The MediaBizLab study trip to Amsterdam was somewhat a success. Workshops, business visits and the time spent together provided plenty of extremely interesting and useful new things and thoughts. Here are the ones that I’ve been pondering ever since the trip.
1. What’s your story? What’s our story?
Usually the ones who have managed to create a rich and multidimensional story around the idea concept are the ones to meet the success. A good story doesn’t offer any shortcuts but might be one of the key elements.
I got to say that I’ve been quite skeptic about the storytelling aspect. There is a big danger that the story is just pasted weakly on the top of a stand-alone concept. What if the stumble was avoided by crowdsourcing or even opensourcing the story. Give your customers or a community a ticker to play with, a prologue to the story and see what they come up with. Take some bits and pieces of what they’ve done, develop it maybe a bit further and give it back to the customers. The results should be a story that is written through the customers’ eyes, and thus will engage them. The whole process is engaging itself too.
2. The publishers are just following the markets
There is no difference for the publishers whether the platform for the content is Nokia, Samsung, HTC or Apple. They just follow the needs of customers. Currently Apple and IPad are obviously the hot words on everyone’s lips. The current situation is quite easy to handle for R&D, but we’ll see what happens if the device/platform field will be more fragmented in the future.
3. The rhythm of IPad
The studies show that people grab their tablet the first thing in the morning and give it a good night kiss just before going to sleep. What are they doing? What are their information needs in the both ends of the day? What if the applications would take the time of the day in consideration and provide morning-content and night-content?
4. Fold your towel outwards
Most of us fold the towel towards body after taking a bath in order to wrap it tightly on the hips. This is absolutely the wrong way of doing it. Fold the rim outwards and the wrap will be tighter than you would’ve ever dared to wish. This was an eye-opening lesson and something that I will carry with me to the very end.
5. Elderly – the heavy users of tablets?
It seems that elderly people have very well found the possibilities of the tablets. This is significant as they are the ones that never really found their ways online. The behavior of aged consumers is something worth of researching as their needs and conventions differ significantly from the younger generation. It is fairly easy and natural to study the behavior of people that one currently is that was. None of the young researchers have ever been old and thus the potential of researching elderly might not be observed or taken seriously.
Hi Jukka, interesting ideas you got - especially I will try out the towel trick! Where did you get an inspiration for that? Moreover, what you said about the elderly and iPads is something I have been pondering on as well - will let you know how it works out since I am planning to experiment this with my grandma.
VastaaPoista