The team discovered two issues for building a collaborative office space in Seoul.

First, people have a double standard. They generally use the open space for serious reasons such as discussing business issues or having meetings with clients. However, when they notice others occupying the space, the others “seem to” chat over a cup of coffee, read casual books, or just have fun. This unnecessary strictness of others inhibits them from visiting the open space.
Second, people prefer the sofas located next to the window over the white table located in the middle. This skewed flow does not allow accidental interactions.

The team decided not to attack the first, psychological issue but to attack the second, technical issue and then conducted a few experiments to smooth the flow with a hope to make the whole space more vital. For example, the sofas and the round tables with chairs switched each other. As shown below, many people followed the sofas and while doing so, they made some accidental interactions, which is a key feature for collaborative office spaces (see Adam Alter’s post).

This project shows that a minor change in an office space determines the flow, which in turn makes the space where collaboration can happen.

Cases

Experiment for collaborative office space in Seoul (1)

2013-06-13 Jaewoo Joo 1 Comment

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpm_LIyMtMY]

Although many people want their offices similar to the Pixar’s office or the Google’s New York office, only few had them. Adam Alter, Assistant Professor of Marketing at New York University, wrote a piece of article on this issue at U99 (How to build a collaborative office space like Pixar and Google). In this article, he argues four key features of a collaborative office space.

An open plan and other design features (e.g., high-traffic staircases) that encourage accidental interactions.
More common areas than are strictly necessary—multiple cafeterias, other places to read and work that encourage workers to leave confined offices.
Emphasis on areas that hold two or more people, rather than single-occupancy offices.
Purpose-free generic “thinking” areas in open-plan spaces, which encourage workers to do their thinking in the presence of other people, rather than alone.

Dongwha holdings, a company selling interior items and dealing used cars based in Seoul, opened a space called Green Lounge in 2010. This space was dedicated to encourage collaboration among employees. It was equipped with sofas and tables, designer chairs, upscale coffee machines, and a plenty of casual books, etc.

This open space, however, was mostly empty. Very different from Californians and New Yorkers, people in Seoul avoided mingle with strangers and thus accidental interactions did not occur. Instead, they stopped by this space with their colleagues and picked up free coffee and left. Alternatively, they occupied meeting rooms for chatting with friends or keeping focused on their own businesses.

In order to revitalize this open space, a team of employees conducted research; they performed deep interviews with others, video recorded others’ behaviors, and collected and analyzed the flow in the open space. This research revealed two issues and the team decided to attack one of those issues by conducting several experiments.

> Go to Experiment for collaborative office space in Seoul (2)

Cases

Wood plank for steak choice

2013-06-04 Jaewoo Joo 1 Comment

Buying a steak is not a challenging task. We can simply choose portion (e.g., sirloin), quality (e.g., AAA), and weight (e.g., 8oz).

However, when I visited the SSG food market, a premium grocery store in Seoul, to buy a steak, I was asked to choose the thickness of the steak. Over there, I was provided with several pieces of wood plank in different thicknesses. Thanks to this tangible decision support tool, I did not have to scratch my head to figure out the numerical value of the steak thickness. Instead, I picked up one piece of wood plank and simply said “I would like to go with THIS thickness.” Wood plank is a great example of evaluability hypothesis. It helps other visitors choose the right steak as well because thickness is difficult for people to evaluate. A specific value (e.g., 2 cm) is hard to tell another value (e.g., 3 cm) because we are not sensitive about it. About this issue, a group of psychologists introduced a concept of General Evaluability Theory about 10 years ago. (Here is a more recent post)

** Reference

Hsee, C. K., & Zhang, J. (2010). General evaluability theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 343-355. A central question in psychology and economics is the determination of whether individuals react differently to different values of a cared-about attribute (e.g., different income levels, different gas prices, and different ambient temperatures). Building on and significantly extending our earlier work on preference reversals between joint and separate evaluations, we propose a general evaluability theory (GET) that specifies when people are value sensitive and when people mispredict their own or others’ value sensitivity. The GET can explain and unify many seemingly unrelated findings, ranging from duration neglect to affective forecasting errors and can generate many new research directions on topics ranging from temporal discounting to subjective well-being.

