All posts by Jaewoo Joo

Jaewoo teaches and writes about design thinking and behavioral economics for customer experience, new product development, and new product adoption. He is an associate professor of marketing and participating professor of experience design at Kookmin University.
Cases

Private Karaoke for two people

Leave a comment

I have long believed Asians go to Karaoke for team spirit. When a popular song appears on the screen, they show companisonship by standing up and singing all together. When a song is new, they start their own conversations with the next person. Regardless of whether they sing or talk, Karaoke is the place people confirm they are in the same camp.

 

 

However, I changed my belief about the function of Karaoke after having met a private Karaoke for two people in ShenZhen, China. This facility named as M-Bar is of the same size with a phone booth. This small place is not designed for comradeship or loyalty. Instead, it is designed for people to become absorbed in their own singing experience, the core feature of Karaoke. Although no one waits outside for their turns, a few passers by silently watch two people singing inside through the transparent windows. This facility shows the power of single households. Alternatively, different from my thoughts based on the Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, Chinese may not be collectivist but individualist.

 

Cases

Thompson, a Japanese paper clock

Leave a comment

Some products are stunningly beautiful. They include Balmuda toaster, Dyson’s hair dryer, and LEGO brick. People sometimes buy these products without thinking much whether the purchased items are useful or needed. They seem to have a desire to posses the aesthetic quality of these products. Interestingly, they often become passionate ambassadors of these products.

Recently, I met a difficult-to-resist product at a Japanese stationary store, Ito-ya, in Tokyo. It is a clock named Thomson. The Thomson Clock is designed to blend in paper and wood. It has engraved indexes (its numbers were punched on the paper), creating the three-dimensional feeling. This clock was designed by Yoichi Nara, who was born in Tokyo in 1977, graduated from construction architecture at the Yokohama National University in 1999, worked at several companies in Italy and graduated from Venice Architecture in 2006, and then returned home to establish his own design studio, Noto Design Office.

This clock is manufactured by the company, Lemnos, which started its business as a Hattori clock factory called Seikosha (currently Seiko clock Inc.). Product designers working for this company have designed several master pieces and have won good design awards in Japan and abroad as they shared the idea that “the clock creates space.” Each product is carefully honed by craftsmanship skills and is not influenced by fads.

 

 

 

 

Interestingly, a group of marketing researchers recently argued handmade products symbolically contain love, proposing “handmade effect.” The abstract of this paper says,

Despite the popularity and high quality of machine-made products, handmade products have not disappeared, even in product categories in which machinal production is common. The authors present the first systematic set of studies exploring whether and how stated production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) affects product attractiveness. Four studies provide evidence for the existence of a positive handmade effect on product attractiveness. This effect is, to an important extent, driven by perceptions that handmade products symbolically “contain love.” The authors validate this love account by controlling for alternative value drivers of handmade production (effort, product quality, uniqueness, authenticity, and pride). The handmade effect is moderated by two factors that affect the value of love. Specifically, consumers indicate stronger purchase intentions for handmade than machine-made products when buying gifts for their loved ones but not for more distant gift recipients, and they pay more for handmade gifts when purchased to convey love than simply to acquire the best-performing product.

 

 

 

Cases

From Samsung 2013 to Huawei 2016

Leave a comment

Although smartphone market is slowing down, smartphone manufacturers constantly open their stores. While I was staying in Shenzhen, China, I paid a visit to a nearby shopping mall called Yitian Holiday plaza (9028 Shennan Road, Nanshan District 南山区深南路9028号益田假日广场). As most other shopping malls do, it has a wide variety of shops and restaurants. I visited the same shopping mall 3 years ago.

In the middle of the shopping mall, I noticed that the Samsung store closed in 2013 and the Huawei store opened in 2016 at the same place. This indicates that the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer paid significant resources to massive marketing. According to the Telecom Lead report released in January 2016,

“Melissa Chau, senior research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, said; “While there is a lot of uncertainty around the economic slowdown in China, Huawei is one of the few brands from China that has successfully diversified worldwide, with almost half of its shipments going outside of China. Huawei is poised to be in a good position to hold onto a strong number 3 over the next year.” Huawei became the fourth mobile phone vendor in history to ship over 100 million smartphones in a year.

Cases

LEGO-like solution for error management in hotel

Leave a comment

Today’s travelers are not looking for a just tooth brush. They are looking for an experience, something they can relate to. Whether an environmentally conscious traveler or business traveler, guests are demanding more out of their hotel stays than ever before (see Trends Changing the Way Guests and Hoteliers View Amenities). One of the frequent requests travelers make is that they need a new personal item provided complimentary for use in the bathroom (e.g., razor) after they used one before. However, guests often re-locate many amenities, and therefore whether a specific personal item needs to be replaced with a new one or not is difficult to identify. Put differently, an accident (e.g., a new razor is not available!) can occur when a housekeeper makes an mistake or error (e.g., I thought the guests did not use a razor…). What can we do to prevent this from happening?

