Per Axbom's Blog, page 7

How to delete unroll.me and revoke their access to your e-mail

In reports coming out about how the unsubscription service unroll.me has been selling your data to Uber, it has become […]

--

by @axbom

Same goal. Different tactic.

A fisher had finished work early and was sitting next to her boat on the beach. A wealthy businessman walked by, clearly upset by seeing the woman displaying such laziness.

“Why aren’t you out fishing?”, he inquired.

The fisher responded: “Because I have caught enough fish for today. Now I’m taking it easy and enjoying the afternoon sun.”

“Why don’t you catch more fish when you have time to spare?”, said the businessman.

“What would I do with that fish?”, she wondered.

“You could sell it and make more profit. With that money you could buy a bigger engine for your boat. You could go further out to sea, fish on deeper waters, catch more fish and buy nylon nets. That could give you even more fish and make you even more money! Soon you’ll have enough money to buy another boat, you could build a whole fishing fleet, sell it and make a fortune.”

“And then what would I do?”, the fisher pondered under her hat.

“Then you can relax, unwind and enjoy life!“, he explained.

“Well, what do you think I’m doing now?”, she laughed.

This is a retelling of the old parable of the businessman and the fisherman. Sadly the original author is unknown.

--

by @axbom

Ruckusmaker Day

In honor of Steve Jobs.

As initiated by Seth Godin, on February 24 each year we celebrate annual Ruckusmaker Day. The first Ruckusmaker Day was celebrated on what would have been Steve Jobs’ 60th birthday.

Your opinion matters

Ruckus
noun. The act of making a noisy disturbance – The act of disturbing something or someone; setting something in motion. (Source: The Free Dictionary)

On Ruckusmaker Day you are encouraged to speak up, to have an opinion on something you care about. Too often we fall back on other people’s views and actions, we retweet their words and their thoughts – we feel safer riding on someone else’s shoulders.

Today, make it a point to be the one who shares your point of view. When you sit down and shape your thoughts into something that you then articulate and share with others you will begin to plant seeds and create new pathways, even within yourself.

In the words of Seth Godin:

Commit to articulating your point of view on one relevant issue, one news story, one personal issue. Every day. Online or off, doesn’t matter. Share your taste and your perspective with someone who needs to hear it.

Steve Jobs didn’t give us inventions. He gave us a point of view.

Think different

Here’s to the crazy ones Narrated by Steve Jobs

Here's to the crazy ones(Steve Jobs)
http://axbom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/thecrazyones.mp3

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

(Script by Apple Inc.)

Now speak up, give a speech, write a blog post, sketch or compose – and say different. Don’t be everyone else’s expectations.

--

by @axbom

Ling Valentine answers my questions about LingsCars

So I did an e-mail interview with Ling Valentine back in 2013 but I only published it on my Swedish blog. By popular demand, here is my post with Ling’s answers in English (which they of course originally were written in!).

In talks and posts I sometimes reference Ling Valentine who is the proprietor of one of the most startling websites for car leasing: LingsCars in the United Kingdom. People I show this site to truly believe it is a hoax, but not only does this business show signs of complete madness – it is also rather profitable. I was given the opportunity to ask Ling some questions the other week and of course this is the perfect day for publishing it… because, you know: Valentine’s Day!

First, if you have no idea what the site looks like, take a look at my screen recording:

1. How many people work with LingsCars?

Eight people work at LINGsCARS currently, plus Jamie who used to be head of IT but has now gone freelance, but he is still very much part of my team on a retainer. So, 9 people really.

Emma and I do sales, Wai does sales progression and bookkeeping, Holly and Guy do customer admin, Jon does everything out of the ordinary, and Chris does IT. Annie cleans and maintains, part time.

My website does an incredible amount of work. I am actively looking for two or three more people which will enable me to hit my medium-term target of £100,000 of sales a month (currently hitting £60k of sales this month and average £50k a month over the last year).

2. How much and what type of design thinking do you employ (UX, research, neuropsychology or best practices)?

Everyone contributes to my website. The website feeds us all, so we all have a big interest in it. Often customers and visitors chip in and people on Twitter give me ideas and comments come out of the blue. Some are very insightful. You have to realise that no one just buys a car, it is a very big, long term decision. Few people convert purchases as big as this on the web with no physical intervention. I need people to remember my website and return when it’s time.