Cases

Secret for home deco store

2013-05-31 Jaewoo Joo 1 Comment

When consumers shop for home decorators, they often find it difficult to imagine how a space looks like if they buy and display specific items. Unfortunately, many typical home deco stores do not take into this issue seriously but take an easy or “analytic” approach: they simply pile up the whole decorators and categorize them by chairs, tables, and lighting (above).

However, up-scale home deco stores take a relatively demanding or “holistic” approach. Ando, for example, is divided into several sections. In this store, only a few items are selectively displayed that go well with the theme of each section. When a section represents a single-person studio, for instance, it has a desk, a chair, a mirror, and a hanger (below). Such a holistic approach relieves consumers’ mental burden, which in turn leads them to pay more in the store (see other examples in the IKEA or read a relevant article on designer vs. consumer).

Publications

Dessert design workshop @ Cognitive Science 2013

2013-05-28 Jaewoo Joo 5 Comments

At the Korean Cognitive Science conference on May 25, 2013, Soren Petersen and I ran a workshop called “Design Tasty Dessert: The Art of Firing All The Five Senses!” In this workshop, we wanted to go beyond presenting our research projects; instead, we wanted to have some fun and creative experience with participants. Therefore, we asked participants to come up with as many creative dessert ideas as they could and then chose one to present. In order to help them to enjoy the workshop as well as to enjoy their own creativity, we provided them with a piece of chocolate, a piece of brown cake, a strawberry, a mandarin, and a cubic of cheese in the beginning of the workshop.

Surprisingly, some participants generated creative dessert recipes by utilizing typical food items such as banana, strawberry, raspberry, peach, ice cream, and chocolate (see the hat (above) and the peach hand (below)).

Cases

Classroom for empathy, creativity and cooperation

2013-05-24 Jaewoo Joo Leave a comment

Although classrooms are used by students, they are not student-friendly. NHN NEXT, however, provides its students with the carefully designed spaces so that its students listen to the lectures, do their group projects, read some books, and even take some rests conveniently and comfortably. Teaching public software developers (e.g., portal sites, games, and social network services), NHN NEXT was found in 2012 by NHN, the Korean version of Google.

In this educational institution, students learn how to understand users deeply, how to develop new programs, and how to work with other developers harmoniously. Therefore, its classrooms are designed to encourage its students to be empathic, creative, and cooperative. For instance, desks in the classroom have 6 power outlets, providing 2 power outlets for each student. The wall in the group study room is painted white, which allows students to write/draw/erase their thoughts and ideas freely. The library has multiple shelves in which faculty members leave their books so that students read the books that their favorite professors recommend. Finally, several game rooms are placed in the public space, allowing students to play console games to get excited or relaxed.

Cases

Studio blank, wood material for product line

2013-05-18 Jaewoo Joo Leave a comment

About an year ago, I met two artists who opened StudioBlank and carved wood like a bowling pin. They produced a single product: wood massager called Tapi. We discussed how to increase sales and I suggested them to vary its size in order to target different segments. For example, sales representatives might be interested in small-sized Tapi because they want to give something special to their clients.

Recently, I visited StudioBlank’s newly opened shop and found that the two artists did not simply change the size of their product but developed the product line. Now, they make and sell from typical massagers to aroma diffusers, wooden pillows, and special (acupressure) massagers.

Marketers wonder how to develop/extend the product line without sacrificing the consistency among the products. They tend to focus on visual cues such as brands, logos, or colors. However, product designers can use material, the essence of the product, as a vehicle to develop a successful product line.

Cases

Wood wick for soothing sound

2013-05-13 Jaewoo Joo 2 Comments

When we buy candles, we generally consider how they look or how they smell. Therefore, most candle makers carve their candles artistically or add scents to the candle waxes (e.g., Red Roses of Jo Malone). However, some candle makers pay attention to a different aspect of candle: wick.

A candle wick is usually a braided cotton that holds the flame of a candle. Wicks can be made of material other than string or cord, such as wood, although they are rare (Wikipedia). Recently, I met a candle maker who was selling wood wick candles. She told me her candles make a relaxing SOUND of burning wood. Since I was fascinated by the sound, I bought her candle without considering how it looked or how it smelled.

