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FEMALE VALUES AS INNOVATION DRIVERS FOR BETTER USER EXPERIENCES

INFINIT 19.09.2012 Lyle Clarke, Concept Manager, B&O

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THE INITIAL IDEA FOR B&O

Learn to bring ‘Wife Acceptance Factor’ into products with Interaction design.

B&O has worked with the concept of ”Wife Acceptance Factor” for many years

Interaction design is an increasingly important part of product offerings

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THE BIGGER OPPORTUNITY FOR B&O

From ‘Wife Acceptance Factor’ to 'Wife Addiction Factor'

Females have more influence on spending inside the house than men

The 'benefits' approach to value matches B&O's brand ideal

Focusing on high value 'benefits' is more rational than competing in the global race of feature list check boxes.

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IN PRACTICE

Introduce the Female Interaction principles with all new team members, followed by the target female persona - Aesthetically aware, seeks identity through aesthetics

Focus on HER benefits in Concept and Design phases Deemphasising the product itself - Focus on actual benefits to

deliver and the social context of use in scenarios. Question old-fashioned ‘male’ features - Identify and remove

features only there because a ‘typical’ male user would expect them

Add features that complement ‘her darlings’ - Rather than trying to be one of the darlings

Set the requirement of what is good enough and who we are trying to serve, as a young professional, aestheically aware female

Talk about the female persona using the product in her social context, with engineers, again, and again and again.

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EXTERNAL RESULTS

Market success with females ‘this is the first product from B&O I’ve ever considered

buying.

Significant improvement of first time use of new product releases

In reality, many of the people buying these products are the same people who have always bought them... But they are getting a much better experience than they could before

Marketing and communication has become much more social benefit oriented

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IN PRACTICE

Share the research with the stakeholders, keep bringing it up time and time again - so it becomes part of the

project DNA and part of what you stand for. Concept briefs shold explicitly list benefits for her - technology

as a tool Design briefs should highlights gender aspects, and include

benefits from female perspective as key success criteria Explicitly go into how the product should be perceived and

used by women – rather than talking about a genderless (but really, MALE, functionality)

At every working session, start with the benefits first, especially the social / family benefits... and then afterwards show the concept, design or whatever concrete problem/solution we we are working on, on the table.

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NOT A QUICK FIX - A CHANGE IN MENTALITY NEEDED

A lot of time and effort needed to help people on the project understand what we are trying to help the female customer achieve. Once something has been done, it is tough to ask for it to

be redone but in a new and unfamiliar way. The more people involved on the project the harder it

becomes to keep the female interaction focus The more systems, both infrastructure and human

learnt processes that are supporting the previous designs, the bigger the challenge If you do not communicate well enough people will try to

‘fix’ the parts of the project that are different from normal, speedily undoing the work done previously.

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SIGNS THAT A MENTALITY CHANGE IS SPROUTING

New concepts have benefits to women as key features. The female personas are widely used when discussing

solutions Words like ‘Darlings’ entering the internal language Some new user interaction research and concepts

include gender (and age) perspectives. In some teams it is acceptable to tease colleagues for

‘forgetting the females’

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NUTURING THE MENTAL CHANGE

Firstly, the thoroughness of the research and data behind it is crucial to getting buy in internally with key stakeholders.

Stay ahead, invest in female interaction understanding BEFORE the ‘default-male’ auto-pilot starts

Pay attention to the balance of the discussion and intervene with reminders to consider the female target personas.

Female interaction expert DICTATORS are needed. Democracy in consumer electronics design does not favour

females.

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