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Social media could transform the UK National Health Service and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard.
Make sure to check the related links on the right for some innovative examples of people-driven public services. |
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collections along the way
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Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone maker, faces increasing competition from the likes of Apple and Google Android. Identifying emerging trends and building new technologies could be key to cementing its future, reports Claudine Beaumont, technology editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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Es scheint im Zeitalter des Web 2.0 ein Konzept mit Erfolgsgarantie zu sein - Unternehmen fordern Kreative und Kunden auf, im Internet neue Produkte zu gestalten. Damit die Ideensuche wirklich funktioniert, sollten Initiatoren acht Empfehlungen beachten.
A few years ago I was enjoying brunch with some friends at the Tavern at Lark Creek, which is rightfully known for excellent food and attentive and friendly service. Part way through the meal I had to excuse myself to use the bathroom. The bathroom was up some windy stairs, and was very nicely appointed, even more nicely treated than the dining room itself. As restaurant bathrooms go it was very pleasant, but I did not give it much thought.
At the end of the meal before hitting the road for a slightly long drive, I decided to make another pit-stop. This time I saw a downstairs bathroom, which was not as nice as the first one I had used upstairs (thought it was not by any means unpleasant). It became clear that I had taken a wrong turn the first time and had used the employee bathroom.
I could have chosen to be miffed that the restaurant didn’t ensure that the guest bathroom was as good as it could be. Instead, I realized that the quality of the employee bathroom was one sign that the restaurant cared for its staff, and recognized that taking care of the EX – the employee experience – is a prerequisite to a consistently high quality UX – user (customer) experience. They realized that “customer centric” does not mean ignoring employees. In fact it’s just the opposite, if you want to offer truly good service to customers, you need to start with treating your staff right.
As Olive Garden President David Pickens puts it, “It’s very difficult for the experience of the guests to exceed the experience of the staff.”
When you look at the company’s that consistently deliver superior UX – Zappos, Amazon, Google, Southwest, Starbucks back in the old days, Levenger, Niemen Marcus, the one thing they all have in common is that they pay huge amounts of attention to the quality of life of their staff, creating a culture and infrastructure of training that help their staff do the right thing, even when there isn’t an exact rule about what to do in a novel situation.
As an extreme example, read the letter that Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote to employees when the acquisition by Amazon was announced. It is manically focused on the culture of the company and the worklife of the staff, superseding just about every other concern. “Culture” shows up 23 time in it, 7 times in association with “unique”, and 21 times with “brand”. In other words, Hsieh makes an intimate connection between the internal culture of the company and the external brand as it appears to customers – he recognizes that the EX is directly correlated with UX.
An NY Times article illustrates the large effects that can accumulate from small nudges that influence behavior:
[T]he back-of-the-cab swipe has emerged as an unlikely savior for New York’s taxi industry, even as other cities’ fleets struggle to find fares in a deep recession.
Overall ridership and revenue have increased. More and more fares are being paid with credit cards, even for shorter rides. And tips for drivers, usually an early casualty of tough times, are up sharply, double over the pre-plastic days.
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The increase in tips, however, may have less to do with New Yorkers’ generosity than with the preset amounts suggested to passengers on the taxi’s software systems. In many of the city’s cabs, riders are offered options for their tip depending on the length of the ride. For fares under $15, a screen prompts tips of $2, $3 or $4; the numbers can range from 15 percent to 30 percent for higher fares. The presets are used about 70 percent of the time, according to industry estimates.
This perfectly illustrates the notion of giving people “nudges” – little hints about how to behave – and how influential this can be, even when it’s quite transparent as in this case.
The key was making the credit card experience much easier than the usual pain-in-the-neck that it is in other US cities, where the driver reluctantly drags out an old-school mechanical swipe reader, or rubs your card with a pen on a carbon paper receipt.
Although New York was late to bring credit cards to cabs, it leapfrogged ahead by pioneering a customer-friendly system that required no signed receipts, no minimum payment and an interactive device that let passengers swipe the card and add tips themselves.
This has opened up credit card use for short trips. Like Las Vegas’ use of chips, the detachment from physical cash “lubricates”, shall we say, people’s willingness to part with their money.
Once considered a convenient payment method for longer trips, often to the area’s airports, credit cards are now being used for shorter, cheaper rides, the type of $5 rainy-day indulgences that were once handled exclusively with cash.
