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.
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What is an advantage of having a popular first name?

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First name (or given name) is the name that identifies a specific person. It differentiates a person from other members of a group, such as a family or clan, with whom that person shares a common last name (or family name). While last name is normally inherited, first name is “free to choose” and thus can be unique.

In some countries, however, only a few options seem to be highly popular. Many of my friends who were born and live in US, UK, or Canada have common first names. In English-based countries, Coke’s massively-distributed-but-highly-customized “first name” marketing campaign will work: each bottle of coke has its own first name label such as John, Sarah, Emma, and Alex. However, popular first names seem to be avoided in other countries. Most of my Korean friends have their own unique first names. In this country, Coke marketers may find it difficult to find popular first names and launch a marketing campaign using them.

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Then, why do some people pick up popular first names and others avoid them?

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Make public communication points useful

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Nowadays, people rarely use pay phones or mailboxes run by government. Instead, they prefer to use private services when communicating with others; they use mobile phones or gmails. As people find the contemporary public services slow and inconvenient, they avoid public communication points. Ironically, most of the public communication points such as pay phone booths and mail boxes are located at the high traffic areas. Put simply, relatively useless, public communication points stand at the highly useful, high traffic areas.

Therefore, many people propose to use public communication points for other purposes. For example, they suggest to use pay phone booths to charge batteries from mobile phones to electronic cars, to use the booths to collect traffic data, or to leave defibrillator, a device to give electric shock to someone’s hearts, for emergency.

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Pay toilet, spoiled customer, and mental accounting

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I have seen pay toilets at train stations or tourist spots in London. Since paying money to use public toilet was new to me, I simply thought making profits by victimising tourists is unethical. However, one of my friends who has been living in London for a few years said money should be collected to maintain toilet clean.

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I found that I paid too much attention to consumers’ service and did not carefully think about the maintenance issue. In order words, I did not separate the toilet service from the train service, and simply requested free toilet service because I paid for the train service.

When I lived in Toronto a few years ago, I did not expect free bundles or free services. I walked to a restaurant to eat, I carried a newly purchased microwave oven by myself, I visited a bank to pay hydro, and I paid for the lotions at stores. After moving to Seoul from from Toronto, however, I have become accustomed to free things; I ordered food or bought devices and asked for free delivery service, wired money at home without visiting the bank, and received a lot of free sample lotions at stores. Indeed, the guardian chose Seoul as the 10 best cities in the world to be a student because McDonald’s in Seoul runs a 24-hour delivery service. Although free goods and convenient services offered by this city may welcome budget-tight foreign students, people who are constantly surrounded by free stuffs become easily spoiled. I am not exception, either.

Then, how could I fix this situation? I believe mental accounting might be an answer. Researchers suggest that people keep track of their past transactions and plan their future budgets mentally. While doing so, people often make mistakes. They do not accurately remember how much they spend when using credit card or fail to separate different expenses but put them into one category. For instance, if I mentally account better when someone delivers McDonald’s set to my place, I can separate delivery cost from McDonald’s set price and then, at least, appreciate and thank for free delivery service. If I mentally accounted better about pay toilet at the train station, I paid for toilet without complaining.

Mental accounting was originally proposed to study people’s biased financial decisions. However, it may help people to be nicer by decreasing the degree to which they are spoiled. 🙂

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Engineering smells of childhood memories

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I visited an interesting exhibition. It was held by the Naeum, a project group of eight people who study fragrance for empathy. Differently from others interested in developing fancy and welcoming odors, they try to create a wide variety of unique smells and then enjoy them with others. In this exhibition, they introduced a series of uniquely engineered smells that evoke specific childhood memories such as a handful wood, sense of sunshine, cut grass, decay, and painkiller, to name a few. I smelled all; some made me smile and others made me frown. However, these odors called upon my childhood memories vividly. In fact, Play Doh Cologne spray does same to many.

This exhibition was divided into multiple sections. In each section, a word or sentence was written on the wall and multiple white-colored ceramic bars were located underneath. These white bars gave off a specific odor which associates the meaning of the word. For instance, the white bars located under the “sense of sunshine” smelled like the detergents or newly washed clothes.

Among many sections, I enjoyed the “nervous” one the most. It rejuvenated my experience of the dental clinic through cross modal cues (picture). In this section, I sniffed its unique odors from the white bars, I looked at the green operating gown and shiny dental instruments, and I listened to the grinding sound from the speakers all together. I learned that carefully planned and well balanced multi-modal stimuli can make people time travel (see more info at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory).

