Cases

Should we go noisy or quiet when exporting goods?

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People like imported goods. Some like them so much that they even pick up the old license plates and place them outside their buildings for an aesthetic reason. (Note that this tiny run-down building is located in the center of Seoul and must have nothing to do with Nebraska or Iowa)

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Imported goods are welcomed in particular when exporting countries are highly qualified. This, so called, COO (Country Of Origin) effect is well established for Germany, France and Japan. Recently, I found that Canada Goose is also enjoying the same effect. It is a popular fashion brand designed for extreme cold weather conditions. According to my undergraduate students, Canada Goose is hugely popular because it is made in Canada not in US, Russia or China. They particularly love its huge label saying “Canada Goose Arctic Program.”

Differently from Canada Goose, M0851, another successful Canadian fashion brand says nothing about Canada. Although it started in Montreal and seems to be well established in Canada, it has no clue about where it comes from. One Canadian fashion brand speaks loudly, while the other keeps silent about where it was born. Interestingly, they both run business well.

Canada Goose LabelM0851

Cases

Different Ads, different people, same products

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20130421_@ Museum (10)

I visited a special exhibition at the Seoul Museum of History and met an old day of Korean advertisement.

“Title: Seoul Nostalgia: A Retrospective Photographic Exhibition of Kim Hanyong

Having started as a news photographer in 1947 at ‘Gukje Bodo’ (International Report), Kim Han-yong is a renowned photographer who has devoted himself solely to photography throughout his life. His professional traces crossing genres such as news, art and advertisement can be translated into the records of Korea’s contemporary history. This exhibition consists broadly of the two themes: ‘Memories of City’ and ‘Portraits of the beauty’. ‘Memories of City’ displays the dynamic changes that Seoul and the people living in it have gone through since the 1950’s. ‘Portraits of the beauty’ presents some 70 advertising posters created by Kim, commonly referred to as an ‘advertising photography magnate’. He says that he has never forgotten photography for a moment in his life of 90 years. Thanks to this passionate artist, we can discover our own portraits of the days when we dreamed with hope despite difficult circumstances.”

20130421_@ Museum (5)

I had an interesting observation when I compared between the Coca-cola ad and Hyundai-Ford ad in the 1970s. About 40 years ago, Coca-cola was advertised WITH pencil-drawing consumers while the Hyundai-Ford car was advertised WITHOUT drivers. Since then, this trend has become opposite: Coca-cola is now showing Coke (or bear)  whereas Hyundai is now demonstrating how people drive vehicles.

Cases

How do we evaluate designs?

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20130415_Design @ Kmu ID (1)

My friend teaches Product Design. He uses coffee maker in his course. Students disassemble and assemble a coffee maker and then design a new one.

A few days ago, I was invited to see the designs that his students submitted to his course. After discussing with him which ones are well designed and why, I made two interesting observations.

20130415_Design @ Kmu ID (3)

First, only few coffee maker designs have cords. He and I reached a consensus that most students failed to take into account how their newly designed coffee makers work or look like in reality. Only few thought these issues deeply and put some flavor of reality. Interestingly, we reached another consensus that the coffee makers with the cords are generally better designed than those without cords.

20130415_Design @ Kmu ID (5)

Next, we chose the identical coffee maker as well designed for different reasons. I chose it because its look and feel is appealing whereas he chose it because it may work well compared to others. Although I always assume that aesthetics and usefulness are in a trade-off situation, they are not necessarily traded off in the reality.

Cases

Timid-looking electric vehicle

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At the Seoul Motor Show, I came across an unique electric vehicle—not for its powerful performance, but for its gentle name and modest design. It is called Yebbujana, meaning “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Its curvy body and four tiny headlamps give it a soft, almost timid appearance.

20130330_@ Seoul Motor Show (22)

In general, giving a product an inviting name and approachable design can be a smart strategy, especially when introducing something new and unfamiliar. It helps reduce potential resistance from consumers.

However, in this case, the car seems almost too shy—both in name and appearance—to inspire confidence as a vehicle we would want to drive.

***

Reference

Scherder, R., & Drauz, R. (2013). Influence of car design within the electric mobility market. International Journal of Technology Marketing, 8(4), 453-473.

This paper investigates how customers want electric cars to look like in comparison to current cars. A survey gives insight into customer preferences. With the upcoming electric mobility, automotive technology is becoming more homogenous, making design important as differentiation possibility. The survey results overall show big design changes to be of less relevance compared to small or no design changes. Interestingly, this changes, when the participants are informed about the advantages of purpose design. Moreover, the majority does not prefer car design expressing the electric mobility. Here also a gap between German and international participants is observed. German customers have a significantly lower preference of design changes. The design change is differed by the car views front, side, rear, and interior and compared to sex, age and nationality of participants. Also vehicle classes and preferred design visions are compared. Here again, no and small design changes prevail. With regard to the customer point of view, thus the implementation of design-driven innovation in electric mobility needs to be handled with care. Gained insights provide the possibility to derive electric mobility design strategies. The participant’s preferences change towards bigger design changes when being informed about purpose design reveals a practical implication for marketing activities.

Cases

How to collect creative ideas massively?

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20130327_Soren @ KMU (1)

Soren Petersen gave a talk about how to collect creative ideas in a massive scale. He applied crowdsourcing methods to address a wide variety of design issues including design marketing conflicts, animal rescue, peace innovation, to name a few. He shared his experience that social platforms such as LinkedIn and HuffingtonPost are useful to prioritize problems, solicit solutions, and share insights with professional designers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ka3jDAWKeA

Cases

What happens when the men’s room sign is pink?

