Millennials (people born 1982 – 2000) do get it. They have lived with digital media and the deluge of information for much of their lives, and have developed senses that are different from their parents when it comes to sifting the wheat from the chaff. They are different in other significant ways as well.

• Millennials were the first generation in which the majority of kids spent their early years in daycare rather than at home with Mom and siblings. This required early development of social skills to get a fair share.

• Millennials have grown up working in teams. Everybody gets a trophy, the kid who shot 97% of the goals that season, and the kid who usually kicked the ball in the wrong direction, if they made contact at all.

• Millennials share with one another. They share opinions, ideas, values and even their entertainment “possessions” with peers they’ve never met in the real world.

• Millennials smell an inauthentic rat quickly. I’ve heard older people comment, “Who knows if any of this is true or not? It could just be the company trying to fool you.” Millennials have revealed a starkly different attitude to me during in-home interviews. One said, “You can tell what’s valid and what’s not. I trust people to give me the right answer. Especially people my age.”

So the first key to reaching the coming tidal wave of customers (Millennials are 20% more numerous than Baby Boomers) is Authenticity. Unfortunately, you can’t fake authenticity. The companies who are excelling at developing communities around their products and services are those who understand their own DNA and their place in the social media scene, understand their customers, and understand the difference between what their customers want to hear about (the pull), and the idealized, one-sided expounding of product highlights and promos (the push). These early winners have developed a voice that younger consumers perceive as Authentic.

It’s not too late. Millennials will be talking about you one way or the other, so it’s better that you frame the conversation in terms that emphasize your core value adds. For larger companies who don’t understand the new game, I recommend you take a deep look at what role your products and services play in the lives of your customers, particularly Millennials. Not just the utility aspects, but the full life context. The best way to do that is through an ethnographic research study, conducted ideally in the homes or primary usage context of customers. And yes, I would be delighted to help you with that.

Pottery Barn has an excellent e-commerce web site that I frequently use in competitive assessments to illustrate clean simplicity of product showcase that lets you fall in love with the product (well, not me, but other people). However, they released a mobile catalog app, and here’s what users of the app have to say. “I don’t understand what this is supposed to be… It is pointless. I’m surprised PB isn’t a little more saavy with their app.” Another user of the app said, “Pottery Barn can usually be counted on as a source for quality and style; unfortunately this clunky app has neither of those things.” Walmart’s app got better reviews, but customers are quick to point out gaps that would cause the app to meet what they expect of Walmart. One user said, “The whole point of getting a store’s app is to view their weekly ad. Duh…” Another Walmart app user said, “Please add an option to upload pictures, request prints and pick them up at the store… please?” A user of Home Depot’s app said, “You can’t create shopping lists unless the product is in a project or ad! Fix the list feature and it may make sense!!!”

Of course, reviewers clearly expect a lot from these free apps, and to be fair, these apps also had very positive reviews. But as a multichannel design strategist, I can’t ignore the fact that these tech-savvy customers have a clear picture in mind of how mobile technology could improve their interactions with retailers. It seems to me that retailers would be wise to expend some effort to get an equally clear idea of how their customers expect to interact with them in this relatively new channel, and to focus design efforts on supporting those types of interactions where feasible. It’s striking to me that user reviews are not harping on lower prices or more coupons, which is a frequent type of feedback encountered in e-commerce forums. Instead they focus on how customers want to evolve their shopping interactions using mobile shopping tools. And notably, their expectations for different retailers are different, as illustrated by the comments above. Moreover, the variation isn’t random. It models how customers shopping expectations vary in different retail contexts, which is very valuable information for retailer’s multichannel design efforts.

When e-commerce was as new as mobile retail is today, say 1995 – 1996, when Amazon was pretty lonely in its market niche and my friend Warren Bare was in his basement inventing the first really big career web site, this depth and breadth of feedback was not to be found anywhere, and the people who knew how to catch and incorporate such feedback into new design work were few and far between. The situation is quite different today, as a perusal of social media sites quickly reveals. There is no excuse for releasing retail apps whose design concepts don’t model a deep understanding of how a specific retailer’s customers shop and make decisions in their particular category of merchandise.

