A Tale of Two Interfaces – and Two Companies

Zune Text Based Interface Design

When Zune was released to the world I found it curious that few commented on the the Microsoft choice of interface – a text based menu system vs. Apples icon alternative.  To navigate through the Microsoft menu system – you scroll through text descriptions of the various options – “Music”, “Videos”, [...]

A peak at the Ad Agency of the near Future (and it's Scary)

Don’t tell us what you think, we’ll tell you.

9:30 AM.  Man walks into the office.  He’s greeted by an executive.  Offered a glass of water and is lead to a screening room.  The guest positions himself comfortably on a chesterfield in a simulation of home living room.  Once sat down the visitor is asked to [...]

How the iPhone will forever alter Real-World Retailing

Image by Payton Chung via Flickr

Is Your Bricks and Mortar Store Ready for Digital Invaders?

It used to be that if you ran a store and a customer walked into your premise you’d have full control over the consumers user experience, till the moment they left your shop.  Unless the customer has a flyer in [...]

Invention of the Day – A better Starbucks Experience

Image by avlxyz via Flickr

Here’s my idea of the day – for Starbucks or any other coffee joint.  The idea of this is to help out staff during peak times ensure customer satisfaction.   I’ve noticed that at busy peak times often all the containers of milk and coffee cream empty out.  With the stainless steel [...]

Stock the Shelves when the Store is Quiet!

Image via Wikipedia

A local grocery store of my is notorious for having it’s employees stock the shelves at what seems to be it’s busiest time. This results in clogged isles and frustrated customers. Clearly busy periods of the day are cyclical, so it shouldn’t come of any surprise that the store is [...]

BlackBerry's Survival depends on Content Provider Partnerships

Image by Alex Osterwalder via Flickr

If BlackBerry hopes to be around in five years and not end up as another Palm – they need to do a radical rethink of their business model.  BlackBerry is not going out of business and it will be healthy for the next few years – but their USP is [...]

Looking foward to the Network Decade

Image via Wikipedia

Hindsight is always rather entertaining.  Looking back you see just how naive we were and how we felt at the time that we had progressed further than what time shows.

To me the last decade was the decade of the internet.  Sure it started in the 90’s but the true infrastructure and adoption occured [...]

Conversions at What Cost?

Maybe meet your customers at the bank machine? (Credit image via Wikipedia)

BAD CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE – So yet another Friday night, 8 PM, the start of the weekend, Ring Ring. “Hello?”. “Hi Stephen Crooks this is Bank of Montreal calling …”.  And this is probably the 4th call I’ve received from Bank of Montreal (or [...]

Social Marketing: First Steps

As someone who’s been actively involved in online marketing for years, I often neglect (out of time constraints) building up my own sites and content.   I’ve always kinda felt that the best companies are the ones with the crappiest websites – as it shows their staff are just too busy working on their clients projects [...]

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