Designers and marketers are always searching for latent needs, the needs that consumers do not express verbally. Since a wide variety of shapes and scents are existing in the candle market, candle designers and marketers consider innovating their candles by offering different types of burning sounds.

Reference

Urban, G. L., & Hauser, J. R. (2004). “Listening in” to find and explore new combinations of customer needs. Journal of Marketing, 68(2), 72-87.

By “listening in” to ongoing dialogues between customers and Web-based virtual advisers (e.g., Kelley Blue Book’s Auto Choice Advisor), the authors identify new product opportunities based on new combinations of customer needs. The data are available at little incremental cost and provide the scale necessary for complex products (e.g., 148 trucks and 129 customer needs in the authors’ application). The authors describe and evaluate the methodologies with formal analysis, Monte Carlo simulation (calibrated on real data), and a “proof-of-concept” application in the pickup-truck category (more than 1000 Web-based respondents). The application identified opportunities for new truck platforms worth approximately $2.4 billion–$3.2 billion and $1 billion–$2 billion, respectively.

Cases

Alternative to made in China

2013-05-06 Jaewoo Joo Leave a comment

Apple — http://tradediversion.net/2011/03/24/made-in-a-series-of-places/

Wikipedia says,

The Made in China label is one of the most recognizable labels in the world today due to China’s rapidly developing large manufacturing industry, China is currently the largest exporter in the world and the Made in China label can be seen on a wide range of goods from clothing to electronics. U.S. law requires the country of origin of a product to be clearly displayed on the product, or on the product’s container if it is enclosed, resulting in many corporations such as Apple labeling their products with “Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/05.html

Microsoft once labeled their Zune products as “Hello from Seattle, Assembled in China.”

LABC_C434 — http://www.lab-c.co.kr/product/product_c400.html#c434

Plus-X is an established design consulting agency in Seoul, Korea. It completed a brand experience consulting project for YG entertainment successfully. YG entertainment has many Korean singers and Asian entertainers including Psy who suddenly appeared on the global music stage with his mega hit song, “Gangnam Style.”

Recently, Plus-X launched a smartphone case under the name of Lab C. Inspired by the PSY’s Gangnam Style, it labeled the case as “Designed by Lab C, in Gangnam, Material by Italy.” This label is eye-catching and more importantly works well because people in Gangnam are known to be trendy, hip and exude a certain supposed class (though it would have been more noticeable if it says “Stylized in Gangnam”). My friend and colleague, Soren Petersen, also wrote about what design can learn from Gangnam style. Thank you, PSY. You help Koreans to be creative!

Newman, George E. and Ravi Dhar (2014), “Authenticity Is Contagious: Brand Essence and the Original Source of Production,” Journal of Marketing Research, 51 (3), 371–386.

It is well established that differences in manufacturing location can affect consumer preferences through lay inferences about production quality. In this article, the authors take a different approach to this topic by demonstrating how beliefs in contagion (the notion that objects may acquire a special aura or “essence” from their past) influence perceptions of authenticity for everyday consumer products and brands. Specifically, they find that due to a belief in contagion, products from a company’s original manufacturing location are viewed as containing the essence of the brand. In turn, this belief in transferred essence leads consumers to view products from the original factory as more authentic and valuable than identical products made elsewhere. The authors further reveal that consumers who are higher in sensitivity to contagion are more likely to exhibit this effect and that activating the concept of contagion enhances preferences for products made in the brand’s original factory. The authors close by discussing theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Cases

Should we go noisy or quiet when exporting goods?

2013-04-29 Jaewoo Joo 3 Comments

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)

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.

Designmarketinglab

Experiment for collaborative office space in Seoul (2)

Experiment for collaborative office space in Seoul (1)

Wood plank for steak choice

Secret for home deco store

Dessert design workshop @ Cognitive Science 2013

Classroom for empathy, creativity and cooperation

Studio blank, wood material for product line

Wood wick for soothing sound

Alternative to made in China

Should we go noisy or quiet when exporting goods?

Jaewoo Joo | design thinking, behavioral economics, customer experience