Blog 6 - Social Media

As the Groundswell book says, I think social media can do the most for companies by promoting a relationship between customers and the company. By giving customers a chance to participate in the company’s activities, the company can foster a personal connection between the customer and itself. This can not only strengthen the customer experience, but help the company gain insights for the company. However, I think many companies are much too overkill on the idea to promote on facebook or twitter. Instead, I think they can be more successful using social media to market by creating these social media interactions on their own sites.

In my experience, websites like facebook are best for connecting people, not advertising for companies. In fact, any company page on facebook is an immediate turn off for me. Instead, I think companies can be much more successful if they develop their own site, geared towards a goal that is relevant to the company. Like the Groundswell book mentions, let customers talk but steer them in a certain direction, so that the content discussed is not a random discourse like Youtube. This can be best done if the company uses its own site for social media, instead of relying on a site like facebook. If the site is well designed, customers will be happy to post and discuss on it, satisfying both their customer experiences while helping the company gain insights about its customers. On a site like facebook, neither is achieved. Customers either shun the blatant advertising where it’s not supposed to be, or even if they do manage to click there, quickly skim past the company’s “facebook page” (I feel weird even saying that). Many companies have offered promotions if someone “liked” their facebook page, but all that does is make the customer click the “like” button, print the promotion coupon, and nothing more. It does not build that interaction companies seek.

I have had a good experience with NewEgg and their usage of social media. Newegg sells a huge selection of electronics such as computer parts, cameras, TVs, etc. on their website newegg.com. When someone clicks on a product, there are user reviews from people who bought the product before. However, the reviews on newegg are much more meaningful than most reviews seen on other company websites. Looking at the review below, we can see that newegg asks users to specify their “Tech level,” and “ownership.” It also shows when the review was posted. This detail allows customers to review the item in much greater detail than just an “average rating.”

But what newegg has really been able to do well is its ability to get its customers to post meaningful reviews, caring reviews. On many and most other company websites, a review is usually posted by someone who either hated or loved the product. Not on Newegg. Most of the reviews are very specific for a specific product, and give meaningful insights to the product, like the one above, “Won't bring in stations from 500 miles away,” but “Great value for the money.” Newegg has managed to create a community of customers who want to help each other understand a product. Personally, I enjoy reading the reviews posted on Newegg and have found them very helpful. Almost every product, even the most obscure little hardware parts in its breadth of products has some meaningful reviews. Customers who post reviews may even feel like they are contributing to this “newegg community.” This is the interaction companies should look for in social media. And newegg has done this by carefully and subconsciously directing the social customer discourse by giving users seemingly obvious but meaningful categories to talk about (refer to the categories in the picture above), and making a website with a friendly user-interface. The categories look so simple, but are absent on most other companies’ customer review websites. And that’s the important thing – to not make customers feel like they are posting a review for the company, but instead posting for the community and their own sake. If customers feel like they are posting a review because the company needs reviews to help advertise, then the reviews will not be thoughtful, like most of the posts on Amazon. Read posts on Amazon and then posts on Newegg. There is a big difference.

Thus, in the ways I talked about above, I think Newegg is a good example of how companies can use social media to create value for both the customer by creating a good customer experience, and for the company itself – by knowing which products consumers like and dislike, and for what specific reasons.

Blog 5 Innovations with a Mouse

So I’m doing this as I write. Maybe I’ll come up with some pretty wacky things.

First Word: MOUSE

I had to clarify that it was a mouse for the computer, not the animal. Words, synonyms, and associations that come to mind: mouse (the animal), technology, cursor, Logitech, laser, wheel, pointer, computers, click, button, skipping, rolling, Microsoft, scrolling, battery, wireless, mouse pad, gaming, word processing…

So you ever stop to think about how much utility the mouse provides us with? I absolutely hate not having a mouse. When I first got my laptop, for a few weeks I did not have a mouse, and it was very irritating. While it might be ok to browse the web or type in Microsoft Word using the touchpad on the laptop, doing anything slightly more advanced like video editing will become very tedious, and gaming will be impossible. And having a good mouse gives you is such a different experience compared to just a so-so one. You have so much control over exactly where you need the cursor to go at the exact moment…something gamers would understand intimately.

