

Final report


Dear Perttu *******,


Thank you for raising your concern with regards to a fly in your 70cl bottle of Talisker. We have received a 4cl sub sample along with the bottle that you had sent back to our Technical Centre for investigation. On receipt we noted that the bottle was 40% full and the 4cl sub sample contained a fly, there was no labelling on the sub sample. We have now completed analysis with the following results: The strength measured = 45.8% (Label strength indicated 45.8%) Higher alcohol congener analysis indicated that the sample in the bottle was a genuine sample of Talisker. Higher alcohol congener analysis indicated that the sub-sample was a genuine sample of Talisker. Sensory assessment found the sample to be similar in character to the control sample of Talisker with no off notes or tainting detected. The sub sample was filtered and was found to contain a fly measuring 2.6mm in length. Conclusions: The sample was filtered and was found to contain a fly measuring 2.6mm in length. As the sample was received open it is not possible to determine when the fly entered the sample. We would like to thank you for taking the time to return these samples to us for analysis, although we cannot ascertain at what point in our process the fly could have entered the product, due to the bottle being received open. The pictures initially provided also showed the fly was in the drinking glass and not in the bottle, again we do not have any evidence to support the claim of the fly in the bottle. Unfortunately we will have to close this concern as we have do not have any conclusive evidence to support the claim.  

Kind Regards,
Customer Account Manager

To complete the story I paste here also my response.
It's quite easy to see how Diageo could have solved this smoothly and hard to imagine why they decided not to pursue user satisfaction.

I was waiting for further comments from you, but thanks for informing that you agree with my species identification.

I wouldn't have needed to ask you that though. I saw it carefully enough to know that it was not part of Finnish fauna.

I actually thought that you guys care and my input would help somehow the quality of your products. I'm quite shocked that you think I went through all the trouble just to hoax you.

I also want to remind you that I asked three times that do you really need also the bottle or would the sample be enough. And you requested to have also the bottle, causing me even higher shipping cost. -In future I suggest that you tell the policy in early phase and save a bit of customers nerves and your reputation.

It is understandable that manufacturing processes have flaws. But when policies and communication have flaws or intentional difficulties, that is totally something else than understandable.

After your latest mail, I'm relatively pissed off and I'm going to publish your response on my blog.
On the meantime, I assume that you send me back the 40% of the bottle that was left. -Not that I'd drink it, but still it's mine to pour into the sewer.

Sincerely,
 Perttu ******* 

Couple of weeks after this I received a delivery. It was quite sad moment, but mostly because I felt so bad for the company I felt so strongly before. -Somehow the whisky just wasn't that good anymore..

User observation for better breakfast?

For a moment I was sure that I was a subject in a user study:

I was balancing on my left foot, with two plates on my left hand, trying to push slider door open with my right foot to place the milk jar from my right hand into the fridge. All this while the waiter observed.

Unfortunately this was not user study - they were happy with their service.

Graphics work: theme for a homescreen clock

My strengths are on the product and services concepts and not so much on the graphical design. Despite the tendency I sometimes have artistic urges to fulfill.

Not so long ago, we realized a co-operation possibility with my ingenious colleague, who has coded a clock/timer application to Ovi Store on his spare time. I had a vision to work with fonts covered by paint or dirt and he could use a theme for his application. As in design work generally - there was a feeling of magic in bring this -this time artistic- vision alive. Theme builds on the Symbian Anna software refresh.


Here's the preview of the theme, but you can as well download the whole application to your smartphone to get a better picture :)
 

Industrial design - fighting against windmills

Old colleague of mine left the company to continue her PhD in an academic project in metal industry. The main problem is the old one - how to get users needs and opinions better into consideration in product development.

The same issue continues to puzzle in all branches where R&D plays a role in success or failure of products. I see this area as area where industrial designers operate. We are supposed to be the answer to the very problem! -Why have we failed?


Industrial designers have learned the methods of user centered design, we can conduct user studies and usability studies, we can recognize behaviors and see the parts which could be improved. We can even improve service processes. Why majority of the industrial designers skip most of this and work only on trends, forms, surfaces and finishes?
-Could it in the end be the lack of competence?
-Could it be the strict organization models?
-Credibility in the eyes of management?
-One possibility is our own ambitions. Every industrial designer wanting to be a "Star Designer" - drawing masterpieces with just intuition.
-Or could the reason be the lack of terms and definitions for a industrial designer that not only makes an artistic interpretation of the actual product, but also finds and uses the user data to create a product proposition to this foundation?
-In the end, it might be just a matter of education and knowledge in the company management.



I have described the work of industrial designer as fighting against windmills. The management is slow, stubborn and resists change. All the little pieces of change and true needs of user that we can fight to the products are all little victories! -It's just to decide that which mills you want to fight against and by which means :)

Stupid users

The title might feel pompous.
After I add my motto; Never underestimate the stupidity of a human being - It surely sounds even worse.

My excuse is that I admit my stupidity also as a designer. We tend to overlook the challenges users have in their interaction with our designs. The issue is the same, the important thing is that we study the issue - what ever the point of view may be.
Demystifying Usability has some good thinking on How to deal with Stupid Users.

