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.
*Event

Jan Chipchase @ Seoul

Leave a comment

Jan Chipchase

.

Hidden in plain sightSpeech at Seoul by Jan Chipchase (Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog, Author of Hidden in Plain Sight)

Title: “Leap of Faith”

Synopsis:  “Drawing on over a decade working for Fortune 500 and Korean clients Jan’s talk will explore the use of real-world insights to inform and inspire design, strategy, challenge minds and flutter hearts. The talk will cover a sample project all the way through to cutting edge techniques in obtaining insight and discuss why sometimes, against the better judgement of the organization it requires a leap of faith.”

Time: October 28, 2013 (Mon) 4-6PM

Place: Conference Hall, Administration Building, Kookmin University

.

.

.

관찰의 힘얀 칩체이스 서울 강연 (프로그 디자인, 크리에이티브 디렉터 / 관찰의 힘, 저자)

제목: 믿음의 도약

시놉시스: 얀 칩체이스는 지난 10년동안 포춘 500대 기업과 한국 기업들을 대상으로 프로젝트를 수행하면서, 현실 세계에서 발굴한 인사이트가 디자인과 전략을 개선하고, 틀에 갇힌 사람들의 생각에 도전하며, 심지어는 사람의 마음을 움직일 수도 있다는 점을 보여주었습니다. 본 강연에서는, 기존에 수행한 프로젝트 뿐만 아니라 인사이트 발굴에 사용되는 기법들도 함께 선보일 예정이며, 다양한 사례와 기법들을 통하여 언제, 왜 데이터에 기반한 판단보다 믿음이 조직의 발전에 도움이 되는지 논의하려고 합니다.

시간: 2013년 10월 28일 (월) 오후 4-6시

장소: 국민대학교 본부관 학술대회장

참고 1) 동아비즈니스리뷰 인터뷰 (201308): “르완디 시장조사때 밀수꾼 인터뷰… 극단적 아웃라이어는 통찰의 보고”

참고 2) 조선일보 인터뷰 (20131008): “제품 기능에만 치중하면 실패… 소비자 깊숙한 내면적 욕망 읽어야”

 

 

Welcome Jan! On Oct 28, 2013, he gave a speech at Kookmin University, Seoul. He shared with the attendants his unique perspective and rich insights as an Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog and author of Hidden in Plain Sight. In total, 280 people showed up. This event was run by Ran Yoon who is working at the product development team, SK Telecom, and used to work at the marketing team, Samsung Electronics Canada. One of the attendants, Jaeyong Yi, the president of PXD, a Korean design consulting agency, wrote his review in Korean language.

 

Jan Chipchase @ Kookmin University

Jan Chipchase

Publications

Apple and Samsung took different approaches toward design thinking

4 Comments

The article presents research focusing on the development of design thinking in business context. It utilizes balancing intuitive and analytical thinking to determine the exploitation of design thinking in organizations. It explores the decision making processes of two electronic corporations including Apple Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to offer practical implications to executives who are interested in implementing design thinking in their organizations.

… Samsung is a good example of a “technology push” firm. Samsung has been a late mover in the electronics market. Responding to unparalleled business challenges, the company first expanded its design team from 200 designers in the late 1990s to 1000 designers in 2012. Samsung has made noticeable debuts in winning several international design awards. However, the company’s intuitive and analytic teams needed to work closely before they were able to deeply understand and appreciate each other’s way of working. The forced collaboration produced challenging decision-making conflicts—the types of conflicts that are difficult to resolve without a moderator. Instead, decisions were made exclusively by the intuitive team or exclusively by the analytic team. This issue explains why Samsung has performed well in design awards, but has not yet introduced an iconic product like the iPhone…