Second Word: BEVERAGE

Words, synonyms, and associations that come to mind: Coke, Sprite, Orange Juice, juice, alcohol, water, bottle, can, Dasani, soda, mug, cup, thirst, gulp, quench, Gatorade, chug, cold, ice, hot chocolate, aluminum cans, milk, cartons, Capri Sun, coffee, Starbucks, wine, soy…

I love beverages. Drinks are absolutely amazing, and a meal without them is like a day without the sun. Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter so much how tasty the drink itself is, just the feeling of the cold liquid flowing down your throat is sheer bliss.

I prefer 100% juice drinks over soda, not just for health but I think juices taste spectacular too. But a soda or alcoholic beverage once in a while is refreshing too. The drink I drink most often though is milk. I love milk, and usually anything that goes with it. When I make my coffees, hot chocolate, they’re usually over 50% milk. If I have to go more than two days without milk I get unhappy. The only exception is if I can have a soy drink, which can replace milk for me. I do this when I go to China, where soy drinks are excellent and cheaper than water. I drink milk when I am in the states, because for some reason soy drinks here are quite expensive (relatively).

Combination Ideas:
1. A mouse pad that is see-through and has liquid on the inside.
2. A mouse that is see-through and has liquid on the inside.
3. A mouse pad with beverage pictures on it
4. A mouse with a beverage company design over it; for example instead of a grey mouse it’s a Starbucks mouse pad
5. A cup or mug with the words of a mouse-making company over it, like Logitech
6. A mouse shaped like a wine bottle
7. A digitalized picture of a beverage drawn by a mouse
8. An aluminized-cased mouse, like soda cans.
9. A mouse that has a malleable outer shell, supported by liquid inside
10. A mouse that has a cup attached onto it so you can drink when you are in front of the computer.

To be honest I am very surprised and happy with my ideas. In fact, they all seem like viable product ideas to me, a few of which already are. The first two are just for an aesthetic design. Numbers 3 – 4 I’m sure have been done by companies at some point.

My favorite two are the last two. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mouse with a malleable outer shell that can custom-fit every person’s hand shape. What if it is supported by one of those gels that can take the shape of a person’s hand when they use the mouse? It might also be more comforting on the hands to hold something soft rather than hard. Wow I actually really like this idea. Any ideas on how I can pitch that idea to Logitech now?

The last one – I like to eat behind/around my laptop. It becomes inconvenient when the cups and bowls start stacking up around my workspace. I know this sounds kind of odd at a first glance, but what if you had a cup that fit over a mouse? It has to be wide and relatively deep so the liquid doesn’t spill all over the place when you move the mouse around. Then you could drink without having another cup on your desk.

3D Book Opening

Book opening from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

So finally I have something up here that doesn't look like crap. This export looks a lot darker than it did on after effects,so I'll probably go back and lighten the image. But yeah, 8 seconds of animation took I don't even want to say how many hours. It depresses me that I worked so long on 8 seconds. This might be the beginning to my final project in the class.

This composition included lot of billboard arranged 3D, one camera, and one light.

Text: Title credits

Title Credits from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

A title page I created that could be used for a production company. I actually kinda like this one.

Particles: Puke

PUKE! from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

So I messed with the particle creator a bit, and I wanted to create an effect of a cartoony-looking puke. There are 3 layers, one that bounced off the ground, one that created most of the spray, and one that created most of the spread on the ground. Any suggestions on how to improve it to make it look a little thicker or more viscous? Maybe add a layer with a custom particle?

Old people don't like movies? Blog 4

Do older people intrinsically enjoy movie-going less than the younger population? For my paper, I would like to look into why movie attendance is so low for the older populace. When studio executives in Hollywood decide to “green light” a movie, or to give consent for a film to be made, a big factor they consider is if the film is geared towards an audience younger than 28. According the Motion Picture Association of America 2009 report, (http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/091af5d6-faf7-4f58-9a8e-405466c1c5e5.pdf) almost 50% of all ticket purchases were made by movie-goers under the age of 24, which roughly only makes up 30% of the US population. For ages 50 and over, there is a drastic decline in movie-going attendance. With a growing baby-boomers population, I am wondering if something can be done to get that segment into the theaters. Is it impossible to get older people to the theaters, or is this a segment that Hollywood has chosen to neglect due stale traditions and misunderstandings of how to market to this segment?