 

 

The Venice Hotel Shenzhen, China, solved this problem intuitively; personal items are separately packaged in the paper boxes and assembled into a kit like LEGO bricks. Doing this will help housekeepers instantly identify which personal items need to be replaced among a wide variety of items including tooth brush, comb, sanitary bag, vanity kit, sewing kit, shower cap, and razor.

 

Cases

What are the problems of ATM machine?

Leave a comment

We use ATM machines to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money. However, strangers unintentionally overlook what we do when they stand behind us or next to us because they stand side by side and people queue behind us. Unfortunately, this issue has not been addressed in Korea yet. Only a tiny, low-resolution mirror is attached on top of each machine.

Differently from Seoul, Shenzhen provides safer and more comfortable experience. A orange-colored bank not only provides sufficient distance between machines but also allows users to get inside the closed space. Therefore, Chinese users feel safe while being “encapsulated.”

In fact, ATM safety is an international issue. Designers address this issue from an innovative perspective. For instance, IDEO designed humanized ATMs for the Spanish bank, BBVA. This concept was introduced in Fastcodesign.

The biggest overhaul, though, has nothing to do with the touchscreen; it’s the position of the machine itself. It’s rotated 90 degrees, forcing people to queue up next to the ATM rather than behind it — a remarkably simple solution to a longstanding problem: the ominous feeling, when you’re taking out cash, that the guy behind you is about to rob you blind.

Another interesting idea is a concept called Magic Carpet proposed by a Polish industrial designer, Judyta Wojciechowska. This concept was introduced at the Behance.

Magic Carpet is a decorative floor covering located on the footway beside an ATM. The carpet design guides ATM users as to where to stand to maintain the privacy of the person using the ATM and also to accommodate pedestrian flow. This visual guidance on the footway indicates the desired direction and distance for the people to form the queue for the ATM. If the ATM user’s private space is invaded then sensors in the carpet detect this movement and activate a vibration system beneath their feet. The vibration alerts the user to respond and the “invader” to step back. This design consequently protects the ATM user from crimes such as shoulder surfing distraction theft and pick-pocketing.

Cases

How to avoid long lines for women’s restrooms

Leave a comment

Women differ from men. Carol Reiley mentioned in her blog post titled When Bias in Product Design Means Life or Death that “female drivers are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash” because seat belts were historically designed to be safe for men and thus unsafe for women. When it comes to our everyday lives, I believe we need more women’s restrooms. In an article titled the everyday sexism of women waiting in public toilet line, Soraya Chemaly wrote that “long lines for women’s restrooms are the results of a history that favors men’s bodies.” She said,

Women need to use bathrooms more often and for longer periods of time because: we sit to urinate (urinals effectively double the space in men’s rooms), we menstruate, we are responsible for reproducing the species (which makes us pee more), we continue to have greater responsibility for children (who have to use bathrooms with us), and we breastfeed (frequently in grotty bathroom stalls). Additionally, women tend to wear more binding and cumbersome clothes, whereas men’s clothing provides significantly speedier access. But in a classic example of the difference between surface “equality” and genuine equity, many public restrooms continue to be facilities that are equal in physical space, while favoring men’s bodies, experiences, and needs.

Although I cannot agree with her more, this issue has not been well addressed in most public spaces. Fortunately, I recently found a women-friendly building located in Seoul. It is Stradeum, the building exclusively dedicated to sound-sensitive music lovers. In this building, visitors enjoy listening to a wide variety of music using hand-held devices or stand-alone speakers manufactured by Astell & Kern. This building installed three women’s restrooms and one men’s restroom and, this is probably why there is no line in front of both restrooms.

stradeum-seoul1

 

stradeum-seoul

 

 

Courses

New product project: Stain free

Leave a comment

“Stain Free” gives a proactive solution for those who concern about makeup stain on the clothes while getting dressed and undressing the clothes. It is portable silicon collar made from organic material so there should be no harm on the skin. Customers will put “Stain Free” on the collar of her or his clothes before getting dressed and undressing so it prevents the stain. After using “Stain Free”, customers will be able to easily remove the stain on the product, so they can use the product in a clean condition as frequently as they need.

NPD_Stain freeAlthough Make up stain is classified into temporary stains, it is still hard to be removed as cosmetic is composed with complex chemicals. We have found many people online looking for reactive solutions to remove the makeup stain and sharing the solutions with others. After surveying 70 women, we have realized that every one of them has experienced makeup stain on the shirt and they wished they had a product that can prevent. Out of all the opportunities we have come up with, “Stain Free” was evaluated by RWW Chart as the most feasible with the greatest competitive advantages and it was financially prospective. However, the result was not over “108”, therefore we were still required to improve our opportunity based on the customer’s need. We found the product called “Face Cover” as our potential competitor. However, we also found a number of disadvantages of the product from the reviews on the internet as well as the 1 on 1 interview we conducted. As well, we have drawn a couple of personas with two different life-styles in order to figure out how “Stain Free” will adapt on our customer’s daily life. Eventually, it was clear to see that customers demand the convenient, market available, and affordable product.

