Yesterday, I got a letter from Citibank with “Important Account Information” printed on the front of the envelope. I have both a bank account and a credit card with Citibank so they often send me “important information” by mail. Sadly, they also often send me junk mail in the form of credit card solicitations.
The front of a Citibank solicitation envelope
Though it’s frustrating to get both spam and important letters from your bank, there’s actually an easy way to tell which is which from Citibank. You simply need to look for those three magical words on the envelope: “Important Account Information”. If the envelope has those three words, then throw it out! That’s right – Blank envelope = Important account information. “Important Account Information” = toilet paper.
This seems insane but is probably the result of careful research. Citibank likely optimizes their solicitations and tries many phrases to see which ones result in the most people opening the envelopes and signing up for credit cards. In marketing, we do this all the time – optimizing click through rates, email subject lines, etc.
The problem is that we often don’t consider the effect these micro optimizations have on customer happiness, trust, and loyalty: the very things that will create long term sustainability. In Citibank’s case they’ve both frustrated their customers by making them open junk mail and they’ve lost the ability to ensure people open important mail. That is, unless the envelopes read: “Ok, seriously. Not even joking this time. This envelope has serious information inside. Swearsies”.
So why does Citibank do it? Because measuring the income generated by credit cards is easy and measuring the way someone feels when playing envelope Russian roulette is hard – so hard that Citibank optimizes for getting new customers instead of keeping their existing ones. And if they keep this up, eventually we’ll all switch to the bank equivalent of Virgin America (I can already see myself sipping a martini as I deposit a check in their lounge).
So what should you do? You redefine the sphere in which you work as a company. You say that optimizations can be made as long as we meet our customers’ expectations. You don’t send out envelopes that say “Important Account Information” unless they actually have important account information inside. The number might not go up as high or as fast but it’s how you get what really matters – happy customers and a sustainable business.
If that isn’t what matters to you, well, keep on sending that toilet paper.
When I was a kid, Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries was pretty much a staple at the Blumenfeld household. It was a fantastic cereal that somehow found the delicate balance between sweetened corn nuggets and “berry” sugar bombs. Being more ant than grasshopper I also had a special way of eating this divine creation: I saved the berries until the end since it gave you a little “desert” composed of strawberry milk and soggy sugar berries (this easily created the best ROI).
Now, Crunch Berries was created in ‘67 and was enjoyed by all children (and 6 adults) for many years. Then, 30 years later, lightning struck. Having probably received tons of feedback telling them the best part of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries was the berries, Quaker Oats did the unthinkable. In 1997, armed with nothing but sugar and a dream, they granted every child their wish and created Oops! All Berries.
I was 18 but I remember walking into the local Ralphs and seeing that box. It had been a few years since I’d eaten Cap’n Crunch but there was no way I was going to miss the chance at Oops! All Berries. A few spoonfuls into the experience and it quickly became clear why this disaster had “Oops” in the name. Turns out that all berries, while good as a garnish, doesn’t quite work as a main dish. The twisted mofos at Quaker Oats might have even known this which explains why they stated it in the name of the product! “Listen, we messed up and put a ridiculous amount of berries in this. The ratio? Well… technically it’s undefined. We cannot stress this enough – there is no cereal in this box, just colored spherical sugar.”
As designers then, I believe we have a responsibility to take a step back when given tasks like designing things like Oops All Berries. Questions like –
How did we decide this is what people wanted?
Was it simply through feedback or did we actually give them whole bowls of All Berries to eat?
If people actually did like bowls of just Berries, are we being true to our mission to deliver great taste, nutrition, quality and variety?
Granted, these aren’t the type of questions that win popularity contests. However, they are essential to ensuring the problem is framed correctly and go a long way towards getting design included early as a strategic partner. At Facebook, this type of questioning is required of our designers. It is what provides us with the knowledge that we’re working on the right problems and offering proper solutions. So, next time someone comes to you with a design request make sure you step back and ask the right questions. Otherwise, you might end up with a box full of Oops!
Today as Jocelyn and I were going through the security line at Burbank we were greeted with signs asking us if we were “expert” or “casual” travelers. We quickly exchanged WTF looks and decided we were indeed expert travelers since that line looked shorter. However once in that line we began wondering why on earth had they asked us to choose? We started stressing out as well. Now that we were in the expert line there were new expectations. I imagined a siren going off if I didn’t have all my stuff in 4 trays in 12 seconds.
“Sir, seriously, what were you doing in the expert lane?”
“I don’t know, I guess since I memorized the 3-1-1 liquid policy I thought I was ok?”
“You sicken me… let’s go…”
After we got home I looked it up and it turns out the expert lane is for people who can go through the checkpoint “quickly & efficiently”. The result is that those lines usually move faster (average of 21% faster according to the tsa site). So, wouldn’t you think the sign would say something like – “FAST LANE, for expert travelers”. I mean, at no point did we understand the benefit in choosing one lane over there other because the crux of the sign consisted of silhouettes in shapes (I also loved that they use a ski analogy, what percentage of people in the US do you think ski?). Seems like pretty basic usability – when asking someone to make a choice make sure they understand the consequences and/or benefits of that choice.
Strangely enough, they also don’t cite any improvements in the casual lanes. The results there are probably a 38% increase in being pretty chill and just, hanging out and stuff.
Designing at Facebook is filled with many moments of awesomeness that make working here really special. As our 5 year anniversary approached a couple of us from design sat down with some people from the communications team to discuss our efforts around this event. We discussed using the opportunity to tell our story of how far we’ve come in such a short time, or possibly taking the opportunity to look into the future and share our thoughts around where we’re headed. To me these were all fine but seemed a bit self serving. Finally someone raised the idea of thanking our users and this was when it started to get really good.
A Unique Tool Set
Thanking the people who use your product is not noteworthy. In fact I would argue most companies should and do have this as a standard practice. However, at Facebook we have a unique set of tools (advertising platform, gift store) and circumstances (175+ million users) that allow us to do things in a very unique way. The solution was simple and almost obvious once stated: create a virtual thank you card, and give it away for free. Seems straight forward but what makes this idea so good is that not only was this expressing thanks to our users for using Facebook and connecting but it actually enabled and encouraged people to thank each other. And thank they did.
Thank you gift designed by Ben Barry
Welcome to Awesometown
In only a few days over 1 million people sent each other thank you gifts. That’s one million people telling their friends thank you for being there, their parents thank you for supporting them, their coworkers thank you for helping them. Add the people on the receiving end of those thank you’s and the friends that saw the public gifts and you’re now impacting tens of millions of people. For a designer who loves making a positive difference in this world, it doesn’t get much better.
Years ago my little brother started a web site called beingfamous.com. The idea was to let people submit their photos and put them up for 24 hours so they could be famous for a day. Ironically, he is now a bit of an internet celebrity and will now be starring in The Collegehumor Show on MTV which premieres on February 8. Self fulfilling prophecy FTW.
The communication design team recently got decked out for the first Facebook all hands of the year. Seeing as how we just got a new d90 we decided to go for a little impromptu photo session. I can’t get over this shot, I laugh every time i look at it.
Everett’s expression of pure focus really makes the picture (hat on the way right).