I want to dive in and explore through understanding customer insights what it will take to increase movie-viewing for this group. Some questions/ideas I pose include:

-Does the older population want to see a certain type of film that is not
being made, for example, drama, or with certain actors, etc.?

-Marketing might consider different channels to reach the older
population. Instead of promotions on television and the internet, they
might consider ads in newspapers or whatever other sources of media the
older population uses.

-On what occasion would a senior individual go see a movie, is it with a
spouse, friend, or grandson?

In class we talked a lot about experiences, and I think this applies to movies as much as anything else. The experience of going to see a movie is much more than just the movie itself. For an individual, it involves hanging out with friends and family, sitting in a nice, comfy chair, and eating popcorn or other sweets. And theater chains have worked to create this experience, from the very design of the building to the foods offered at the concession stands. But once again, everything in theaters today screams for the youth and modern: from the “hip” shapes of the walls, down to the employees that work there. Have you ever seen an older employee work at the theaters? I was reading an article on Vodafone, which was trying to design a cell phone for older people. In one example, older people actually said they did not want to go into the stores because all the employees there were too young and spoke in terms that the older people did not understand. The older people did not feel like they fit in with the atmosphere of the stores. While the interactions between employees and customers might be less in a theater, I think it is all these small, unconscious things that come together to create the experience.

I was at an independent theater chain in New York that showcased smaller, independent films. To my surprise, I was the only attendant there that looked under the age of fifty. Was it because of the genre of the film that was shown there? Was it because theater had a certain way of advertising to older people? Or was it something else?

I hope my research leads to answer some of these questions, or even discover new ones. How can films be marketed to older people, from the very start in the production of the film to the exhibition? In production, studios might have to open up to new script ideas or directors that speak to the older audience. Then, distribution and exhibition might have to create a whole experience that this segment would enjoy, through insights like on what occasions do older people go to the movies, or what are they looking for when they go see a film (other than the film itself)?

Motion Tracking Assignment

I uploaded the original image also to make a comparison with the image after it was edited. Basically, there was a boom shadow in the billboard and it had to be removed. It was a bit harder than I thought because the way the camera moved the perspective of the image changed, so I had to go in and hand tweak a lot of the frames. Unfortunately I had the wrong codec for the video so the compression looks very bad.

Edited:

Without Boom from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

Unedited:

Boom on Billboard from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

The Cheesecake Factory Experience - Blog 3

In today’s world, products are so widespread and attainable that companies need to build customer experiences around its goods and services to give customers a reason to purchase. After all, is there really a big functional difference between an ipod and some other branded touch-screen mp3 player? Do Duracell or Energizer batteries really last longer than generic brands? Can customers really taste the difference between Coke and another soft drink like Pepsi? In an article by Malcolm Gladwell, “Kenna’s Dilemma,” it turns out that most people who claim they can taste a difference between Coke and Pepsi, when put to a blind test, can’t. So what is it that makes a customer worship Nike and not Asics, Oak Farms and not Great Value, or vice versa? Certainly not just because of the functionality of the products themselves. Customers buy or repurchase because of the holistic experience they’ve had with a product or service, which begins when they do research for a product they want to buy down to the experience they have afterwards.

To create more value for the customer, the company needs to help the customer build emotional connections with the product that reinforces positive associations. For example, people who buy Apple products may buy them because of the great customer service they enjoyed while going to the Apple Store, or associations with being cool, modern, and hip. And Apple achieves this through paying attention to SEMs details such as great visuals. Another example - my blog background is plain and unappealing, so right off the bat it might send negative associations to the reader, creating a bad experience.

To better illustrate how customer experiences work, I will discuss a great experience I had at the Cheesecake Factory, using some of the SEMs.