About 65% of business comes from my website with no human contact, just the LINGsCARS website doing its job.

On one level a great deal of thinking goes into my website, deciding how customers will use it and maximising customer interaction and dwell-time, but mostly making it fun. But on the other hand, I do things instinctively, do difficult things willingly, and make pages that no one else would consider (heavy, long, bright, animated, off-the-wall, difficult coding, hundreds of queries or whatever)… without any AB testing or analysis or anything else.

I just think “that looks good, we’ll do that”, or “visitors will LOVE that”. I am wanting different people to love different things, so it stands to reason that some people will hate some things. I think many web businesses are scared stiff of causing any offence, and to me that is a very weak way to work… and it comes across to customers as weak.

I think you have to back websites up with offline assets, so for example I show the office on webcams with interesting things to spot, a new (3 x 55″ TV) video display I am building that people will watch on the webcam – daft but true – it gives people the confidence that I am real, I exist. But, I don’t mentalise about stuff, I would rather just do it.

3. What does a typical customer look like?

The market for new cars in the UK is just around 2 million a year. Just under half are private purchases. Most private or small business new car buyers are, by default, liquid and good credit risks. These are my target customers.

My customers are predominately male, predominantly middle aged (hence the karaoke music from that era and my rocket and my Dalek), mainly professional, and predominantly reasonably IT savvy. They also have an open attitude (or else they will say they would “never” buy from me).

So, my customers are usually happy chappies and I have a very good time chatting with them on my secure CRM called LINGO.

I do everything in writing on there, very rarely using the phone. Cars are big things and having everything in writing is something no other company does, and it protects both me and the customer, they appreciate that. I never ask for any money at all until car delivery, I do everything on trust. I do occasionally say “no” to some people who otherwise qualify for credit.

I have a large number of repeat customers, which over the long term is cumulative. I answer my customers LINGO messages within 5 minutes in normal working hours, so they always have great confidence I am there and learn to prefer using online chat to the phone. The phone is wasteful, dangerous for big-ticket items and I often need to quickly research answers to avoid giving bullshit nonsense to customers.

END OF INTERVIEW.

My Reflections

What strikes me the most is how fearless Ling Valentine is and how customers seem to appreciate her direct, honest attitude, that she defies the norm, trusts her customers, makes them laugh and the fact that she is quick to respond. Imagine if more companies realized that one needs to answer within minutes for the digital channels to become a straightforward and ultimately lucrative option.  The insight about breathing time for research when communication is via chat is also spot on.

I am hugely grateful to Ling for taking the time to answer me; these are valuable insights I think many of us will have reason to revisit. The bigger question now is how much the rest of us dare embrace the same refreshing disposition.

--

by @axbom

Trust. Can you build it?

All the signs say 2017 is bringing us into an era where UI:s no longer will be UI:s in the traditional sense.

As the explosion of mobile devices and content chunking has rendered it nigh impossible to anticipate how a person will digest your message, content has — once again — taken its rightful seat on the throne. It looks as this reign will become even more critical when text and short bursts of words is all we will use to trigger purchases, downloads, news and entertainment.

New relationships will be formed with chatbots, voice-controlled agents and data-powered assistants acting on our behalf. This has the potential of bringing us even closer to those people we endearingly refer to as users, hence the question every modern-day cyborg designer is pondering: are we ready for this?

This forces us to realize that each and every user in fact is an individual human with all the quirks and emotions that this entails.

Inadvertently using someone’s middle name won’t cut it anymore, you need to be on solid buddy terms. What we build must appeal not only to needs but build trust in the form of a long-lasting friendship — all the while making it a point to never overstep boundaries that we still not have defined.

Listening, reacting and adapting in the moment to feedback will be increasingly crucial. Failure to do so will result in anxious humans questioning the validity of the relationship.

As our datacenters overflow with insights about user behavior it is not in our best interest to mine this data to perform manipulative actions on the very people who provide the information. Misusing data, overstepping, will lead to tearful breakups with technology and services.