The main points to remember are:
1. Users who have trouble with designs and feel stupid lack a key behavior required in using most interfaces: Discovery and Exploration.
2. Users who struggle with interfaces and feel of incompetent do not notice or use features.
3. Users who struggle with designs that do not feel intuitive are not comfortable with interface elements that are too different.
4.Users who do not make interface design distinctions ignore complex or multi-step tasks.
5. Users that lack the confidence with computers have a thinner comfort barrier and a general helplessness.

Design for errors

Example of Nielsens usability principle "design for errors" emerges in this "there I fixed it" -type of improvement of attached traditional finnish craftmanship.

Another good principle of "keep it simple" has failed in this case and there is some reported cases, when somebody has carefully closed the door behind - and locked a poor soul into the hut. Then again the repair (red string going inside the door) is kind of simple too ;)

Powerpoint organizations

2003 Columbia space shuttle was hit by a 760g piece of insulation with life threatening result. The threat was analyzed and presented to managers for decision making. Decision was to take shuttle down as planned. Seven lives were lost.

Data visualization specialist Edward Tufte analyzed the slide that was used to communicate the threat and pointed out several reasons why Power Point is a wrong tool to communicate complex information for decision making.

Similarly, PowerPoint can be dramatically wrong tool for creating organizations compared to any nodal presentation.
A human way to use PowerPoint is to pursue harmony, balance and clarity. This can result as over simplifying organizations into boxes with arbitrary amount of size eventually linked with solid or dotted lines.
After a few years of continuous experience of organizational changes, I claim that boxes don't discuss and further, cross discipline UX specialist don't belong to any boxes.

Conclusion is that, if you want to "use UX professionals in all levels of your organization", but you don't want to increase your headcount, stop lying to yourself and admit that your organization will not be a UX driven one. -Possibility that a rationally thinking manager in resource pressure would create a PowerPoint box for cross disciplinary UX specialists is expected to be quite low.

Facebook now showing clearly what information is shared to applications

Facebook changed the way they present the information shared to 3rd parties through applications.

Now the information shared to 3rd parties is listed in clear language and creates a feeling of trust through it's transparency.

Xbox Live credit card hoax disquised as Automatic Renewal

I spotted an interesting line from my credit card bill, which said Xbox live 19,90.

This was clearly unauthorized charging since I paid extra attention to my choice of Live membership and payment method after warnings from my colleague who had previously experienced continuous charging of credit card.


I decided to remove my card data as once from my xbox. -Unfortunately this move had been thought at Microsoft headquarters. Removal was not possible to do on the xbox!! Instead the prompt asked to visit http://www.xbox.com/support for membership info and how to turn of automatical renewal...

At this point I can give you a hint. It's nowhere near there. You might get a better start from the address https://live.xbox.com. -The end result is not any better, but least that's wehere it is supposed to be..

The guidance what you'll in the end find is useless:
 

Ok, lets find that billing information then manually...
You'll probably find several errors from the system:

 

But if you hit the right spot, you'll find your billing information:

 

There it is finally; "Cancel my service".
-But let's first think for a moment that which service it was you wanted to cancel.......





Ok, here we go. Thumbs up everybody!!


 

Still not possible. -It Really is made impossible to cancel the automatic renewal and charging from the credit card!

Time for some conclusions:


I consider this a criminal credit card hoax, with the difference that this is done globally, diguised as legitimate and sealed with the human lazyness and self accusations. -And definitely not good businness on the long run.

Next: Calls to Consumer Agency and Microsoft.

Improving UX design by managerial decisions?

Original build of Kenwood kMix hand mixer had a power cord that could be rolled around the base of the mixer allowing a perfect fit to the table stand.

I fell in love with this feature and bought the mixer. The disappointment was huge when I found out that some "UX aware manager had clearly improved the design" by extending the cord for any of the usual reasons and simultaneously ruined the design.

I don't believe in the democracy of expertese.

Suddenly everything stops

Imagine that you rush into your hotel room with you hands full and drop your keycard to the floor when trying to shovel it into the main light switch while the door is closing behind you.

Suddenly you get a feeling that there's no rush and the best thing to do is crawl on the floor in total blackness.
-Further you can't avoid thinking that this was not considered, when the brilliant idea of key card operating main switch was introduced to hotel businnes.

Design for not-in-use

This soda maker shows an perfect example how some products are designed without the thinking that how they actually are used.

When do you actually see your newly purchased OBH soda maker looking like this? -The machine stays unused 99% of the time looking like it's literally missing parts. Only time you actually keep the bottle attached to the machine is when you make the soda. And that's actually when all other functions (like attaching the bottle instead of good looks) are critical components in creation of the user experience.

Feature improvement?

Apple shows an example, how to take a hit like a man and turn it into a success.

There is a new feature in the new iPod Shuffle:

You remember the last years model - which didn't have buttons, only voice UI.

This is solved then - even without seeing the figures.
-Let's see what happens on the touch phones area - are HW buttons getting even fewer or will there be new rise of user control.

Why satisfy to ultimate performance?

When analysing how to make a design for young women, that delivers the message about the ultimate performance - one usually get's lost.

Why is it so natural to express the performance and qualities for men? -Just draw the headlines on the paper and make it look functional piece.

Is it really in our DNA so strongly?
-We see a good pair of tits and we have a positive attitude on the content.
-Girls see amazing shoulders and they are open for a guy to tell more of himself..

Designing for women can be close to trying to hit a girl. You need to make your stand, claim your opinions, prove your usefullness, act according to expectations, be transparent on your deliveries and be -last but not least- adorable.