Immediately when I arrived at the restaurant, there was great sensory appeal. I was in Orlando at the time with relatives, and the Cheesecake Factory was located in a mall in the midst of all the theme parks, adorned with lights. As I walked in, the beautifully designed cheesecakes in the lit glass casings provided great visuals and anticipation for what was to come.



Inside, the lighting also created a great mood for dining and carrying out conversation with company. The Cheesecake Factory pays so much attention to the visual appeals, down to design of the menus.



Finally, the main dish arrived. It smelled great, and indeed tasted great, but when it arrived, looked great. Going back to the Coke example, while the Cheesecake Factory does have great food in terms of taste, if customers were put to a blind test, it is likely they would not be able to tell the difference between a marinated shrimp from the Cheesecake Factory and another, possibly cheaper, source. So in these ways, the Cheesecake Factory created a great sensory experience for me.

When we finished dining, the servers, who were just fine to begin with, somehow found out that it was my birthday. I was surprised when a group came over with a cup of ice-cream that mimicked a birthday cake with a lit candle on it. They asked me my name, and sang the happy birthday song for me. I made a wish and blew the candle. This definitely created an experience that was above and beyond what I expected. In this way, the Cheesecake Factory tapped into my feelings and created an emotion experience for me.

Finally, the design and atmosphere that the Cheesecake Factory creates helps its customers relate to themselves in a certain way. For example, the menus don’t show the prices of the orders, which I don’t like, but I can see how it helps create the experience of a certain social class, where price for dinner isn’t so important.

In these ways, the Cheesecake Factory really does use the experience of going to “The Cheesecake Factory” to create value for the customer. Going there is not just like going to another restaurant with good food.

Assignment 3 - or was it 4?

For this assignment I decided to finish up on what I started in assignment 2. I fixed the paint job on the horse, fixed the snapping in one of the back legs, and improved the motion in the movement. Unfortunately, I forgot to not have a black background so you can't see its hooves, which are on separate joints...:(

Untitled from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

Horse Walk Attempt, Assignment 2 for Visual Graphics

Unfinished Horse Walk from Bruce Li on Vimeo.

I decided to play with the parenting tool and animate this horse walking. Of course, I quickly found out that it is much more complicated than it looks to get right, not to mention I used to many joints, even at the hooves...which I guess you can't see well since they are black. So I totally ran out of time, and had to leave the horse as a skeleton instead of painting it in. If you look carefully the loop is also a bit off; there is some minor snapping going on in one of the legs. Finally, I did the front legs first and forgot that the shoulder blades needs to move, so there is no motion there, which as you can see I did do for the back legs.

I'll make it look better in a follow up assignment or something. If you can't see the embed the link is http://vimeo.com/15017800

Assignment 2 - Personas

Marketers create personas to better understand their target customers and in turn design better products and services. Personas go further than just segmentation. Rather than just looking at demographics, a developed persona takes into account details such as a person’s goals, hobbies, etc. By probing deeper into a potential customer’s life, marketers can discover unspoken or even unconscious wants of an identified persona. Based off of this information, they can then develop and design products and services based off of the research.
Formally, developing personas can be a detailed procedure, such as going through the five stages of conception and gestation, family planning, birth and maturation, adulthood, and retirement and lifetime achievement. In the end though, the idea is to discover insights about groups of people who have unsatisfied needs where a product or service might improve their lives.
To create a persona, a marketer will need a wide array of information on a person. For a start, a description of myself might be a good start for a marketer to develop a persona.
The basics: Bruce is a 21-year old male Chinese-American college student. Currently he is a double major in Marketing and Film Production at the University of Texas at Austin.
Bruce is very independent and goal-oriented. He is passionate about becoming a writer/film director, and is not afraid of the difficult road towards that goal. He does a lot of studying and work outside of class regarding writing and film-making. As a senior in college, he is both excited and anxious about what is to come after school, because as exciting as it sounds, it is difficult to get a start in the film industry.
He keeps himself occupied between school and his own studies because he values his time and wants to use it efficiently. Throughout his career in college, he has become disillusioned with the college degree, and is increasingly questioning the importance of it. He likes to live simply. He spends nearly nothing on clothes, haircuts, or material goods that don’t have intrinsic value. He doesn’t believe in “dress for success,” and in fact has never worn a suit in his entire career in business school. He likes reading, movies, and videogames when he has time. With movies, he hates seeing bad films, so he will usually wait until a film gets some reviews before considering watching it in the theaters. He also likes to keep with technology and new trends, but like movies, prefers to wait for responses from other users before trying a new product or service.
He enjoys hanging out with friends, but does not like bars and clubs, finding them too noisy and rowdy. He likes a wide array of music and arts, but has an inclination towards classical music and traditional art because he was trained in those fields. Usually, he listens to his music on his MacBook Pro. He works out to stay healthy. He likes great food, but as he is on a tight budget now, he usually chooses price over quality.
In the future he would like to learn more about the world, the human experience, and do something he loves. He is willing to take the risk on a more precarious career path rather than a sinecure that he is not passionate about.
Using information like that described above, marketers can discover insights about what products/services might improve Bruce’s life, what products/services that Bruce might be interested in, or staying away from.