I’m developing some materials on specific ways to do this type of purchase modeling for a talk I’ve proposed to SXSW 2011 entitled, “Digital Ethnography for Design Innovation.” Please vote for my talk, if you haven’t already, at:

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/8232

If my panel is selected, I will present methods Usography has developed over the past couple of years for structured analysis of social media using principles from ethnography as a theoretical foundation.

The presentation will focus on identifying needs, gaps and opportunities through virtual participant observation, discourse analysis, identification and operationalization of key dimensions, audience segmentation, formulation of design concepts, and reporting results. There is a significant time element to overlay on the process, because one major benefit of social media as a data collection method is that it is real time. Emerging trends appear in social contexts long before they are surfaced to broader attention through traditional media. This has implications for designers, because there is a latent period between idea and realization, so understanding the trends in a particular product domain is an important aspect of successful innovation (unless you are designing in a market-agnostic vacuum – possible, but not widespread).

My experience with this topic stems from structured review of social media on e-commerce sites. Customers’ passion really strikes you as they express their pain and frustration to peers. But just reading through a mountain of remarks, with no benchmark as to honesty or authenticity or relevance, is not necessarily going to be a fruitful exercise. This is where ethnographic methods come in. They are especially suited to extracting key dimensions from massive amounts of discourse, leading to a deep understanding of the underlying scaffolding that drives behavior.

The trick will be finding a happy medium between tediously theoretical and plebeian pap.

Please go over and vote a thumbs up at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/8232

Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

As a simple example, consider a new homeowner who wants to buy appliances. Our hypothetical customer goes online to look at types of appliances, features, trends, and prices. After getting a sense of current offerings and retailers of choice, the customer visits the store. The customer has stored tear sheets for the products of interest on an Ipad, with quick access to the models that were in the consideration set. There is a kiosk with a video that shows advantages of the latest features on various models the store carries. The customer saves the most interesting videos to a personalized online account on the retailer’s site, to watch later at leisure. During the store visit, the customer finds a couple of models that are a better fit than those found earlier online, and wants to get comparative prices for similar models within a reasonable driving distance. Later at home, the customer views the models found in the store, views the videos again, and creates a detailed comparison table. The customer does a last minute price and availability check in the area, and then orders the appliances with the best price, fit to expected usage, and availability.

For the above scenario to work, the shopper has to have a platform agnostic account with the retailer, and a compatible shopping interaction using the various technology devices: computer, Ipad, and kiosk.

Retail Ethnography by Usography: Personality of Apparel from Paul Bryan on Vimeo.

• Appropriateness: Right for the situation
• Value = (Wear frequency x Matchability)/Price
• Appeal: Makes me look how I want to look
• Personality: Clothes portray the wearer’s mood or personality: flashy, professional, understated, fun, young
• Fit: Size, cut, draping
• Click: Calls out to shopper, love at first sight, drawn to it

We’re going to do a more in-depth analysis to formulate the primary segmentation dimensions. We will also overlay mobile technology.

Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

The above are basic in-process ethnographic study observations; we haven’t started coding the transcripts.

For example, suppose you are responsible for a web site that sells women’s shoes. An ethnographic approach to researching the needs of women buying shoes online could be to visit the shoe closets of a sample of women in the target demographic, asking them about their current shoes, why and how they purchased the shoes they have, their total spend, their tendencies in terms of style, materials, cost, etc. If there are retail stores associated with the web site, you would probably want to conduct observation and shop-alongs in stores. This research could be conducted more easily in a lab or meeting room setting, but the data captured on site is likely to be much richer in terms of emotions, decision-making criteria, and purchase case histories, giving the work contextual authenticity that is difficult to generate from interview data alone.

It is usually a straightforward process to determine the best location for ethnographic research. Admittedly, it is not always easy or financially feasible to set up a study in that location.

Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

Ethnography is very flexible in terms of data collection. Some ethnographers develop their methodology in the field as events unfold. The primary data collection methods, observation and interviews, may be supplemented by a wide variety of field research techniques. Some additional data collection techniques commonly deployed by design agencies include passive video capture, video participant shadowing, photo elicitation, visual diaries, and concept collages. Research in archives as well as social media web sites can yield supplemental findings that are difficult to capture or observe in the field.

Results from ethnographic studies are often triangulated with quantitative methods, such as surveys or analytics, for corroboration, extension, or quantification purposes.

Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts