Re-inventing the wheel
Iterative experience design
Digital marketing seems to have inherited the phrase “what have we done before that we can just use again” from more traditional marketing, with the simple rationale that we don’t want to re-invent the wheel. And whilst I don’t necessarily want to re-invent it, I do want to re-design and tinker with the wheel.
“I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I believe that clothes should make a woman feel beautiful. But sometimes it’s the little things like cut and fit and sex appeal that make a large impact” Joseph Altuzarra
Every campaign that I pick up, the first thing I want to do is dissect the overall experience into single elements. Then analysing each of these elements, think about how it can be better, how can it evolve. If the overall experience works well, brilliant, but there is usually always parts that can work better.
Think about the wheel-less suitcase, for years it worked, it carried belongings from one place to another. It did the job and everyone was happy — we just left it alone. And then in the time that it took us to put two wheels on, and then four wheels onto the bottom of a box, we put people on the moon, we developed portable mobile devices and music players. We went from computers the size of a house to laptops and tablets. We managed to move leaps and bounds ahead in the design world yet still we were left carrying heavy luggage.
And part of the reason we were able to make so many of these advancements in design during this time, is that we moved into this more digital world, which of course lends itself perfectly to iterative design. Digital is so phenomenally dynamic, that a website built three months ago and left alone is already out of date. As such, digital design has to work more responsively and more intuitively than non-digital design.
Largely we have learnt to work in this environment. Initially there were concerns that consumers would be frustrated with constant updates; but as we adapted to behaviours such as the constant downloading of updated versions of apps, it became habitual and we began to see digital iterations as inevitable, and actually beneficial. We like seeing something in draft form, contributing and seeing our comments incorporated. We don’t expect perfection straight away, but we do expect reactivity to issues. Answers are so much more agreeable than silence.
And we can apply the concept of small changes vs. wholesale changes to innovation — if we look at some of the great jumps in digital over the last decade, they are not new ideas but re-designs. Apple re-designed the portable music experience, but they didn't come up with the idea. Facebook re-designed the social experience — but again, not a new idea. And since these updates we have had more innovation through re-designs via Spotify, Twitter, Instagram etc. etc.
In the same way going forward, the next innovations I would like to see pairs digital advancement with products that have not been changed in a while. TV advertising is the perfect example, it is stagnant and largely irritating. Yes, creatively we could easily improve, but my deepest frustration is with the irrelevance of most ads I see. With smart TVs, we must be nearing the ability to step away from blanket advertising and tailor ads to the profile of the owner via a Google or Apple account. If someone doesn't own a car, don’t try and sell them car insurance.
To work in this way, the two key challenges are firstly identifying the troublesome elements that need updating and secondly recognising how they can be updated.
The first challenge is simply a case of stepping back and mapping out the entire customer journey and how this entwines with the brand experience. With some detail you can see where the brand experience does not align to the customers journey or where it should just work better. By focusing on these leverage points we can take logical steps of improvement: what does the customer need, what are we currently providing, how should this service change to meet customer need and what is the best way of providing this. Step-by-step we can go from what we have to something better, without revolutionising the entire experience.
And that movement from what we had to something new, brings in itself a requirement — the right kind of talent. Working within this approach requires minds that can instantly recognise the gap and fill it with new ideas that hold relevance within the current state of the digital environment. We must also be honest that this is still not the end, everything will continuously evolve so we need to be prepared to make this the way we work every day and not be restrained by regulated updates. Along with our strategic-led and event-led (proactive) marketing, we should always be mindful of reactive marketing.
So where as previously we have relied heavily on experience (hence, what have we done before mantra), we now need to find the people with the right minds who have the ability to work almost exclusively in the moment. This real-time acquisition and implementation of knowledge is a far rarer talent, but now invaluable.
With the right people, we can dare to re-design the wheel and we can do it all the time. It is an approach that lets us straddle the current environment with the changes of tomorrow, so that we never again need to spend years carrying heavy luggage without considering the addition of wheels to suitcases.
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