… Apple approaches design thinking differently from Samsung. Its design team does not communicate with its manufacturing team. Instead, an independent team (consisting of Steve Jobs and his supporters) made most of the firm’s business decisions. In the process, Jobs limited the decision-making power of the analytic teams in order for them to be comparable with the power of the intuitive team. Note that although Steve Jobs was often criticized for his assertive decisions, he did free the intuitive team from the analytic team. As a result, Apple products are welcomed by a massive number of consumers—even though their individual features do not necessarily outperform the products manufactured by their competitors …

Cases

Hand print for escalator safety

1 Comment

Jenny Xie wrote A Potentially Brilliant Idea to Keep Escalator Obstructors to the Right at the Atlantic Cities. In her article, a London-based designer called Yoni Alter made an interesting proposal to signal “stand on right, walk on left.” Although his idea has not been implemented yet, he proposed to paint two different foot prints on the escalator so that people standing in the right side stay and those standing in the left side walk.

Jenny Xie @ The Atlantic Cities_20130917
By Jenny Xie, The Atlantic Cities, September 17, 2013

Recently, I have met another brilliant idea about escalator. Escalator users are supposed to hold the handrail while using the escalator because, although rarely happens, it might go in reverse, injuring them seriously. This safety instruction, however, is often ignored.

Warning

As escalator accidents increase recently, someone who is not identified but works at the Seoul subway system came up with a brilliant idea: painting hand prints on the handrail. These visible cues nudge people to, at least, place their hands on the handrail.

DesignMarketingLab_Hand print @ Seoul_20130921

Besides improving the safety for public transit, visual cues are used for improving store traffic. When a store is crowded, store visitors are often recommended to enter and leave in a specific way. One store manager painted foot prints to nudge the visitors follow them.

DesignMarketingLab_Foot print @ Seoul_20130921

Cases

Marketers should go beyond SWOT analysis

Leave a comment

Richard DAvneni

At the Dong-A Business Form, Richard D’Avneni, Bakala Professor of Strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University, gave an interesting talk about Hypercompetition, which is the term that he coined about 20 years ago arguing that there is no sustainable competitive advantage. In this talk, he emphasized the dynamics of market by telling us that Sears or the retailer with 90-year successful business history cannot help but leave the industry within only 15 years. Thus, he made a persuasive argument that well-known strategy/marketing tools such as SWOT analysis do not work anymore.

According to him, firms use the SWOT-based strategy for multiple times and, therefore, “learning” takes place. Imagine a firm uses the SWOT analysis and then selects a specific strategy based on some combination of Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. In this case, the firm is highly likely to win over its competitors. However, those losing competitors learn what strategy the winning firm will select in the next round (e.g., when launching different products or when entering different markets) and they are able to respond to the same strategy smartly. This suggests that a single-shot SWOT-based strategy works but it does not work in the multiple contexts.

Then, what is an alternative tool that marketers could use when they want to conduct 3C analysis (understand consumers, companies, and competitors)?

Cases

Cafe: East vs. West

1 Comment

People often go to cafe not for coffee but for work. According to Mehta, Zhu, and Cheema (2012), an appropriate ambient noise (e.g., cafe noise) enhances work performance. Their five studies showed that people performed creative tasks better when surrounded by the moderate ambient noise (70db) than the low one (50db) or the high one (85db). They argue that when people are surrounded by the moderate ambient noise, people cannot process information easily and thus they focus on their work harder and think more abstractly and creatively.

One website picked up their findings and enables its visitors to play a pre-recorded coffee shop noise at your computer (Coffitivity).

20120708 @ Cafe bene
Cafe “Bene” @ Seoul

Cafe @ Seoul
Cafe “Gurunaru” @ Seoul

Many other space attributes beyond sound are discussed on how to create the ideal workspace. According to the Psyblog run by Jeremy Dean, for instance, there are six tips to do so: (1) avoid open-plan, (2) the great tidy-messy debate, (3) curvy is beautiful, (4) room with a (picture of a) view, (5) plants, and (6) decorates. When it comes to coffee shop chains, Starbucks seem to meet many tips while other competing Canadian coffee shop chains such as Second Cup or Tim Hortons seem to meet only few.

