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Under the new system it will not be unusual for a local Macy’s to stock the merchandise customers request, be it wide-width shoes or Sean John suits, and for those offerings to be different from the ones in a Macy’s store 100 miles away.
“I think what Macy’s is embarking on is perhaps the largest transformation in our company in a couple of decades,” said Terry J. Lundgren, president and chief executive.
The Macy’s change is just one example of a wide range of initiatives retailers are pursuing as they struggle to cope with an economy where sales are lower than they were just a few years ago.
Two concepts (at least) seem to be colliding here. In recessions the demon creative destruction is invariably let loose, and the retailers are obviously aware that it’s chasing them hard.
In addition, user experience designers will recognize a pattern of personalization to local tastes, something that always improves a customer’s experience. It is not often that one size fits all.
While I’m a fan of what Snooth is trying to do, these little oddities drive me nuts.
First, “What do I do next?” is not a meaningful question for a user. The link is intended for people who don’t know what they can do on Snooth, so perhaps the question should be formulated in a more straightforward manner, like: “What can I do on Snooth?”
Secondly, we have problems with point of view. This could also be read: “Hi AKirtland, What do I do next?” Is the web site speaking to me? No, but that’s what it sounds like. Lets hope users don’t then read “Logout” as the answer.
Essentially the application asks to use your private data to see which of your friends might be related to you, however distantly, and then can potentially share that information, even though you might have previously said this was information you did not want to share. This seems to be a clear violation of privacy (difficult to define, regardless) and the Europeans are of course on the case.
What’s interesting from a business point of view is that many Facebook applications appear to rely on this type of “sharing” of information as the backbone for their business model. And if the Europeans crack down, that’s a threat to the business model.
As the article states:
If this leads to tighter regulations on how personal information flows to the applications that ride on top of the networks, it could have long-term business implications. Giving application developers access to data to make their services more engaging – and, for advertisers, to make their messages more relevant – is central to how the social networks hope to attract users, and make money, in the future.
It seems possible that some developers, wary of breaking laws, will conform to the strictest standards. Which means that Europe will be to privacy laws what California is to pollution laws in the US: the de facto standard.
Which ultimately means harder going for businesses in the social networking realm.
The presentation is worth a listen, particularly for anyone who manages a large website and wonders how to keep making it better. The quickest answer I can give it: don’t redesign (evolve), and takes risks.
There’s also this gem of a slide which reveals how Amazon can always offer products for less.
The FT has a mostly boring article rehashing much of what we know about the usability of enterprise software (vendors say they follow user centered design, and then don’t; workers lose a substantial amount of time per week due to the poor usability of applications, and so on). The interesting bit, though, was this:
Received wisdom suggests that, when an organisation deploys a new application, it should be prepared to invest heavily in training if it is to reap the full return on investment benefits of the purchase.
But Mr Spiller of Experience Dynamics argues that enterprise software vendors and their third-party partners have an interest in perpetuating these training needs. “If you’re spending huge sums on training, you’re footing the bill because of vendors’ failure to adhere to usability standards, and they’re getting away with it,” he says.
This highlights the conflict companies that offer software training have with usable software. If it’s usable, they lose money. Ergo ….
Today’s FT carries an article by Gillian Tett — Credit crunch causes analysts to rethink rational market theory. One has to wonder why the frenzy in internet stocks in 2000 wasn’t enough to cause “analysts” to rethink their theories while the credit crunch could. Maybe they lost enough money this time …?
Anyway, if you’re interested, the new market theory is now the adaptive market hypothesis, by Andrew Lo which takes into account actual human behavior and applies some nifty concepts from evolutionary theory.
From Wikipedia:
“Prices reflect as much information as dictated by the combination of environmental conditions and the number and nature of “species” in the economy.” By species, he means distinct groups of market participants, each behaving in a common manner (i.e. pension funds, retail investors, market makers, and hedge-fund managers, etc.). If multiple members of a single group are competing for rather scarce resources within a single market, that market is likely to be highly efficient, e.g., the market for 10-Year US Treasury Notes, which reflects most relevant information very quickly indeed. If, on the other hand, a small number of species are competing for rather abundant resources in a given market, that market will be less efficient, e.g., the market for oil paintings from the Italian Renaissance. Market efficiency cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, but is highly context-dependent and dynamic. Shortly stated, the degree of market efficiency is related to environmental factors characterizing market ecology such as the number of competitors in the market, the magnitude of profit opportunities available, and the adaptability of the market participants (Lo,2005).
Each of Surowiecki’s prediction market conditions (diversity, independence and decentralization) relates to this overarching principle and serve to improve the pool of information held by the market participants, but it is not enough to simply have them present; they must operate to amass a reasonable level of information “completeness”, too. Of course it is difficult to know, in advance, whether a pool of market participants holds enough information to be considered “complete”. Hence, we tend to rely on Surowiecki’s three conditions, but we have forgotten that they are really a collective proxy for information completeness.
The Economist’s Technology Quarterly came out this past week. As usual lots of great articles including this one about the smart grid. In particular the story makes the following point: without standards many of the devices that could take advantage of the smart grid and smart meters, and thereby tell you how much electricity you’re using (and how to save money), will not be able to.
Said more eloquently, and with a tad more detail:
Although smart grids are often likened to an internet for energy, there is one important difference. The internet is built on open technical standards, from internet protocol to move packets of data around to hypertext mark-up language to define the appearance of web pages. But agreement on standards has yet to be reached for smart grids, which can pose a problem when different networks and technologies are expected to work together.
Some standards exist, but others are just emerging, says Don Von Dollen of the Electric Power Research Institute, whose organisation was recently asked by America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a “smart-grid interoperability standards road map”. Agreed-upon standards would allow companies to buy and sell devices, services and software in the knowledge that they would work together.
One area where such interoperability will be critical is in the home. Many utilities want people to be able to buy smart thermostats, smart appliances and other smart-grid technologies in shops, says Sam Lucero of ABI Research, “and if everything is proprietary that becomes much more problematic.” Another complication is that there is currently no standard way to access historical billing information or real-time metering data, which would be extremely helpful to developers of web-based billing and energy-analysis services for consumers, says Erich Gunther of EnerNex, a consulting firm based in Knoxville, Tennessee, that is advising California’s energy commission on smart metering and demand response programmes.
UsableMarkets is a user experience consultancy. We also publish our opinions, observations and insights via the blog, as well as the occasional interview with UX practitioners and industry experts.