Based on the insight we have examined earlier, we improved a number of attributes of our product such as materials, design and the ways of distribution etc By writing HOQ, we were finally able to specify the product and also generated a number of concepts of our product to meet our customer’s needs. We have selected the product made from silicon as our ultimate concept after evaluating 3 different concepts with Pugh Matrix and we expect see our annual revenue over $113,400.

 

Written by Seunghyun Yoon, Sooyoen Lee, Yurim Lee, and Mohammed | New Product Development 2016 Spring | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University

 

Courses

New product project: Cup crash

Leave a comment

Cup crush

How many cups of coffee do you drink a day? Nowadays, it easy to find people holding a cup of coffee in your surroundings. Coffee has become a commodity in our lives. However, as demand for coffee has increased, it also increased the number of disposable cups. This causes trash bin to be over floated which leads to environmental problems. For these reasons we planned to make a new product for environmental protection. And we focused on reducing the amount of trash.

NPD_Cup crash

Well, there are various ways to reduce waste. For example, we could increase the number and volume of trash bin. Or we could also try to reduce the size of trash. However, we think it is most effective to decrease the volume of trash. It’s because it has spatial limitations as we increase the size of trash bin, and also it can’t solve essential environment issues. But in contrast, reducing the volume of trash has many great benefits.

As a solution to minimize the volume of the coffee cup, we came up with the idea of paint bucket. It is effective to reduce the volume of the cup. If you simply press the top and bottom part of the cup, you can reduce more than one third of the volume. This product is more effective than the existing products because the existing products require more force and once it is squashed, it seems that there is not a huge difference in terms of volume. Furthermore, our differentiated design may provide freshness to customers. Not only that, it arouses a trend of participating in an event of reducing trash which leads to saving environment.

Our main targets are both individuals who sell coffee and who drink coffee. From the perspective of cafe owner it allows them to keep their cafe clean and reduce the cost of refuse disposal by reducing the amount of trash. From the perspective of people who drink coffee, customer can give such positive effect that has been mentioned. Also, our product can create social trend that has image of protecting environment by reduction of trash. Social trend involves meaning that each and everyone will try to reduce the amount of rubbish like a campaign.

It is common sense that social trend like this which is protecting environment is healthy. However, crushing the empty cup could be tiresome for somebody. Therefore, we would like to put small sentence or character to attain user’s interest to encourage crush the cup. When the cup is completely crushed, new picture or sentence can arouse people’s interest.

In other words, by launching “Cup Crush”, It will drive a lot of benefit for not only just coffee seller and coffee buyer, but society also.

 

Written by Bohee Cheong, Donghui Kim, Hyuntaek Lee, Wonjoon Cheong, and Yan He | New Product Development 2016 Spring | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University 

Courses

Commercial renewal project: New Balance Cameraman

Leave a comment

New Balance released a TV commercial in October 2015 to introduce its premium jacket line called Cameraman. According to the website, this premium jacket was inspired by the jacket of professional cameraman who is shooting in extreme cold weather and harsh circumstances. As such, this well-made TV commercial spotlights on a male professional photographer who has a Canadian, Vancouver, background. Although it delivers the concept of the newly introduced jacket very clearly, it does not seem to resonate with general public who are interested in a highly functional jacket but do not always bring their DSLR cameras with them to take pictures seriously.

We change the New Balance Cameraman TV commercial by changing the target market. The main message of our new TV commercial is that Cameraman is no more than a name of a new jacket, and everyone can enjoy it. We broaden the target market by ending our TV commercial with “he is not a camera man, IT’S cameraman.”

 

Produced by Yoonseung Kim, Hyunjae Kim, Jungwoon Park, Jongjoo Park, and Nayoung Eum | Marketing Communication | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University

 

New Balance

 

 

 

 

 

Courses

Commercial renewal project: Budweiser

Leave a comment

When Budweiser released its 2015’s “freedom” TV commercial in US, only few twitter users liked it. Instead, majority criticized its unclear message of independence and overwhelming numbers of visual images.

We decide to change the Budweiser’s TV commercial by making it simple. First, we do not move its angle but maintain its static image. Second, we interpret freedom as “you can be whoever you want to be”; in our new and short TV commercial, the viewer drinks Budweiser and can become a famous singer like Michael Jackson. In order to emphasize the message of freedom, we also generate and add a new slogan that “Be a Budyweiser, Beer Budweiser.”

Produced by Donghoon Lee, Jeeyi Kim, Yujin Song | Marketing Communication | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University

Budweiser