All three people from different photos, the kid in the middle is me when I was younger.  Tried to give the photo an old look, and in general tried to make it look like it was actually taken with the three people.

Blog #1

An influx of 3D movies attack the big screen as Hollywood decides to take their new design to the theaters. With the success of James Cameron’s Avatar, every movie seems to have a counterpart 3D viewing option. Just this year, The Last Airbender, Step Up, and almost every animation including Toy Story 3 has been shown in 3D, and upcoming movies include Jack Ass 3, Resident Evil, along with again, almost every animation feature.
From an industrial design standpoint, 3D movies are in almost every way a bad design. Industrial design seeks to “optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer,” but the designs of 3D movies, in fact, minimize the function, value, and appearance of films. What is the function of a movie? To provide entertainment, whether it is tears or laughs, in the form of a story. For the most part, 3D doesn’t add to the story, it just takes away from it, as audience as distracted by “cool graphics” and big explosions with debris flying at their faces. Appearance? Most directors and professional filmmakers in Hollywood argue that 3D cheapens and lessens the aesthetic of the image. Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight, clearly expresses his disapproval of 3D imaging, where once the glasses go on the image immediately becomes dimmer and smaller. This is precisely why he fought for his latest film, Inception, to be not shown in 3D. Even directors and cinematographers who take a more cautious approach, such as Star Trek director J.J. Abrams, agree that while 3D imaging may improve in the future, in the present it is inferior to great 2D imaging. One reason is because the 2D image has been whetted, if not to perfection, for over a century of filmmaking, and 3D has not.
3D fails almost every good design test. It is not innovative – with the exception of perhaps Cameron’s Avatar, the technology used in 3D imaging has not changed much since the ancient days when 3D was first used. As described above, it neither makes the product (movies) more useful nor improves the aesthetic. It is very obtrusive, emphasizing the graphics rather than what the movie is really about – a good story. It is not honest. In fact, it is the very opposite – a quick way for movie studios to trick a temporary audience into spending money for a fad, since for a 3D showing the price of movies goes up by about $5.
3D does not add value to the filmmakers or audiences. For filmmakers, with the exception of perhaps James Cameron whose movie Avatar was specifically designed for 3D, the process diminishes the director’s original vision of the film, a film he/she designed for a 2D screen. For audiences (customers), for reasons discussed above, 3D cheapens the real movie experience for them. Looking back at history, every time Hollywood runs into trouble, they try to substitute what a movie really is – a good story – with some gimmicks such as explosions, sex, and now, 3D. And how about “good design is as little design as possible?” Needless to say, 3D is such a heavy-handed attempt to achieve a deceptive end, its needless complications rival the heydays of the old studio system B-movies, an attempt that does not consider the quality of the product, but only monetary gains.
Personally, I watched Toy Story 3 in 3D and felt that it was absolutely awful. The only reason I went was because I got the ticket for free, but now I wish I had seen it in 2D. While there may be a very select few movies appropriate for 3D such as Avatar, the savvy film lover should resist this trend designed to take money from our pockets without due return in value.

First blog

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