this is David's profile

The Fine Print

David Armano is a senior partner at Dachis Corp. This is my personal blog where I share thoughts + opinions that are solely my own.  Logic+Emotion exists at the intersection of business, design + the social web.

E-mail | Twitter

View blog authority

GREATEST HITS

Why Blogging Matters

Geek 2.0

Compassionate Designers

User Experience Building Blocks

Incomplete Manifesto

Stones + Marketing

12 Consumer Values

DMV Experience

Your Creative Brand

Creativity The New Innovation

A Simple Philosophy

Not Staying in the Lines

MRI Experience

What's The Big Execution?

Drive Thru Marketing

Contagious Culture

Creativity + Genius

Blogsourcing

We Are Not Alone.  Life 2.0

What I Learned in D-School

Finding Beauty in the Ugly

Never Forget Where You Come From

Please Pass The Shampoo

Perspective

Are You Obsessed?

Business + Design

Got Juice? (Podcast with Jaffe)

Updated Manifesto

8 Degrees of Jakob Nielsen

Take a Deep Look INside

Human Hierarchy + Collaboration

HP is blogging. Why aren't YOU?

Ad Leaders Struggling

Delight = Brand + Experience

Quiet Celebrations

Interview With a Barbarian

Working Class Blogger

I Love My Citi

Experience Map

Visualizing Social Media Network

Interaction Design Made Simple

Customer Logic + Emotion

T-Shaped Creativity

Influence Ripples

In Around, Outside The Sandbox

Holy Trinity of Experience Design

Sharing Ideas

The 4C's of Blogging

Brand Love

People Who Need Lables.

Creativity 2.E

Power Consumer is the New PC

Visualizing The Tipping Point

People Respond: The New PR

Navigators, Explorers...

Silos + Overlaps

Brand Affinity

Q+A with Roger von Oech

B.S.P.



« Brand As Facilitator | Main | Digital Marketing Needs a Reboot »

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Designing The Digital Experience: A Foreword

David Lee King asked me to write a foreword to his upcoming book titled "Designing The Digital Experience". I got to see an early draft of the book and it looks promising.  Most of the focus of David's book is on designing digital experiences, but in the foreword—I take a step back and examine the relationship between "experience" (physical or digital) and the social phenomenon.   Here's a sample of from what I wrote.  You'll have to wait for the book to read all of it.

"So if you went out and bought this book, you’re heading in the right direction. The reason why social networks are such a big deal these days is that they act as both the great equalizer and amplifier. Customers who have a crappy experience with a company’s products or services now have a virtual arsenal of communication methods to be heard.  Often times the search engine's powerful algorithms (Google) finds their content and links to their complaints.  When a certain “power consumer” couldn’t cancel his AOL account despite several pleas with the voice on the other end of the phone, he decided to take matters into his own hands and record the horrendous experience.  What resulted was a PR nightmare for AOL that started online, gained momentum and was quickly reported on several national news stations. What starts digital becomes something much bigger, and it all starts with an experience.

Yes, the social revolution needs to be understood, but what needs to be driven home even more so is that companies who continue to deliver mediocre or bad experiences will find themselves in a downward spiral, fueled by a digital revolution that has now empowered all of us.  On the other hand, companies who figure out new ways to delight customers will have brighter futures and consumers who are more than happy to do their marketing for them.  It sounds simple, and common sense because it is—but the reality is that few companies have customer service baked into their DNA, and culture.  The ones that don’t may choose to go about business as usual but will have to risk dealing with a better-educated and empowered consumer class who is being influenced by the most influential source out there.  People just like them."

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bfa9853ef00e553d05dff8834

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Designing The Digital Experience: A Foreword:

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

"The ones who don’t may choose to go about business as usual but will have to risk dealing with a better-educated and empowered consumer class that is being influenced by the most influential source out there. People just like them."

Exactly.

And when the companies who are listening start to do better than the ones who aren't, everyone will discover this and start talking about it as if the idea of customer service suddenly fell down from the sky overnight.

Until then, more power to the ones who are listening.


This give a whole new power to consumers that I hadn't fully realized. The ability to really make our voices heard about say the lack of research and funding for alternative forms of fuel, the war in Iraq...the list goes on. Thanks for writing this book, I can't wait to read it!

Excellent synthesis, but i would regret it if social networks, social media would be reduced to some sort of booster of online customer service.
It is far richer, further reaching and not always fitting into the marketeers canvas, we'd better get used to that and learn to live with it.

It's "foreword", not "forward". The latter means "ahead", the former - and correct usage - means "an introductory statement in a book". The credibility of the content is diminished when such glaring errors are not caught.

Thanks for that clarification Lew. Actually in my e-mails to David I called it "foreword" and then went to "forward" based upon Google results. Didn't know which was appropriate. (but now I do).

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment


View + download presentation (PDF)
Contact me about speaking

Picture 583
The Collective Is The Focus Group
 Download Whitepaper (PDF)

AddThis Feed Button

TwitterCounter for @armano

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter

    People, Places + Events

    Speaking At:
    Conversational Marketing Summit
    SXSW 09
    Marketing 2.0, Paris
    WOMMA 2008
    Forrester Consumer Forum 08
    IDEA 2008
    O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo
    Chicago New Media Summit
    The Conference Board
    Ad Age Digital Marketing
    MIX 08
    Interaction 08
    UI 12
    CanUX

    In The News

    Adweek Spotlight
    Conversation Economy
    Conversation Architects
    IN Blogs
    Best of 2006
    Overnight Success
    A Blog's Eye View

    Video Clips

    MIX 08
    Interaction 08
    Forrester 2007 Forum
    Chicago Office
    Road To Dell
    Chat with Ze Frank
    Blog's Eye View

    CM Links

    Experience Matters
    Always in Beta
    Beta Reel

     

    Practitioners

    As Seen on Marketing Profs

    L+E Links

      Pics + Flicks


      www.flickr.com
      This is a Flickr badge showing public photos and videos from armanz. Make your own badge here.