Amos Tamam, president of VeriFone Transportation Systems, whose card readers are in 6,700 cabs, or about half of the city’s fleet, said his company’s average credit-card fare is now less than $15, down from $16 a year ago.
“The more usage you get with credit cards, the lower the average ticket is going to go,” Mr. Tamam said.
An NY Times article illustrates the large effects that can accumulate from small nudges that influence behavior:
[T]he back-of-the-cab swipe has emerged as an unlikely savior for New York’s taxi industry, even as other cities’ fleets struggle to find fares in a deep recession.
Overall ridership and revenue have increased. More and more fares are being paid with credit cards, even for shorter rides. And tips for drivers, usually an early casualty of tough times, are up sharply, double over the pre-plastic days.
…
The increase in tips, however, may have less to do with New Yorkers’ generosity than with the preset amounts suggested to passengers on the taxi’s software systems. In many of the city’s cabs, riders are offered options for their tip depending on the length of the ride. For fares under $15, a screen prompts tips of $2, $3 or $4; the numbers can range from 15 percent to 30 percent for higher fares. The presets are used about 70 percent of the time, according to industry estimates.
This perfectly illustrates the notion of giving people “nudges” – little hints about how to behave – and how influential this can be, even when it’s quite transparent as in this case.
The key was making the credit card experience much easier than the usual pain-in-the-neck that it is in other US cities, where the driver reluctantly drags out an old-school mechanical swipe reader, or rubs your card with a pen on a carbon paper receipt.
Although New York was late to bring credit cards to cabs, it leapfrogged ahead by pioneering a customer-friendly system that required no signed receipts, no minimum payment and an interactive device that let passengers swipe the card and add tips themselves.
This has opened up credit card use for short trips. Like Las Vegas’ use of chips, the detachment from physical cash “lubricates”, shall we say, people’s willingness to part with their money.
Once considered a convenient payment method for longer trips, often to the area’s airports, credit cards are now being used for shorter, cheaper rides, the type of $5 rainy-day indulgences that were once handled exclusively with cash.
Amos Tamam, president of VeriFone Transportation Systems, whose card readers are in 6,700 cabs, or about half of the city’s fleet, said his company’s average credit-card fare is now less than $15, down from $16 a year ago.
“The more usage you get with credit cards, the lower the average ticket is going to go,” Mr. Tamam said.
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NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, has published a 45-page discussion paper on how transforming healthcare to involve the public, i.e. the creation of people-powered public services, can save money and save lives.
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Nokia user researcher Jan Chipchase has posted an in-depth presentation and paper on designing mobile money services for emerging markets:
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Mobile phones for development and profit: a win-win scenario Rohit Singh Overseas Development Institute, 2009 The number of mobile subscribers globally is estimated to have reached four billion in 2008 (ITU, 2008), with mobile penetration reaching 61%. Around 58% of subscribers are in developing countries, and subscriber growth in Africa – more than 50% per year – is the highest in the world. Studies have shown that this rapid increase in mobile penetration has contributed significantly to economic growth. Fuss, Meschi and Waverman (2005) looked at 92 countries, both developed and developing, to estimate the impact of mobile phones on economic growth for the period 1980 to 2003. They found that a 10% difference in mobile penetration levels over the entire sample period implies a 0.6% difference in growth rates between otherwise identical developing nations. The effect of mobiles was twice as large in developing countries as in developed ones (Waverman, 2005). Mobile phones have brought three kinds of benefits (id21, 2007). First, incremental benefits, improving what people already do – offering them faster and cheaper communication, often substituting for costly and risky journeys. Fishermen in India, for example, can earn more money and waste less fish by phoning coastal markets to see which market has a shortage of supply. Second, transformational benefits that offer something new. Innovative applications, such as m-banking and m-commerce, are bringing banking services to millions for the first time, and enabling people to use mobile phones to pay for goods and services. Third, production benefits that result from the creation of new livelihoods, not only through professional telecommunications jobs but also through activities like re-selling air-time or phone cards. Since the liberalisation of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector in 2000, the industry has become a key source of new jobs in the economy, employing about 5,500 professionals, and responsible, indirectly, for another 450,000 jobs. (via MobileActive) |
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David Leggett provides on his UX Booth blog an overview of what the future of interface design has to offer.
He covers various upcoming interface technologies such as heads up displays, gesture-based interfaces, spatial motion interfaces, augmented reality, other sensory-based interfaces, and smart surfaces. |