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20130315_Washroom @ Ewha Women University (2)

Blue is for boys and pink is for girls. This color-gender association is strongly established in many countries. In a women’s university in Korea, however, signs for men’s rooms and for ladies’ rooms are both colored in pink. My friend said that they use the same color to avoid any possible gender discrimination. Interestingly however, pink signs confuse men when searching for men’s room. Indeed, “men” needs to be written down on the door of men’s room.

20130315_Washroom @ Ewha Women University (3)

This raises a series of interesting questions.

  • First, does the different colors discriminate different genders?
  • Second, if this is the case, should we sacrifice our color-based convenience in order to promote social justice?
  • Third, if color-based convenience needs to be replaced with other coding systems, what are the other ways that do not discriminate gender? For instance, if the shape-gender association is a good candidate (below), how could we UN-learn the color-gender association and then learn the shape-gender association?
20130315_Washroom @ Ewha Women University (1)

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Reference

Scarpina, F., & Tagini, S. (2017). The stroop color and word test. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 557.

The literature on interference in the Stroop Color and Word Test, covering over 50 yrs and some 400 studies, is organized and reviewed. In so doing, a set of 18 reliable empirical findings is isolated that must be captured by any successful theory of the Stroop effect. Existing theoretical positions are summarized and evaluated in view of this critical evidence and the 2 major candidate theories, relative speed of processing and automaticity of reading, are found to be wanting. It is concluded that recent theories placing the explanatory weight on parallel processing of the irrelevant and the relevant dimensions are likely to be more successful than are earlier theories attempting to locate a single bottleneck in attention.

Cases

Hyundai Motors, UX for car marketing

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Hyundai i30

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.

Cases

What is the right choice for museum curators?

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DML_Boston

While I stayed in Boston for the conference, I visited Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston and met an intriguing decision-making question. I took a picture of a panel titled Making Choices which says,

Every gallery represents a long series of choices. Who decides which works go on view and how they should be arranged? What factors go into making that decision? Does the Museum have consistent guidelines about what should be on view — or do the rules change from gallery to gallery?

Ultimately, the MFA’s curators are responsible for deciding what you see in the galleries, for making choices from the Museum’s rich collections that do justice to the art and engage the viewer. Context is key — what is the story to be told? Should the gallery be a survey of a whole period or should it showcase just a few artists in depth? Should it provide variety or set up close comparisons? Re-create a sense of a historical period, focus on a specific style, or feature that character of individual objects? Curators work with a team of designers and educators in considering these issues and making these decisions.

And finally there is the question of quality. Which works are the most compelling? In which are the artist’s skills most effectively employed? Where are materials used with the greatest sophistication or technical ability? And what about condition: does the work still represent the artist’s intent at the time it was made?

Indeed, curators face a decision-making task regarding how to display an artifact. Do they complete the artifact to restore its original appearance (e.g., sofa with hypothetical cushions) or do they remain the artifact as-is for further studies (e.g., sofa frame only)? Unfortunately, there is no right answer for this question. I wish some behavioral decision theory researchers discuss this issue seriously.

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Reference

Einhorn, H. J., & Hogarth, R. M. (1981). Behavioral decision theory: Processes of judgement and choice. Annual review of psychology, 32(1), 53-88.

Cases

Research questions about design

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Research topics @ DMI_20120808 001
Research topics @ DMI_20120808 001

Research topics @ DMI_20120808 002
Research topics @ DMI_20120808 002

Research topics @ DMI_20120808 003
Research topics @ DMI_20120808 003

At the 2012 International Design Management Research Conference  (August 8-9, 2012 @ Boston), I have attended a group discussion session called Research Methodology Clinic. Its description says,

Join us for a group conversation, facilitated by Alison Rieple and Jeanne Liedtka, in which interested colleagues come together to offer feedback and coaching to each other on the thorny issues we face as academic researchers in design related areas. Come with a research issue you’ve been struggling with and/or to offer your successful methodological insights to others!

In this session, 12 participants have shared not only their research methodologies but also their research topics. From the pictures above, you will be able to identify who was studying which topic. The research topics vary from DESIGN (Understanding how design really happens), DESIGN THINKING (Definition, construct, and application / Its relationship with management), and DESIGNERS (Collaborative problem solving / Decision-making) to DESIGN POLICY (Corporate level of design polity), INNOVATION (Metrics to identify innovators), DESIGN PROCESS (toolkit, activities, and actions) and SERVICE DESIGN.

Publications

Decision support tool for collaborative concept evaluation

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Although concept evaluation has attracted much attention, collaborative concept evaluation has received minimal attention. In this work, we identify problems and propose solutions regarding collaborative concept evaluation. First, we reviewed past projects and interviewed evaluators with international design experiences to conclude that concept evaluation criteria are not established but constructed. Second, we apply the psychology of Brunswik’s Lens model to propose that providing multiple concept aspects improve collaborative concept evaluation. Three experimental studies demonstrate that our proposed Concept Aspect Profile (CAP) model (1) is superior to existing concept evaluation models, (2) differentiates between breakthrough new product concepts and incremental new product concepts, and (3) increases the likelihood that a concept receives the Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA). This work contributes to marketing research of concept evaluation as well as provides implication for designers.

Jaewoo Joo | design thinking, behavioral economics, field experiment, customer experience