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Ingredients for innovation: simple tools and exploratory behavior

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Matt Kingdon gave a speech on the topic of design innovation at the Dong-A Business Form 2014. I was invited to moderate his speech by Jinseo Cho, a staff reporter of the Dong-A Business Review (DBR) and editorial director of the Harvard Business Review Korea (HBR korea). Matt is the founder of ?Whatif! innovation and has over 20 years of innovation consulting experience. He proposed that innovation is not the addition but the multiplication of four “i”s – identify, insight, idea, and implement. Put differently, Innovation cannot happen when any one of four “i” is missing, highlighting the equal importance of every aspect of innovation from research to ideation to execution.

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He further emphasized in his speech that innovation needs simple tools and exploratory behaviors. First, he introduced tools such as “customer shoes” and “rope of scope.” Although these tools sounds simple, they enable managers to take the perspective of customers (customer shoes) and to prioritize needs and ideas instantly (rope of scope or simply placing needs/ideas inside or out of the rope). Managers use these tools not only to identify customers’ deeply rooted needs and address them effectively.

Then, he suggested that innovation needs the behaviors that promote exploration such as courageous curiosity or “Greenhousing.” Managers should be brave enough to pursue their curiosity and, more importantly, they should nurture immature ideas into commercially appealing innovative solutions.

His speech reminded me of David Kelley’s conversation with Roger Martin. Last year, David said, in order to generate wild ideas, people should have confidence about their own creativity (creative confidence) and then need a series of safe, small successes (guided mastery). Similarly, Matt highlighted courageous curiosity and greenhousing. To me, the most powerful insight from his speech is that innovation needs simple tools rather than a rigid process; innovators need rooms to improvise.

Cases

Hands-on experience of 3D printing

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Probably, I am one of few marketing people in the world who buy and use a 3D printer. I paid about $1000 and bought a printer called Rappy 32 from Stellamove two months ago and have been printing miniature buildings, animals, and mobile phone cases for fun. I want to share what I have learned about 3D printers with designers and marketers, in particular, those who are interested in but have never used them.

First of all, playing with a 3D printer woke up my “creator instinct.” Previously, I was a consumer; I simply purchased and used the products someone else created for anonymous people. After having a countless consumption experiences in my life, I came to unconsciously calculate the cost and benefit of a specific purchase behavior or habitually compared between one option and another. However, when I printed something using the 3D printer, I had a fairly different type of experience; I chose what to create and then waited until it was done. While waiting, my mental calculator did not turn on but I was overwhelmed by (some kinds of) mother-specific emotions such as wish, excitement, warm caring, and disappointment. In my opinion, printing something using 3D printers is easier and more entertaining than other professional creating tasks such as drawing and cook because it simply requires me to plan what to print at first and then fully takes care of the remaining procedures.

Second, playing with a 3D printer taught me that saying is one thing, doing is another. Many people talked about 3D printers without having any hands-on experience. Some are excited about the bright future they unfold; they can decorate cakes or replace the knobs and hooks printed at home. Others are concerned about the gloomy future 3D printers bring; someone else will print out and carry weapons or generate fake coins. However, my experience taught me that the future is not around the corner regardless of whether it is bright or dark. There are literally hundreds of issues that need to be addressed for a 3D-printer to work properly. I myself often dissatisfied with the print quality. I might have developed my taste of finishing too high (e.g., iPhones or Lego bricks).

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OCT-Loft, Chinese design hub in Shenzhen

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Shenzhen is known for manufacturing in China. However, it has a cool spot called OCT-Loft where designers and creative people with different backgrounds gather, chill out, and share their ideas. According to the Protocity.com,

Located in the Nanshan District, OCT-Loft is a project of significant scope and scale. Largely designed by Shenzhen-based architecture firm Urbanus, the project renovated 209.000 square metres of disused industrial warehouse space, modelled after similar developments in Yaletown, Vancouver’s loft district. The architects see the neighbourhood as an assemblage of divergent land uses and district users: middle-class residential units, a clustering of theme park entertainment, and vacant industrial space.

The renovation is a transformation of vacancy into an artistic and cultural node in Shenzhen’s urban fabric: the scope of OCT-Loft’s development yields most of its impact through the strategic programming of space rather than through architectural innovation. The site is primarily a creativity cluster: refurbished factories and warehouses now house hubs of fine art, graphic design, interior design, architecture, costume design, and marketing.

The architects and developers of OCT-Loft envision the project to be a part of a burgeoning trend of environmentally- and socially-conscious urban planning and architectural design. Critics seem to agree, characterising OCT-Loft as a typology for urban “recycling” that reformulates the abandoned industrial relics of Shenzhen’s first developments in the special economic zone in the 1980s into centres of cultural activity, capital accumulation, and compact living.

