I recently traveled by Air Canada from Incheon (Seoul) to Vancouver and then to Toronto. I spent 9 hours in a new airplane (Being 788 Dreamliner) and then 4 more hours in an old one (Airbus 320). In two airplanes, I watched same movies and listened to same music to learn a commonality and several differences of the personal touch-screen TV systems.
As for the commonality, the in-flight entertainment systems embedded in two airplanes are controlled by touch. They have no wired/wireless controllers to select a program or to change the brightness or volume. Although touch is popular, a passenger behind me kept pressing his/her screen firmly and moving my headrest. Therefore, “minimizing the number of touching activities” will be critical in enhancing my own entertainment experience as well as improving the in-flight experience of the passenger sitting in front of me.
*Old*
As for the differences, I found two things that make the new system better than the old one. First, the new system has a better User Interface (UI or layout) than the old one. In the new system, I was able to store individual programs (e.g., movie, tv, and music) and then bring them up to play while enjoying other programs. For instance, while I was watching a movie, I could pause it and then call and listen to the music I stored in advance. In the old system, I completely stopped playing one program to enjoy another one and, more importantly, doing so needs many, many touches. Further, the new system has a new drop-down menu at the top which helped me navigate the programs.
Second, the new system provides a better Customer Experience (CX) than the old one. The new system has a simpler, darker background and thus the information and programs are clear. Adding to that, “a small airplane marker in the bottom” at the new system showed how much more to go to the destination. In the old system, I had no idea how many hours were left and, to quench this curiosity, I should have pressed a lot of buttons. More importantly, the new system responded to my touch faster and more accurately than the old one.
In goal-oriented services, consumers want to get transported from one well-defined state (start) to another (destination) state without much concern for intermediate states. A cost-based evaluation of such services should depend on the total cost associated with the service-i.e., the price and the amount of time taken for completion. In this paper, we demonstrate that the characteristics of the path to the final destination also influence evaluation and choice. Specifically, we show that segments of idle time and travel away from the final destination are seen as obstacles in the progress towards the destination, and hence lower the choice likelihood of the path. Further, we show that the earlier such obstacles occur during the service, the lower is the choice likelihood. We present an analytical model of consumer choice and test its predictions in a series of experiments. Our results show that in choosing between two services that cover the same displacement in the same time (i.e., identical average progress), consumer choice is driven by the perception of progress towards the goal (i.e., by virtual progress). In a final experiment, we show that the effects of virtual progress may outweigh the effects of actual average progress.
Since fashion stores offer a wide range of clothing, they are often full of dust. I find many visitors leave stores because their eyes turn red. I recently found a fashion store with low dust level. Differently from other stores, it hung the whole clothing over the ground and maintained the floor clean. It was very comfortable for me to stay inside, I ended up buying a few jackets and, more importantly, I want to revisit this store. When the store is dust free, more visitors stay longer and they may spend more.
SK Telecom/Broadband introduced a setup box called B Box. It was co-developed by a design consulting agency, Plus-ex, and recently received a red-dot design award. It not only looks way different from other ugly, bulky setup boxes, but it also provides several interesting services with TV viewers through immensely improved User Interface (UI). For instance, viewers can access the information about weather, stock prices, and his/her own schedule information watching the program. They can customize the layout and choose main screen size as well as select which information they want to get among traffic, home monitoring, pictures, and etc.
For me, I like the Dynamic Channel function. It allows me to “watch” up to 12 running TV programs on different channels. I review multiple contents, skip commercials, and choose the best channel. I wish other companies pay attention to improving viewers’ TV experiences as well.
Hyundai released i30 in Europe. So far, most of its marketing messages focus on how it looks (design) and what special features it has (convenience). However, I came up with a different thought after watching a youtube video that one of my German friends recommended me to watch. In the video, Martin Winterkorn, the Chairman of the Volkswagen AG, studied the Hyundai i30 personally at the Motorshow in Frankfurt IAA 2011.
Between 1:30 and 2:00 minutes, he tilted up and down i30’s steering wheel and then said,
“There is no noise. BMW can’t do it. We can’t do it”
I am personally surprised that BMW cars make noises while Hyundai do not. Interestingly, some BMW drivers already posted this issue on a website to look for a solution (e.g., Creaking noise when tilting steering wheel). Hyundai marketers should go beyond traditional issues such as look & feel, convenience, or gas mileage to raise a new issue (e.g., noise of tilting steering wheel or, more broadly speaking, user experience) and differentiate their cars.
