Jaewoo teaches and writes about design thinking, behavioral economics, and field experiment for customer experience. He is professor of marketing and participating professor of experience design at Kookmin University. Jaewoo has been Visiting Scholar at Stanford University since September 2024.
The purpose of this study was to investigate how Design Executive Officers (DEOs) manage creative employees. It differs from prior leadership research in creative industries in three ways; it focused on DEOs, specified their influences on an organisational level, and discovered Korea-specific insights. We conducted in-depth interviews with the seven DEOs who have run their own design agencies for over ten years and hired more than 50 employees in Korea. Our thematic analysis of the 287 quotations collected revealed that 75% of the quotations fit the existing leadership framework and the remaining 25% are two unique attributes of DEO leadership: attitudes toward deeds and business growth. We further verified our thematic analysis by recruiting DEOs and conducting an online survey. Our findings contribute to the academic discussion on design-driven entrepreneurship by shedding light on the changing role of designers in the entrepreneurial landscape.
… More specifically, we found that DEOs differ from CEOs in two aspects: attitudes towards leadership and business growth. These two unique attributes led DEOs to manage their organisations at a strategic level. While we aimed to understand the two unique attributes, we found several interesting behaviours of the DEOs who run their own Small- Medium Enterprises in Korea. For instance, they often emphasized a collective culture to overcome a lack of autonomy in their projects, answer demanding requests from clients, and deliver more than what clients requested, all of which was mainly driven by a hierarchical relationship between clients and agencies. (pp. 329-330)
… We want to highlight that our findings clearly demonstrate that designers shift their roles in the entrepreneurial landscape. Differently from prior work focusing exclusively on design tasks (Lima & Sangiorgi, 2018; Maciver, 2016; Nam & Jung, 2008) or design activities (Giudice & Ireland, 2013; Gloppen, 2009; Jevnaker, 2000), our findings shed light on how DEOs go beyond design to manage employees and address complex problems creatively. Indeed, the roles of CEOs in design companies described in the prior research are limited to supporters. They encouraged designers to concentrate on design tasks, made decisions beyond styling on behalf of designers, or shared the value of design with other employees or customers (Song & Chung, 2008). However, we found that DEOs played active roles in their organisations. (pg. 330)
Objective: Impulse buying is a recognized phenomenon as consumers have abundant shopping opportunities. We investigate whether orderly space encourages consumers to buy impulsively and whether this relationship is moderated by self-construal. Specifically, we hypothesize that consumers show greater impulse buying intentions when space is orderly than disorderly. We also hypothesize that when interdependent self-construal is primed, the effect of orderly space on consumers’ increased impulse buying intentions will be attenuated. Background: Our hypotheses are based on the research about emotions that consumers experience while they shop in a retail store. When the store is orderly, consumers experience pleasure. In contrast, disorganized shelves, unsorted merchandise, and messy clothing racks evoke negative emotions. A recent study shows consumers’ positive emotional responses to a retail environment result in heightened impulse buying. Methods: Two experiments were carried out to test the two hypotheses. Experiment 1 employed a 2 (space order: orderly vs. disorderly) between-subjects design. Participants randomly received one of the two store images and were asked to indicate their impulse-buying intentions. Experiment 2 employed a 2 (space order: orderly vs. disorderly) × 2 (self-construal: independent vs. interdependent) between-subjects design. Participants were randomly given one of the two store images and one of the two self-construal priming tasks to measure their impulse buying intentions. Results: As hypothesized, Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants exerted stronger impulse-buying intentions in an orderly space. Experiment 2 also showed that when participants were primed by inter- dependent self-construal, their impulse buying intentions did not differ, regardless of whether the space was orderly. Implications: Our findings provide insights for offline store managers. To nudge visitors to buy impulsively, managers should organize their spaces orderly. However, the effect of space order on consumers’ impulse buying will disappear when consumers’ interdependent self-construal is activated. Our findings contribute to the academic research into the factors that lead consumers to buy impulsively.