However, more space attributes (in a coffee place) will affect work performance. Two example attributes are whether a coffee place is indoor or outdoor and whether it is brand-new or run-down. Interestingly, most local coffee shops in Seoul are indoors and brand-new while many local coffee shops in North American cities are outdoors and relatively run-down. Since I generally worked more productively when I was at the local coffee shops in North America than when I was at those in Seoul, I expect [outdoor] and [run-down] might be extra critical attributes for a coffee shop to be an ideal workplace.

Cafe @ Boston
Cafe “Au Bon Pain” @ Boston

Cafe @ Virginia
Cafe “Aromas” @ Virginia

Publications

Behavioral Economics for Design

2 Comments

20130821_Behavioral Economics for Design @ ICED13 Young Members Event

Designers will benefit from BDT (Behavioral Decision Theory) or Behavioral Economics in two ways. First, they could improve the effectiveness of their design outcomes by finding users’ psychological errors and then creating designerly solutions. Secondly, they could enhance the efficiency of their own design process by identifying and correcting the psychological mistakes that they often make.

20130820_@ ICED13_Jaewoo Joo
@ Young Members Event, ICED13

Cases

Participation for immersive experience

Leave a comment

Exhibition @ Seoul
http://blog.daum.net/runman67/7047692

When people visit a historical place, they wonder what happened long time ago. They sometimes enjoy watching an exhibition such as changing royal guards in Seoul (above). In the historic place at the Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, however, young visitors go beyond watching an event; they march in the parade with soldiers. This immersive experience will give the visitors an unforgettable piece of memory.

Cases

Printed vs. Online newspaper: Humor

Leave a comment

Washingtonpost_Website

Imagine that you are looking for tenants. Typically, you go to the websites of flea markets (e.g., Craiglist or Kijiji) or newspaper. You rarely pick up and open the classified section of the printed newspaper.

However, I recently met a funny ad in the classified section of the printed Washington Post and, thanks to it, enjoyed the newspaper a lot (see below). I enjoyed this ad because I did not expect to meet a humorous ad on the printed newspaper which is supposed to be serious. If I meet the same ad online, I might not laugh because online websites are not as serious as printed newspapers. Contrast works! 🙂

20130804_@ Williamsburg (7)

20130804_@ Williamsburg (8)

Cases

Blue iced tea is popular

2 Comments

 

Color determines food judgment. According to Hoegg and Alba (2007), for instance, the brightness of an orange juice affects people’s taste discrimination more strongly than its brand name (e.g., Tropicana or Winn-Dixie) or its price information. Food judgment is probably influenced by the hue and saturation of the food as well.

Recently, I find some stores selling blue-colored iced tea. This unexpected color may attract significant attention among those who do not drink teas or who is visually attentive such as kids. However, most adults around me infer it as a poor-quality fake beverage because, they believe, tea is supposed to be orange rust or brown regardless of its temperature. This suggests that changing the color of a given product enables designers and marketers to pursue a new market by sacrificing their traditional market.

Surprisingly, there exists a green wine called Vinho Verde in the world! 🙂

20130731_Ice tea @ Seoul

Hoegg, JoAndrea and Joseph W. Alba (2007), “Taste Perception: More than Meets the Tongue,” Journal of Consumer Research, 33 (4), 490–98.

Perceptual discrimination is fundamental to rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research. The present research investigates discrimination as it pertains to consumers’ ability to identify differences—or the lack thereof—among gustatory stimuli. Three experiments reveal systematic bias resulting from the presence of common visual and verbal product cues. Particularly noteworthy is the finding that the amount of bias induced by a subtle, nonevaluative cue can far exceed the bias induced by overt and well‐established evaluative cues. In addition, the effects these cues have on perceptual discrimination diverge from the effects they have on preference.