The first MacBook Air was, while another impressive piece of industrial design from Apple, not a fantastic computer. It was positioned as a normal laptop replacement, with a pricepoint to match, but specification-wise it was somewhere in between a normal laptop and a netbook, without the real power for anything more than email, web browsing and word processing. The focus on small led to functional issues like not having enough usb ports, and it suffered from frequent heat problems.

But was the MacBook Air a failure? Absolutely not. With the second generation Air models Apple has taken everything they have learned from two years of MacBook Air sales and usage and redesigned the Air from the ground up into a smooth, fast, delightful experience.

So what can we learn from this?

1. Apple released a product that pushed the boundaries of expectations and that was probably ahead of its time.
2. Apple decided to focus on one thing – small – but refused to approach ‘small’ in the way that other manufacturers did.
3. Apple took risks with the MacBook Air – it was not only ahead of its time, but it was risky in terms of its positioning and price point (high end) and also its specifications: would people really buy an expensive computer that could not handle processor-intensive applications like photoshop and final cut, etc, and that doesn’t even have a DVD drive? And supplying only one usb port was challenging everything consumers expected from computers (more ports, more storage, more RAM, and so on…)
4. Apple got an idea out, watched how it evolved, how it was used, and what their users said about it, and they used that information to build a better, more targeted version from the ground up. They didn’t let consumer expectations drive their product innovation, but they did listen and include valuable inputs from user feedback and user research into their product design.
5. Apple allowed themselves to fail on their first MacBook Air launch, in order to learn and succeed later. The best winners know how to lose…

Remarkable products take risks, push the limits of what’s possible and challenge incumbent perceptions and expectations. Is your product remarkable? Are you?

I’ve had an iPad for a few months now, but only recently I started using it to read eBooks. Although for me an electronic device will never replace the texture of paper and the smell of the freshly pressed ink, using the iPad to read books is a delightful experience. I enjoyed it from the first moment.

Where the iPad excels in general is in the delight factor. It’s not only functional, but it’s pleasurable, even fun to use. You want to interact with it. You want to touch it!

The kindle, for example, has two buttons – a back and a forward. What else do you need? What else can you do with a book other than turn the pages? iBooks for the iPad has these buttons, but you can also pick the page up with your finger and drag it to the other side. You see a quaint animation of the page flipping, complete with a rustling paper sound effect. Not only is it slower to turn the page with this method, it’s also more cumbersome, as you have to move your hand that is holding the iPad, move it to the screen and make the swiping motion that turns the page. A book reader certainly doesn’t need this. You can’t do it on the kindle. But there it is on iBooks.

Why? Because it’s delightful. Because it’s fun to do; because the act of using your hands connects you emotionally to the book as you subconsciously reminisce on using a real paper book; and it’s fun to show people. “Look, you can even flick the pages with your finger!”

This, to me, is the difference between quality and delight. Quality is making the product work – flawlessly. If the software solves your key use cases in a predictable, intuitive and consistent manner, then it’s quality software. But people don’t buy quality – they buy an experience. They buy delight. When you buy an iPad you don’t just buy the aluminium, glass and engineering – you buy the right to show your friends how the pages turn on iBooks. You buy the ability to interact with software in a new, exciting and emotional way.

Pure quality is boring – but delight sells.

Are you designing a delightful experience? Unless you are writing software for insurance underwriters, you probably should be.

I came across this very old article about personalisation of websites from 1998: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981004.html

The article discusses the fad of website personalisation that was sweeping the web back in the late 90’s. Back then, many websites were making the first efforts to personalise the web by giving complex personalisation options to users, through which the website could decide which content to prioritise and so on. He goes on to say that personalisation in this form is pretty much overrated, as the majority of users consider filling out large questionnaire type option screens far too unwieldy and confusing. He does give two situations where personalisation can work, that are characterized by being:

1. very simple to describe in machine-understandable ways, and
2. relatively unchanging

To this list, I would add a third characteristic: silent.

Flash forward to 2010: personalisation is alive and well all over the web. The difference today is that there are no more long-winded options screens to tell the website who you are and what you like and don’t like. All that information and more is available on the web, for free. Your Facebook account holds more personal information about you than anywhere else, and it’s almost certainly more than you think. Add to that your web usage habits, what you click on, who your friends are, and what other people who are similar to you did, and there is more information than ever to offer you a fully personalised experience. From the ads that you see on Facebook to the books Amazon tells you to buy; nearly everything you see on the web is specifically targeted at YOU. But it’s silent… you don’t even realise it’s happening – and that’s the beautiful (and scary) part of it.

So what does this mean for experience designers? Well firstly, we should realise that this extends beyond the realm of advertising. We have access to so much of this information, and we can design user experiences that are unique, personal and delightful. (And we can do it without compromising user’s privacy).

I think there are five levels of data that we can look at about our user when designing their experience:

1. Who you are.
2. Things you do.
3. Things your friends do.
4. Things the crowd does.
5. External factors.

Let’s look at some examples:

Who you are:

• where you live
• where you went to school/university
• your interests/likes/dislikes
• relationship status

Most of this is available publicly through your Facebook profile. If your product has it’s own profile service, then it can be aggregated with the information available from Facebook to create a very healthy set of data about who your user is.

What you do:
This is relevant to the specifics of your service. Let’s assume we’re looking at an online mapping application.

• What you search for (search queries – places, categories) – collect all categories and rank the most searched for categories/regions
• What you click on
• Where you check in (category, region)
• What features of the service do you use 
• What you ‘like’, rate or review

What your friends do:

• Again, relevant to the specifics of your service. 
• Places your friends have been to (category, region)
• Places your friends ‘like’, rate or review
• Combine with your friend’s ‘personal’ data amalgamation (see above)

Things the crowd does:

You can learn a lot by watching the behaviour of the crowd. We’re talking generalisations, yes, but these can be refined based on your user’s profile to form quite valuable predictions of user’s future behaviour.

• People in this area also tended to go to these other places… or of the people who checked into Subway, 40% also checked in to Starbucks, etc
• People who looked at this place, also looked at these other places (Amazon style recommendations)

External factors:

• Where you are (this is the most obvious and necessary one)
• Time of day (prioritise lunch places midday, bars in the evening, etc)
• Time of year Weather (if it’s raining, snowing, sunny, warm, cold, etc)

By watching carefully what individual users do as well as what the crowd does, and combining this information with your user’s profile information, you have a powerful platform for creating a personalised experience. How to turn this data into something meaningful would be the topic of another post…