OCT-Loft attempts to bridge the gap between underutilised structures in the neighbourhood with the residential section of the neighbourhood, drawing an explicit connexion between the cultural-spatial transformation and comprehensive mixed-use development seen within contemporary culture-led development strategies.

 

While I visited OCT-Loft, I met several posters. Some posters announced design events such as Creative Product Design. In this event, architect, jewelry designers, and product designers were invited to give a talk and share their thoughts and ideas.

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Other posters announced to recruit designers with backgrounds of interior design, product design, and visual graphics. Interestingly, most of those posters said nationality, age, or gender do not matter. Compared to other Asian cities where the job market dramatically shrinks, Shenzhen provides more job opportunities to young creative workers.

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No skinny jeans, no skinny cans

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DML_HK Fashion (1)Skinny means very thin or unusually slender. Although it is a highly popular word, marketers avoid it but label their “sassier” products differently because the word, skinny, reinforces the stereotypes of women and body images. Interestingly, some items go for skinnier whereas others do not.

 

Fashion items want to be skinnier. According to J. Crew Sells “Toothpick” Jeans, Because Skinny Jeans Just Weren’t Body-Negative Enough, ” J. Crew has sensed that a lot of women are pretty over the use of the word skinny to sell everything from highly unhealthy, chemical-filled cocktails to stretch denims or it’s just an err in advertising. This clothier found that skinny jeans are not skinny enough and chosen “toothpick” to label their slimmest line of jeans.

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This is not the case for the beverage items. Pepsi introduced a skinny can in 2011 at New York’s Fashion Week. According to the Diet Pepsi ‘skinny’ can stirs up big controversy, Jill Beraud, chief marketing officer for PepsiCo said in a statement, “Our slim, attractive new can is the perfect complement to today’s most stylish looks, and we’re excited to throw its coming-out party during the biggest celebration of innovative design in the world.” Unfortunately, it was blamed for offensiveness immediately. Within a few months, Pepsi launches new fatter skinny cans in aftermath of controversy. It fattened up its diet skinny can “with a redesign that aims, perhaps, to distance itself from a controversy that bubbled up earlier this year.”

 

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Traditional building with a modern twist in Korea

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Toronto has many traditional buildings with a modern twist. The house previously used for Rotman Designworks studio was a good example. From the outside, it was a plain three-story house. However, it had interesting modern flavors inside: boards were installed on the white walls, desks and chairs ran on wheels, and newly installed toilette were clean.

I searched for compatible Korean examples for the past couple of years and finally found a right one. It is a small resort called Gurume (“into the clouds” in Korean). It opened July in 2014 at Andong, about 4 hours drive from Seoul. Kimchimari, a blogger, said

it consists of 7 different historical Korean homes with their ages ranging from 200-400 years old. Each home has been relocated from their original location to the resort as vacation villas for people to experience first hand how Korean scholars lived centuries ago.

I stayed a night at one of the historical Korean homes and enjoyed its traditional – and modern aspects. As for the traditional aspects, I enjoyed the rich scent surrounded by the wood materials, cool breeze naturally created through the middle space of the house, and the soothing sounds from the nature with the super-bright moon shine at night. As for the modern aspects, I loved everything about bathroom; a newly installed basin, a shower with high water pressure, and the Aesop shampoo. I found that although I want to travel in the past and enjoy tradition, I do not want to sacrifice the convenience the modern society provides. When marketers and designers aim to create a unique experience either by putting nostalgic flavor to the common products or by adding modern twist on the historically preserved concepts, they should focus on how modernity can eliminate inconvenience.

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Siwa, paper design by Naoto Fukasawa

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People have their own favorite designers. My favorite “product” designer is Naoto Fukasawa. He is well known for the designer of the fan-shaped CD player by Muji. I love his minimalist design so much that I flew for his Tokyo studio, Plus Minus Zero, to consider buying a humidifier for the stimulus of my experimental studies. Interestingly, he once worked with Samsung to design its printer.

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Johnny @ Spoon & Tamago

 

Recently, I found his name on an unexpected place. I visited a small store called studio M nearby my house. It sells his paper (or seemingly half-paper-half-leather) products named SIWA. Soon I realized that his design philosophy seems to match low-tech products (e.g., pencil cases and hand bags) more successfully than electronic gadgets (e.g., CD players, humidifiers, and printers), differently from Dieter Rams. “Some” Minimalist design principles may work better for “some” materials or “some” products. 🙂

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