Many of these new devices are no longer ones we carry around but devices that move in with us. They are in still our house when we leave home, all the while acting, performing, listening. Alive. Making assumptions about our best interests.

Trust will matter more than ever.

Can you build it?

We may be entering an era when your design skills will depend on your willingness to truly connect with the people you rely on for your daily bread. To learn their language and their everyday fears. Which begs the question: are you as a designer comfortable enough in your intentions that you would delight in sitting face-to-face with the very person who trusts them? Not as a researcher. As a friend.

This post was my e-mail contribution to an article on whatusersdo.com entitled 22 Expert Opinions on UI Design Trends for 2017. Needless to say, they just used a small piece of it, because words…

What is UX?

UX is, as many are aware, an abbreviation of user experience – but has over the years come to encompass so much more. You may even say that user experience is the passive way of explaining what UX entails. In fact, the overwhelming growth and popularity of the term UX means it has come to be different things for different people. For the term to be of use within the context of business, education and recruitment we as professionals must however agree on some common ground.

Here’s my shot at bringing the discussion down (or up?) a notch and helping more people understand what the term UX is all about.

UX exists because it fills a gap. Without UX there would be less focus on understanding the users of systems and products. In developing a product or service the success of UX lies in bridging the gap between merely making assumptions about what features users want, and truly understanding how the product fits into users’ everyday lives. When I say everyday lives this means looking at behaviors, emotions and activities beyond the organization’s operations.

Understanding users is important because:

It allows us to produce products that are more well-received by users and therefore more likely to be successful, profitable and/or long-lasting.
It allows us to spend less money and time on development because we do not build things that are irrelevant or unnecessarily confusing, hence minimizing the need to abandon or rework solutions.
It allows us to prioritize and drive the development process, by understanding what features are more pressing than others.
It allows us to discover areas of development we could not think up on our own. This is helpful in innovation, staying ahead of competitors and pivoting the business towards activities that promote long-term survival.
It allows us to run ethical businesses and organizations. By understanding how users respond and feel, and taking into consideration related touchpoints beyond our own organization, we can build things that help people fulfill real goals.

I use the word allows because UX is more of a mindset than a strict set of tools that will always deliver the desired outcome. In many ways UX is a craft that requires a multitude of soft and hard skills to thrive. For the best results UX therefore needs a blend of competencies that will likely be contributed by a team working towards a common goal.

Even in a “UX team of one” the individual is naturally not working in a vacuum but in unison with a plethora of professionals within management, customer support, marketing, development, research and so on. Something individuals focused on UX will excel at is making sense of all the information.

Sensemaking is where you will see a lot of the output from UX practitioners. Sometimes this is described as design synthesis – the attempt to make meaning out of data through interpretation and modeling.

Making sense of information is the natural next step after research. It is a considerable task and one that needs to be approached with care. When interpreting research we can not rush through; we can not jump to conclusions; we can not ignore lack of enough data; we can not dismiss findings we disagree with. To master sensemaking, one must drop all preconceptions and prejudices about how people think, do and react. The data must speak, not the own mind. It is a true struggle with confirmation bias.

It is only when we are making real use of research data that we are no longer using guesswork to drive business. This is the purpose of UX – to eliminate the guesswork. We need to make it count.

In the process of sensemaking, UX as a phenomenon is fueled by its ability to consider and pull from a vast mix of human-related subject areas:

UX is related to design because it is about problem-solving. We must understand why we are building something and then use design efforts to explore and test our options. This includes exploring aesthetic, functional, economic and socio-political dimensions to accomplish our goals.
UX is related to business because it tries to understand what aspects of user needs must be accommodated for a business to progress.
UX is related to scientific research because we do the research and make up hypotheses about what will work, which we then experiment with.
UX is related to technology because, you know, everything is. And I don’t necessarily mean digital, I mean simply using tools to advance performance.
UX is related to sociology and anthropology in that it studies various aspects of humans within societies.
UX is related to psychology because we want to understand the mechanics of behavior and for example how habits and memories are formed.
UX is related to copywriting because content can make or break a solution and it is a great example of a cost-efficient way of improving products.
UX is related to management because we need to coordinate all the efforts in an organization for the UX initiatives to work as intended with regards to variables such as resources, training and investments.