Keywords
impulse buying, space order, self-construal, off-line store, sales
We investigate whether visceral state and temporal distance influenced their choice between a hedonic and a utilitarian product. We hypothesize that consumers are more likely to choose a hedonic product when they are hot (e.g., hungry or sexually driven) than when they are cold (e.g., not hungry or not sexually driven). We further hypothesize that the effect of visceral state on hedonic-utilitarian choice is moderated by temporal distance; hot-cold choice difference disappears when consumers make a choice in the distant future. Our two hypotheses were supported by two experiments. We discuss academic contributions and managerial implications of our findings.
Many design practitioners aim to enhance the beauty of an existing product or develop novel products and services. However, market does not always pay off their effort. Carefully designed products often fail to attract consumers. What should designers do to enhance sales?
One solution is to borrow insights from behavioral economics. Studies show that behavioral economics can increase the adoption rate of newly designed products because it overcomes consumer resistance.
I was once invited by Palermo University in Argentina to share findings about the commercial impact of behavioral economics in the context of design. I shared my experimental findings about three Korean companies.
(1) Samsung’s printer would sell more if its ugly version is placed next to it because joint evaluation helps consumers consider aesthetics importantly,
(2) LG’s Styler would sell more if the clock in the store presents time in analog not in digital because doing so encourages consumers to think abstractly and creatively to appreciate the value of something new, and
(3) SK Telecom’s AI speaker would be used more often if it has a human feature and viewed as a foreigner or child because people become more tolerant about the mistakes of the AI speaker.
Anthropomorphism works. When a car has a human schema (e.g., smiley face), people evaluate it positively (Aggarwal and McGill 2007). When a garbage bin has a human message (e.g., “feed me”), people follow it (Ahn, Kim, Aggarwal 2013). When an AR speaker has eyes or when an instruction manual depicts it like a baby, people become generous about its malfunction (Park and Joo 2018).
Historically, an object was anthropomorphize in one of two ways. On one hand, designers add the parts of the human body such as eyes and arms to an inanimate object. For instance, a tip jar has a smiley face, two arms, and two legs. On the other hand, marketers add a phrase describing that the object behaves like a human being. For instance, a garbage bin eats food or a mobile phone becomes stupid.
Today, I noticed another way to anthropomorphize an object, which can be employed by artists. They do not add something to an inanimate object directly; instead they ask us to actively imagine that inanimate objects animate. This is well demonstrated by the artwork, Relatum – The Kiss (2023) by Lee Ufan. We imagine two stones are two people and they are kissing each other.
Kukje Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Lee Ufan on view from April 4 to May 28, 2023. Lee titles all his scultures Relatum and often provides subtitles to hint possible associations without giving a clear interpretation. Relatum signifies a relation that is different from a readily definable term, relationship, but one that explores the artist’s interest in how individual elements of a work are in a fluid relationship. In this way, the viewer, who directly intervenes in the space of the work as a relatum-along with factors such as the stone representing nature and the steel plate representing industrial society-feels a part of the conversation between the two objects or is led to reflect on the idea of co-presence by observing their conversation.
Lee employes an anthropomorphic metaphor in Relatum – The Kiss (2023), capturing a moment of encounter. As can be inferred by its subtitle, two stones are making a point of encounter as if they are kissing, while two individual chains surrounding them overlap and cross each other, thereby creating a point of intersection. The center of the cirucualr chians leading toward the position of each stone evokes a strong sense of motion…
Artificial intelligence is already embedded in several digital tools used across design disciplines. Although it offers advantages in automating and facilitating design tasks, this technology has constraints to empowering practitioners. AI systems steadily incorporate machine learning to deliver meaningful designs but fail in critical dimensions such as creativity. Moreover, the intensive use of AI features to provide a design solution – so-called AI design – challenges the boundaries of the design field and designers’ roles. AI-powered logo makers exemplify a horizon where non-designers can access design tools to create a personal or business visual identity. However, in the current context, these online businesses are limited to randomize layout solutions lacking the visual properties a logo requires. This article reports mixed-method research focusing on AI-powered logo makers’ processes and outcomes. We investigated their capability to deliver consistent logo designs and to what extent their algorithms address logo design principles. Initially, our study identified representative visual principles in logo design-related literature. After probing AI-powered logo makers’ features that enable logo creation, we conducted an exploratory experiment to obtain solutions. Finally, we invited logo design experts to evaluate whether three visual principles (proportion, balance and unity) were incorporated into the layouts. The assessment’s results suggest that these AI design tools must calibrate the algorithms to provide solutions that meet expected logo design standards. Even focusing on a particular AI tool and a few visual principles, our research contributes to initial directions for developing algorithms that embody the complex aspects of visual design syntax.
