Slow thinking

I always admire people who think quickly, and that's a fairly commonly held value I think. Living with knowledge only a search away has created the opportunity for more people to be more informed in their thinking. This is all good, right? A recent article is making me reconsider the relative value of slow thinking (or, contemplative thought, to use a more fancy-pants name).

Nicholas Carr, writing in The Atlantic.com, eloquently addresses the disturbing and far-reaching changes wrought by our increasing dependence on the Internet for information and entertainment. In his 4,000-word article, Carr develops his argument using Kubrick, Nietzsche, Socrates, Frederick Winslow Taylor, the Gutenberg printing press, as well as contemporary writers and players. Halfway through, I felt the need to print it out so that I could read it in a way that allowed me to absorb what he was saying and develop my own thoughts as I read. Actually, that just made Carr's argument: the Internet is the antithesis of 'leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought.'

I found particularly disturbing the comments from those who had noticed they were losing the ability or interest in deep reading -- and these are people who had previously invested themselves in reading and thinking deeply. They are surely a small minority of the greater populace, which has for decades used television, movies and Cliff Notes as primary sources of information and entertainment.

And yet to meet the challenges of today, more than ever we need fresh and complex thinking. More is at stake: decisions in one place can affect people globally. Economic, environmental, political risks are higher, and change is happening at a pace unheard of in human history. Yet our thinking is more mechanistic, and we are more likely to accept simple solutions based on invalid logic than complex solutions that are actually more likely to succeed. If the solution requires more explanation than a sound bite, it won't be heard. But Carr's point is even more distressing: even if people could stay tuned for the entire explanation, they wouldn't be able to perform the complex thinking required to interpret and understand the content because their wetware has been reprogrammed by today's technologies.

The implications -- for business, technology, politics, our world -- are tremendous. Critical thinking, in the classic sense, is required for problem-solving. What passes for critical thinking (the bombastic criticism of talk radio and cable opinion shows) in the popular mind has assumed primacy in forming opinion, and the popular mind is grateful that it doesn't have to engage in the rigor required of true critical thinking. What a feedback loop!

2D is here

Audrey Chait wrote to let me know that StoreXperience has brought 2D shopping to life here in the US. I just spent a few minutes on their website and downloading their app, and it's definitely interesting. The technology will need concentrated support from early adopters to gain traction, but the potential is huge. Hats off to StoreXperience - I'm hopeful this kind of technology will create a new frontier for cross-channel retail and a new dimension in the customer experience.

Research while you shop

This week in a meeting amongst stores and buyers, the topic was a very stylish and well-constructed kid’s bed. The buyer had recently reduced the price (again!) from $648 to $598, and was asking the stores: what’s happening with this bed? It’s fun, has lots of storage and functionality, and the price is less than half of retail. The stores said it gets a lot of looks, but the above-$600 price tag for a kid’s bed is off-putting. So, we’re trying it at another price level, and I hope it will work.

Today I did a quick Internet search to see what retailers were selling it and at what price: every quoted price I saw was 4 figures. Our retail is so far below the market value it’s not funny.

Which just made me think (again) how powerful it would be to enable the customer to combine the benefits of Internet search (comparison pricing, reviews etc) with her in-store experience. Sure, we could allow the customers to use our showroom PCs to comp shop while in the store, but it would be so much more powerful if the customer could take a picture of the item (or its 2D barcode) with her own phone to search for and display comparative prices, specs, and reviews. Although our price tags declare the comparative retail price, how much more credible that price would be if the customer could verify the actual retail from other retailers’ websites.

Since research tells us that most people research online before shopping, and since this is a business that capitalizes on urgency (and the thrill of the treasure hunt), supporting the research in-store seems a natural. And besides, how many people are organized enough to do their homework before they go shopping? This is an app for the homework-impaired who love to shop in the moment, and also love to get an unbeatable deal.

Raising the bar

From the Internet Retailers Conference & Exhibition:
I had an interesting experience today when I engaged in an SMS promotion one of the speakers mentioned in his presentation. The SMS experience was fast and satisfying -- I had to type maybe a total of 15 characters over 3 fast-paced text messages that resulted in an order to be shipped to my home address (which has more than 15 characters in one address line alone). Impressive, and a powerful example. Until... I read the last message: "Your order will be shipped in 6-8 weeks." OK, this is a free sample, so the order lead time is consistent with that service. But still.

The fulfillment industry remains challenged as ever, and marketing will be able to move much quicker, and will set customer expectations that only the very dedicated suppliers will be able to meet (Amazon and Dell can be exemplary, but they have worked at it from the get-go). Thing is, if I can place an order in under 30 seconds, why should I have to wait even a week, when ground service is usually 3-5 days in the US?

Truth is, fulfillment is dull stuff. And yet - it overwhelmingly determines the final impression left on our customer.

Going mobile

Great content in the m-commerce sessions today. I found it interesting to hear designers stress (over and over again) the constraints posed by the small display area of the mobile device. This isn't new -- for decades, business applications have been tailored for mobile devices (not as sexy, though: RF scanners and clunky PDAs), albeit for a more committed user (who can't opt out and remain an employee). Mobile marketers and app designers are facing how the PC screen size allows us to be lazy and largely ignorant of our users' needs, wants and desires. You don't have to know your user to design a PC-based screen display: you can throw everything s/he might need onto the screen and the user does the work of figuring out how to get what s/he wants. We even push the burden of maintaining screen resolution onto the user -- as well as loading whatever software we require for our content. And, the anonymous PC user has been pretty obliging, if s/he thought the content might be compelling enough.

But with mobiles, we're finally acknowledging a responsibility to provide content that is absolutely customized for the user. I doubt this is harder (requires more effort), but it does require a fundamental change in thinking that has to persist through the entire application life cycle. Change is usually harder than work.

The more things change...

Despite the touted diversity of the attendees by business size and location, and despite this being a conference about 'new' technology, the composition of the conference is surprising to me: mostly white males in their late 30s-to-40s; the Dockers crowd. Boomer music plays overhead in between sessions. The tech kids line the hallways and the walls of the conference rooms, sitting cross-legged and interacting with their gear. I wonder if they're getting what they wanted from the conference.

Bigfoot

The conference has kindly provided charter buses to shuttle us to/from the convention center. This morning I am the only rider on the bus. My carbon footprint is about a size 14.

I take heart, though. I notice that the hotel offers a 50% discount on valet parking rates if you drive a hybrid. Nice.