Let’s face it. UX is not an individual wheel in a machine, it needs to permeate all aspects of an organization to truly make an impact. UX needs leadership to reach as much of the organization as possible, and it needs advocates to continuously educate the organization about the importance of a user-centric mindset that minimizes guesswork and promotes a culture of research and experimentation. Talking to users, it’s at thing.

But is UX a discipline in itself? I would say: not yet and maybe not ever. It is a combination of disciplines that come together to work towards the same goals. UX is a mindset born out of a desire to do what’s best for humans. And this mindset has found its place in providing real and beneficial results for businesses. As such, I don’t believe you need UX in your professional title to be working with it.

Am I done yet? Well, I guess it’s time for me to have my stab at a definition of UX.

Definition of UX

UX is the intent to understand people’s behavior, emotions and struggles with the purpose of enabling organizations to make better products and services for those people. UX professionals make sense of data about people and match this with organizational objectives and resources. UX practitioners communicate their findings to build empathy for users, consensus about problems and proposed solutions, as well as motivation for building what’s right.

Each new solution is an experiment that can be learned from to create the next solution.

Unlike interface design or usability, UX is about the big picture and takes into account the organization’s well-being as well as the goal-fulfillment of users. Hence, UX is not so much about creating a frictionless experience as it is about creating the conditions where both organizations and users can continue to improve their performance.

UX practitioners strive to develop a symbiosis between organizations and humans where both continuously improve at what they are trying to accomplish. UX, as a result, contributes to the longevity and sustainability of organizations.

Others who have defined UX:

* Whitney Hess (one of my favorite posts about UX, very much in line with my personal thinking)

* Nielsen Norman Group (Don Norman should probably have a say as the instigator of UX)

* What is UX Design? 15 User Experience Experts Weigh In. So UX design is really another story, but I encourage you to have a look at Peter Merholz comment at the end.

--

by @axbom

When friction is a good thing

Last week I gave a talk at UX Lisbon entitled The Invisible Problem With Fairy Tale Experiences. It is a talk that challenges conventional wisdom within UX, specifically the claim that the role of user experience is to remove obstacles and friction.

I received lots of appreciation for the talk (thank you!) and many also started thinking differently already in the workshops they were attending the following day. I want to share some of the examples that were sent to me on Twitter, by Francois Jordaan and Louie A. Many of these examples were talked about in Giles Colborne’s workshop From Insight to Interaction.

A cash counting machine from Coinstar. When it was working too fast users did not trust its accuracy. A delay was added, using an animated “loader”, and the problem of trust was largely removed.
Airport baggage claim in Austin. When passengers complained about the wait at the carousel the walk to the baggage claim was routed to be five minutes longer. Complaints about waiting for the baggage disappeared.
Online supermarkets. When there is no friction users only buy what they came for. By adding reminders and suggestions (in a sense friction) there is a chance that people will remember to buy more things they actually do need.
Onboarding flow on Yammer/LinkedIn. By increasing the scope of a step-by-step guide for users the conversions went down but the users who did make it through contributed more relevant content.
Create a blog on Blogger. When initially designed, pressing the “Create a Blog” button on Blogger.com set one up instantly for you. This caught users off-guard, with users exclaiming “That’s it? Is something wrong?”. To resolve confusion a loader screen was added with the message “Setting up your blog…”
Onboarding in an app. A more lengthy onboarding guide will lower conversions but set the right expectations for a more complex interface.
Waiting for coffee. How long would you wait? As it turns out, if you wait longer for coffee your perception of the coffee may actually be that it is better. There is, of course, a fine balance to this. Of course Starbucks could figure out how to make a Cappuccino faster… but do they want to?

Could this be true? The perceived value of coffee just in your head?

Things you can do on your website and apps.

Swipe, don’t tap. By requiring a swipe action instead of just tap you can match this to more important actions where the user needs to exert more energy to perform the action.
Loading screens. Let people wait, but clearly show the website is “working”. As mentioned above, people can have more trust in websites that demonstrate labor (essentially giving a tangible expression of the complexity going on behind the scenes).
Onboarding. In my talk I gave an example of a company that gives out a password one letter per minute in a video of a person explaining the code of conduct. It may sound extreme but it works really well for that organisation.

