The innovation point of user experience

Over the years, Apple has been changing the rules of the game over and over again, with its innovative genes. "Genius Bar", customers no longer need to queue up to receive services, they can through the appointment system, at a specific time to accept the service. Genius

This is the innovation of the retail business of electronic products. In shops such as Circuit City (now closed) and Best Buy, customers often have to queue (sometimes long queues) to meet customer service personnel.

Shopkeepers think that there is nothing wrong with the traditional way of queuing, so at the beginning of the shop design there is enough room to accommodate more people to cope with the busy period of holiday. And Apple's new strategy saves a lot of space, which can be used to showcase products or use them.

You know, the appointment service is not Apple's unique invention. But the way they offer their customers an appointment is really an innovation.

Why is that? If you want to create new products and services, Apple is definitely an example to learn.

JARED M. spool/seven Indian tribes/dubbed Lu Zijun/translation Lin Ai/revisers

Originally published on January 12, 2013. Thank Marco Dini for translating this article into Italian.

Innovation accelerates social evolution

Queuing means that we will lose precious time to do a lot of meaningful things. But if we don't line up, we can't get the service. How can we both?

A few years ago, some shops (as if they were selling deli shops) came up with a good idea. They issue plates to customers to avoid queuing them. When the shop assistant finishes a customer, they will call the next customer's number. In this way, the customer is liberated from the team.

But they can't leave the counter too far. If you miss the salesperson's station, they will be embarrassed to plug it back into the team. Therefore, compared to the queue of trouble, the way to the station is not much better.

The same problem can be faced when seeing a doctor. If you want to see a doctor, you have to wait in line for your turn to see the doctor. The expert number is in the queue for longer periods, sometimes all day long.

Telephone appointments provide convenience for patients. Set the time of the doctor in advance, as long as the doctors appear on time, the patient can visit as scheduled. This change can save space in the waiting room and expand the room in the clinic.

In contrast, the retail service model has not been successful. Apple is an exception: it treats the queue phenomenon differently from the numbness of other retailers, which Apple sees as an urgent problem to solve. So Apple once again dumped rivals out of a few blocks.

Innovation comes from experiencing pain

Apple is not the inventor of the reservation model, nor is it the first retailer to use the model in retail services. High-end apparel retailers have long started to offer tailored services in an appointment mode.

About 10 years ago, Disney set up a similar booking mechanism to slow down queue pressure for theme parks. Visitors to the park can book certain attractions, such as the horror tower, so that they can play other attractions during the waiting period.

Southwest Airlines Specifies the boarding order for each passenger in the seating area to avoid the messy queues. It is easy for the passengers to know when they will be boarding. This is similar to the Disney appointment mechanism.

Uber private taxi service system is the core of the booking service. Uber passengers don't have to queue up, just press a phone button to reserve a taxi right away. The GPS of the mobile phone will tell the driver where the passengers are.

Apple, Disney, Southwest Airlines and Uber all borrowed an appointment system to deal with the queuing problems faced by users. Waiting for the user is a very painful process, is a waste of life.

The success of these companies is that they eliminate the greatest suffering of users. If not, Apple's innovations will not be considered epoch-making.

Innovate in the user experience

In the age of tools, human suffering continues unabated. In the age of tools, users are forced to adapt to tools, but tools do not enhance the user experience.

In the process of shopping or visiting a theme park, queues do not make customers or visitors feel happy. They will endure the agony of queuing because they think it is necessary. If there are other options to change this phenomenon, customers and visitors will bring unprecedented happiness.

In the absence of any other law, customers will think that queuing is necessary, so they may not complain. But not complaining does not mean that the problem does not exist. Eyes only on the customer's complaints, but will miss the real need to solve the problem.

By studying the user's entire experience, we can find problems that have never been complained about. Once these problems are solved, it is a great innovation for customers.

Keep the Promise

Only Apple employees keep their promises, and booking systems will satisfy customers. If a customer completes an appointment and still has to wait in the store, the innovative system will lose its appeal.

Conservative credit is the most important work of the company. Apple has added a resource management system to its appointment schedule, which can prevent too many customer appointments over a period of time. The company also needs to perfect the blind spot of the system to help deal with special problems, such as canceling appointments, not serving people, or providing services to customers who cannot wait for an appointment.

Visible, seemingly simple reservation system, actually very complex. Apple left the tedious work behind the scenes, calmly leaving the impression of "keeping the promise" to its customers.

To grasp the opportunity in innovation

Ten years before the first Apple Store opened, Best Buy earned nearly 1 billion dollars. But Best Buy employees did not come up with a solution to the problem of customer queuing.

The development of science and Technology in the 1991 is completely different from 2001. There was no internet at the time, and no network applications. Large-scale database systems are slow to run and poorly controlled. The customer service center spends nearly millions of per day processing appointment calls.

Apple is in the good times of rapid technological development. When his first store opened, the new technology made the booking system simple and easy to use. (It will be cheaper to open the shop now.) )

Apple has the advantage of having a good time. Their innovative design stems from their ability to use new technology platforms to realize their ideas.

How to innovate in the user experience?

Who would have thought you would be able to innovate in the simple things of queuing, taking a taxi, and boarding a plane? But by carefully observing the user's process of using the product (service), you can seize the opportunity to create pleasurable experiences for the user.

In the user's painful experience innovation, in fact, rule-based. First of all, find the user experience suffering from the customer. Then discover the cause of the pain. Finally, establish a system to ensure that commitments can be fulfilled. By completing the above steps, you can successfully transform your mind to please the user.

Innovative design

Truly innovative design, to meet the needs of users and beyond the needs of users, to provide users with unexpected surprises. 21 to 23rd this October, we will be hosting the "user interface 18 Meeting" in Boston (Interface Conference). Participants will explore how to make their design innovative and bring more value to the user.

About Author: Jared M.spool is a leading expert in user experience design and an indicator of usability design. With over 30 years of usability research and design experience, he is still active in answering design questions for customers, helping analysts analyze the current state of design, and is the principal guest of more than 20 international conferences each year, as well as the chairmen and presenters of several industry conferences and web APP Masters tour.