As I typed in a number of product types, it struck me that the top retailers who previously needed to fight for visual relevance in the search results that took some mental labor to scan, are now appearing before the user’s thought has been completely entered. I haven’t had a chance to test this with retail customers, but I expect that a significant amount of traffic will be diverted from the user’s original consideration set of retailers, to the ones who are very prominently displayed in their immediate perception zone as they type. The big will get bigger, and the small will have to fight for relevance.

Many of the searches I did only listed two retailers and 3 more generic terms. This means that retailers not only need to fight for space on page 1 of search results, but falling into position 2, 3, 4, or 5 in Google Instant will have a direct impact on sales. Obviously the algorithm will be as mysterious as previous search algorithms, i.e. difficult to crack, but it is very simple to see how this plays out in any particular category of merchandise. Number 1 or 2, you’re probably okay, but 3, 4, or 5 may drop down below the tip of the tip of the iceberg of awareness into the sea of millions of results.

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.

The first release of the app, developed by shopkick, works only on iPhone, but an Andriod version is not far behind. The app uses a proprietary hardware recognition system rather than GPS, so Best Buy is investing heavily in this technology. The app can be used for scanning barcodes, so many more potential applications can be developed to enhance the shopping experience.

Since my main interest is in enhancing the shopping experience rather than persuading shoppers to buy things they didn’t know they wanted (i.e. Pull vs. Push), I’m thinking about the kinds of in-store purchase intelligence the app could deliver. For example, when buying a home theater system, I would like to be able to scan a receiver and see:

• Related items that I need to make the receiver function properly
• Video about installation
• Table of comparative features with special attention to moving one notch up or down in price and seeing the corresponding items which are in-stock and their feature sets
• Discount coupon based on bundling options
• Financing options
• Add to cart and checkout in the aisle

I would also like a big red “Hide Me” button to turn off Best Buy’s awareness of my whereabouts.

Retailers are just beginning to scratch the surface of digital shopping design. It’s an exciting time to be in the multichannel design strategy business, other than all this talk about a double dip recession.

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

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

Retail Ethnography by Usography

The feedback on my session was very good. It was about a 4.5 on a 5 point scale, including one person who seemed to not like me or the presentation at all.

The most relevant and informative presentation that I attended was by Andreas Hauser and Daniel Markwig of SAP. I took a lot of notes in that one. They discussed how they adapted a major UX initiative to fit within a Lean process, which is very similar to Agile.  The solution was thousands of screens in a complex ERP suite called Business By Design. They didn’t do the typical whining about how hard it is to be UX in an Agile world where documentation is antithetical to efficiency (?huh?). They explained how they used a pattern library combined with use cases and wireframes, to produce a recipe for UX that developers followed.

The overall atmosphere of the conference was very positive. People seemed very smart and focused, and spoke a common UX language, which was interesting to experience.

I really liked the shop windows in Munich. I posted a Flickr photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43883838@N02/sets/72157624030593401/show/with/4647416633/

• 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

On the university campus, which is 5 minutes from my home, I see them on their mobile devices constantly. But in the shopping process, they refer very infrequently to mobile technology, and when prompted, they do not envision a significantly larger role. They seem far more likely to use mobile technology for social contact than for shopping (duh!), but I’m surprised at the extent to which that is true. I expected some inkling of a comparison shopping usage pattern using mobile devices.

• Depth interviews
• Participant observation
• Informant debriefs
• Context mapping
• In-context interviews
• Artifact analysis
• Participant diaries and collages
• Webcam diaries

Participant observation is the method that set ethnography apart. But this method has given way in market research to observation, i.e. the researcher does not actively participate in the behavior being observed. Informant debriefs refer to conversations that the researcher has with insiders who understand the behavior being observed, and who can explain phenomena that the researcher finds puzzling. In retail ethnography, this is typically a salesperson.

We use context mapping for nearly every project. We draw a map of the area being observed, include stations at which people pause or interact, and develop codes that allow us to quickly note behaviors and timeframes. Overlaying context maps helps us understand frequently observed patterns.

I enjoy the diary and collage methodologies. They provide a lot of insight into the mindset of participants, although that insight is sometimes difficult to translate into design recommendations.

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

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