I would like to stress that the driving force behind my talk is ethics. My role as a designer is for the user to reach her goal and not just enable the completion of a task. If my product won’t assist in this goal alignment this must be obvious to the user. If I can assist in bringing her closer to the goal, but with additional “pain” for the user such as extra costs, this should also be clearly communicated. Design creates win-wins for users and businesses, not just wins for one or the other.

When to add friction

The most common question people had for me after my talk was how they would decide when it is appropriate to add friction. I plan on addressing this challenge more in a longer blog post, but here is the short answer:

Besides the obvious usability tests, by doing regular risk assessments of the different pages and functions in your website you are taking clear responsibility for pinpointing where users could potentially have problems.

The key is to brainstorm as many different unwanted outcomes as possible. In my talk the risk would be for Leeloo to misunderstand delivery time and the unwanted outcome to have her hoodie delivered later than would serve her true goal. In my simplest risk assessment this would be scored on two variables: Probability (of it happening) and Severity (how much of a problem is it really).

By doing a risk assessment you uncover areas where you need to add measures to prevent the unwanted outcomes. More often than not these measures are exactly what we are talking about, adding more now to prevent disappointment later.

The scoring is helpful in assessing how big the problem is and how often you need to return to verify if the risk is eliminated or still present.

I’ll be adding many of these concepts to a Fairy Tale UX workshop.

Until then, what are some more examples you can think of? I would love for you to share them with me in the comments. 

Featured image: UXLx User Experience Lisbon

--

by @axbom

Fairy Tale Experiences talk at #UXLx

Here are the slides for my UXLx talk The Invisible Problem with Fairy Tale Experiences. Huge thank you to everyone in the audience for having a good time with me. Give me a shout on Twitter if you have questions or comments.

The talk in article form: The invisible problem with Fairy Tale Experiences
Follow-up post: When friction is a good thing

Thx for the awesome reminder that friction is not always bad! #supersmoothpresentation https://t.co/WmKigAQFpo

— Uli Siegmeier (@Uli_Siegmeier) May 30, 2016

My #UXLx awards. Best talk goes to @axbom, most inspiring to @MrAlanCooper. Best workshop was by @nathanacurtis for sure.

— Björn Mußmann (@UXundDollerei) May 28, 2016

@axbom I got great feedback on your presentation from friends who attended!

Why we love to hate “user testing”

It’s become popular amongst usability professionals to exclaim “We don’t call it user testing, we’re not testing users” Although (of course!) I understand the sentiment it is often proclaimed in a fashion implying this is a truth a majority of people are not aware of.

I have trouble, though, finding people who sincerely think user testing means finding out if the human being is smart enough to use the tool.*

The assertion works especially well as a rhetorical device in presentations and sales meetings. The audience goes “Aaah!” and one can quickly move on to the next slide. I know. I’ve done it. More than once.

But in a similar fashion I have yet to find people who believe that ski jumping is a sport where participants jump over skis, or hear voices calling for a ban of the term fly fishing because people are taking their boats out to capture winged insects.

Language is funny that way, if you want to infer a different meaning or unfavorable connotation on a word pair you often can. I promise you the deadlifts I do at the gym do not involve any foul play or zombie-induced focus.

Sometimes the ambiguity of a term is actually what gets people interested in understanding more.

People in UX enjoy, and rejoice in, finding double-meanings that could cause confusion. It’s part of their job. But that overzealousness will create some false positives. Just because something can be misunderstood does not mean it often will be. Especially when it is used within a clear context.

Instead of worrying about your own interpretation of “user testing”, I would like to propose that it’s more important to follow up and ensure that people understand what you mean.

The point of the phrase user testing has undoubtedly been to make clear the fact that you are involving people who are users of the product/service you are building or maintaining. I find it hard to accept that the phrase — in the context of a building a product or service — does not communicate this. This is how it has been used for many years.

And then someone figured it was demeaning to call someone a user of a system? Really? Fine, I’ve had conversations around the possibility calling users just people. But let’s at least make the effort to differentiate between current users and potential users. That’s when the concept of current people and potential people kind of has the wrong ring to it.

To be blunt, I do not believe that people who call it usability testing are generally doing a better job than people calling it user testing so I’m going to give that whole ordeal some rest.

My rant is over, but thank you for reading this far. Now on to my real point.

All this said, I actually don’t believe any of the phrases user testing, usability testing, UX testing or similar variants really do justice to the task being performed. Maybe the word we really should be questioning is the second one: testing. Over the years this has become a checkbox in a project plan and without the proper management testing is often overlooked as a passing task that once completed can be moved to a manila folder and archived.

The word test is not something most people who have attended school have fond memories of. Speaking of connotations, tests do tend to bring some dark ones to light: midnight cramming, profuse sweating, stress, you name it.

And really: should a usability test fail or pass a system, or should it focus on bringing new knowledge to the table?

Testing, by itself, is really not the objective is it? I put it to those who find it valuable to point out that user testing is not about testing users: is it then about testing the product? I find it closer to the truth that we are observing the interplay between a user and a system. From this interplay and communication we come closer to understanding what is helpful and what is detrimental when it comes to the users, as well as the organization, reaching their goals.

What we really are looking for is not a right or wrong answer (“Does this work or not?”) but one or more collections of insights, validations and learnings that help us take the next step so that we may then design the next experiment to validate any new assumptions (“It could work better if we do this.”). Wouldn’t it be nice at a project demonstration to discourage the questions “What did we test? Did we pass?” And instead promote the more curious “What did we learn?” and “What do we now believe?”

I much more enjoy talking about my work using phrases such as why- or insights finding, expectations analysis, sense-making or behavior observation. Also, the more I can help people think about purpose and goal rather than bluntly label the task, the more curiosity I can spark with my stakeholders. It is when everyone, not just me, understands the value of the data that real change tends to more readily happen.

Enough of my fluctuating attitude though. Back to you, what is it that you do and what do you like to call it?

 

*The closest I have come to testing human performance in this field is the concept of drunk user testing, but I feel confident placing this in an entirely different category of research. And although it is often considered good form to abide by the law, the phrase “legally drunk” is perhaps not to be taken as a recommendation.

This post was sparked by a question posed by Mike Beasley on Twitter, and I joined in the conversation with Becca Kennedy. I was in retrospect too harsh in my first tweet using the word “snob”. I blame Twitter’s word count and my having recently been getting overly worked up about the common practice of criticizing the term “user testing”. A practice I’ve admittedly partaken in myself, as I confessed earlier. In UX (itself a pretty shady abbreviation and label) we debate terminology endlessly and I don’t see our stakeholders really getting any happier about it. Hence I just needed to get this post out of my system. Thanks Mike for adding just the right amount of kindle to my fire 

Explaining UX with a glass of lemonade

This is Amy and her brother Max. They are 8 and 12 years old. 

Max is a great snowboarder. And Amy, she wants to be just like him. But their parents say Amy can not get a snowboard until she is 10 years old.

Amy loves making lemonade, and she has an idea. She has seen in books that children can run lemonade stands. If she can make her own money to buy the snowboard, can she buy it herself for their winter skiing trip? Her parents laugh and say yes, thinking she is cute for thinking she can make that much money by herself.

This pisses her off, so she decides to really show them.

Max thinks her sister is pretty cool and want to help her. It would be fun to have another member of the family to snowboard with. Also, Max is not an asshole. That’s why Amy likes him.

Amy already has a great lemonade recipe they know that family and house guests really love, and they agree to spend time before school and after school selling the lemonade.

Where Amy and Max live, lots of people go to work by bus and many people walk to the bus station in the morning, and on their way home from work. They think that setting up their lemonade stand close to the bus stop would be a smart idea.

On their first attempt, on a Monday, they bring a foldable table and five pitchers of lemonade. They only sell a half pitcher in one hour.

As it turns out, people seem to be in a hurry, running to and from the bus, and don’t really stop and see them. Amy keeps count and only 1 in a 100 people who pass stop to buy a glass of lemonade. Most of them people who Amy and Max already know.