Keywords
AI-powered logo maker, logo design, visual design principles, AI design, artificial intelligence
I was invited by Digital Marketing Summit 2023 to moderate a fireside chat between two customer experience professionals. They are Jonah Hong, Corporate Vice President and Head of Digital Customer Experience at the Hyundai Motor Group and Dan Gingiss, the author of the Experience Maker.
Digital Marketing Summit 2023
Jonah Hong highlighted bitter patience. He introduced the challenges that Hyundai Motor Group faces. “To address different customers with different tastes and preferences, we have to create tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of personalized content for a vehicle. To do this globally, organizations have to exchange data each other in the short term and we have to go beyond functional organizations in the long term. To do this work dynamically, automatically, and in real time, investments had to be made in technology.”
Digital Marketing Summit 2023
Dan Gingiss emphasized sweet fruit. In the conversation, he elaborated a wide variety of real life examples in which people spent more and they recommended a company more strongly when the company delivered superior experience to customers. His examples clarifies that having a positive customer experience values more than consuming a high-performing product.
Seth Godin gave a speech on the topic of innovation strategy in low growth economy at the Dong-A Business Forum 2015. I was invited to moderate his speech in December, 2015.
Seth Godin is an Author, Entrepreneur and Most of All, A teacher. Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 20 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn). His book, This is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries around the world. The latest book is The Practice, and creatives everywhere have made it a bestseller. Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!). By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.
In our conversation, he asked us to be artists and be hubris. In his words, artists are the people who challenge conventional rules with brevity, insights, and determination. Only those who fail constatntly will become artists.
He made it clear that mass production, mass distribution, and mass marketing do not work any more. In the past, average products appealed. However, only ultimate products or “art” appeal in the new, connected world.
While emphasizing the value of constant failures, he separated ready from preparedness. Ready means that people are ready to embrace failure. Since many Koreans are not ready but prepared to be perfect, he suggested them to be Salto Mortale, a desperate jump translated into Italian.
Coming January 3rd to 6th of 2022, EBS Business Review will broadcast “Behavioral Economics for Dummies.”
The world-renowned bestseller book, Nudge, by Richard H. Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, is well known for its coverage of behavioral economics. The term nudge which has an idiomatic meaning of nudging with an elbow refers to guiding people’s choices through gentle intervention instead of compulsion or coercion. Different from normative economics and descriptive psychology, prescriptive behavioral economics intervenes and guides people’s choices by closing the gap between behavior and mind.
What is the hidden key of behavioral economics? You will learn its various cases which show the power that moves the world.
The secret of 99% adoption of organ donation (January 3rd)
As medical dramas suggest, hospitals need more organ doners. In order to solve the supply-demand problem of organ donation in Korea, a policy was implemented in 2007 which inserts a statement regarding donation into the driver’s license upon issuance or renewal. However, the survey result in 2018 showed that the actual number of those who wish to donate is only about 3%.
What about other countries? If we look into the organ donation rate in European countries in the early 2000s, Denmark had a rate of about 5%, Germany had a rate of about 12%. However, there are many other countries boasting a rate of 99%, such as Portugal and France. What is the secret behind these countries with a high donation rate? We will explore successful uses of behavioral economics that change people’s behavior.
Public institutions can be smarter (January 4th)
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In 2020, an experiment was conducted in US to find out how to increase the vaccination rate for the flu. As a result of sending 20 messages that encouraged people to get vaccinated, the most effective one was the combination of messages sent three days before vaccination saying “a flu vaccine is available for you” and one day before vaccination saying “a flu vaccine has been reserved for your appointment.” For those who received these messages, they made a promise to themselves to get vaccinated, resulting in an increased vaccination rate of about 5%.
Since behavioral economics brings great results with little cost, it is actively applied in many public institutions. Let’s listen to other cases of public policy which solve tough social problems.
When tech giants meet behavioral economics (January 5th)
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Marketing is a key area in which behavioral economics is actively applied. Various mechanisms can be used to target customers, which can lead to an increase in revenue and market share. Lyft, a ride-sharing company once conducted an experiment to encourage users to drive during peak demand times, Friday nights, instead of quiet mornings on Wednesdays.
They divided drivers into two groups randomly. One group was given information that their income would increase if they worked on Friday night. The other group was given information that their income would decrease if they did not work on Friday night. More people in the latter group chose to drive Friday night because people tended to avoid loss, helping Lyft mobilize the drivers’ behavior. What are the other special secrets of behavioral economics that change peoples’ choices and help companies increase profits?
Nudge yourself (January 6th)
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Self control is a process of paying the small pain in the present to obtain a greater gain in the future. But when the pain in the present is overwhelming to bear, people lose their motivation to control themselves. To solve this problem, we have to go beyond the present bias and go back to the past self.
Imagine that alarm wakes you up in the early morning. If you want to overcome the thought of having sleep for one more hour, you need to go back to the ‘me’ last night who set the alarm. To make a rational decision, you have to remember your own attitude of yesterday when getting up early eventually leads to a greater benefit than oversleep. We will introduce the secret of behavioral economics that makes a better ‘me’ based on deep understanding of human.
Jaewoo Joo is a field researcher who applies academic insights to solve real world problems. He received a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Toronto after obtaining a Bachelor degree and a Master degree from Seoul National University. Jaewoo is interested in developing customer experience by utilizing empathic design thinking and counter-intuitive behavioral economics. He is an associate professor of marketing and participating professor of experience design at Kookmin University.
References
Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science, 302(5649), 1338–1339.
Milkman, K. L., Patel, M. S., Gandhi, L., Graci, H. N., Gromet, D. M., Ho, H., … Duckworth, A. L. (2021). A megastudy of text-based nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at an upcoming doctor’s appointment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Vol. 118).
Scheiber, N. (2017). How Uber uses psychological tricks to push its drivers’ buttons, The New York Times, April 2, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/uber-drivers-psychological-tricks.html.
Soman, D., & Shi, M. (2003). Virtual progress: The effect of path characteristics on perceptions of progress and choice. Management Science, 49(9), 1229–1250.
But in recent years, for a number of reasons, the shine of design thinking has been wearing off. Critics have argued that its short-term focus on novel and naive ideas has resulted in unrealistic and ungrounded recommendations. And they have maintained that by centering designers—mainly practitioners of corporate design within agencies—it has reinforced existing inequities rather than challenging them.
Although design thinking *process* rarely produces market-shaking products, design thinking *training* shakes the way people think. When carefully customized, it encourages engineers to be customer-centric and think outside the box. More details about how LG Academy customized a design thinking training is available upon request.
Figure 1 The overall structure and time allocation of the d.school’s design thinking training program
Organizations have sought to adopt design thinking aiming at innovation. However, implementing such a creative problem-solving approach based on designers’ mindsets and practices requires the navigation of obstacles. Corporate structure and culture hinder the adoption course, and cognitive barriers affect non-designer engagement. In this regard, training has been used as a means of easing the process. Although considered a crucial step in design thinking implementation, research on training initiatives is scarce in the literature. Most studies mirror that about d.school boot camp and innovative programs developed by companies globally remain unknown. This practice-oriented paper investigates a training blueprint tailored for LG Corporation in South Korea, targeting R & D personnel working in several affiliates that needed creative problem-solving skills to improve business performance. The study findings unveil a customized initiative that expanded the established boot camp model by adding preceding activities to increase learning opportunities and enable empathetic observation. Fundamentally, the customization strategy aimed to provide participants with customer-oriented tools to solve business problems. In addition, the training program reframed the design thinking steps in order to make it relevant for employees and foster corporate implementation goals. Ultimately, this case study supplies literature describing a training blueprint to disseminate design thinking considering two dimensions: individual adoption and organizational implementation challenges.
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