After trying this for two weeks they realize that Friday afternoon seems to be the best day for selling lemonade. People seem to be more relaxed and stop to talk to the kids, seemingly now seeing them for the first time.

Max has an idea: what if they don’t stand so close to the bus station, where people seem to be very stressed, how about they stand somewhere where people aren’t running but are more relaxed when they pass.

They find a spot further away… nicely framed between two trees. This time when Amy keeps count she realizes that 1 in 40 people who pass by will buy. In a less stressful area people will buy more. But not as many people pass by, so they still only sell a pitcher. At this rate it will take 2 years to make enough money.

By this time they realize that the best spot is under the trees but they need to find a way to get more people to go past that spot, maybe even make a habit out of it. They talk to their friends, Cousin Carol and Artistic Adam, and they agree to help.

Carol thinks they need to convince people that lemonade is a really good choice. She knows most grownups drink coffee in the morning and thinks maybe the lemonade could be an alternative. And Dave starts working on a sign they can put up.

 

The next week Carols new slogan, carefully placed signs and a brightly colored lemonade booth design by Adam really makes a difference. A lot more people are attracted to the area and become regular customers.

 

 

Coffee will leave a stain.

Lemonade will boost your brain.

 

When people say they will tell their friends Max realizes that he should help people tell more friends. As an enthusiastic user of Instagram he knows the power of social media and pictures.

 

As the front figure of the business, they make sure that Amy, who Cousin Carol thinks to start calling “the Lemon-Maid” has a new t-shirt every week, with a cute design and message. They make the t-shirts in Adam’s inkjet printer and iron the designs on. People love how cute this is and start spreading the pictures in every channel imaginable, spreading the news about the Lemon-Maid to lots of new people.

Now that other people were marketing them, they didn’t have to spend as much time pulling people in, and could do some more thinking about how to make more money from the people who were already coming. Was this the right time to raise prices?

Always on the lookout for new ways to make sure they make money faster, Max one day reads about something called the IKEA-effect. Apparently, if you yourself help make something then you will also like it much more. Well he couldn’t have people make the lemonade but when he talks to Amy she comes with the idea of letting people add their own ice if they want.

This, again, turns out to be a success, people love adding their own ice, it makes them feel like a real part of the process and they even start talking about how the lemonade now tastes so much better, did the Lemon-Maid perhaps change the recipe?

Well, in a sense she had: she had added a spoonful of customer involvement.

But something else happens too, when people see the ice. Almost every Friday people start asking if they can buy ice. Well, they don’t have enough ice to sell, but the team starts talking about this. Water is free for them, and if they could sell ice every Friday they could maybe even double their profits, they are now getting very close to being able to buy the snowboard for Amy.

 

They start small and the ice business is booming. Soon enough they are making most of their money selling ice and things just rocket from there. In one week, just on ice sales, they make more money than they made in the previous five weeks.

Here are some of the things the lemon team did:

Had a great product.
Understood how people react to stress and made sure to create a stress-free environment.
Understood the incentive for habits (coffee) and making the best use of that knowledge.
Attracted with copywriting and design.
Made clear signage to help people understand and make the right decisions.
Created shareable items that helped other market them.
Made it easier for people to feel a connection with the playful portrayal of the Lemon-Maid.
Used psychological phenomenons, like the IKEA-effect, to increase the perceived value of their product.
Listened to customers to adapt and pivot their product and offerings to their customers’ behavior (ice on Fridays).

15 years later…

15 years later Amy is the CEO of Lemon-Aid, a company that invests in teenage entrepreneurs. Her executive team consists of Carol the copywriter, Adam the art director and her brother Max, the UX designer.

Together they had learned that if they all worked together, all the time tweaking and making their product better in small steps, nothing could stop them. Other grownups called this Lean UX. They still just called it the same as when they were kids: experimentation and teamwork.

And four times a year, Amy brought them to her cabin in the French alps where they all went… that’s right, snowboarding.

 

 

P.S. This post is adapted from a lightning talk I gave at UX Open in 2013. Had I performed the same talk today I may have referred to Max as the product manager. UX is part of the mindset that all the team members bring to the table. Listen to Melissa Perri talk about the overlap between product management and UX on UX Podcast where I am one of the co-hosts.

--

by @axbom