Archives / December 2009

How to redesign a menu with psychology in mind - the Times covers Danny Meyer's New York City restaurant Tabla, and its recent redesign:

"We thought long and hard about the psychology because this is a complete relaunch of a restaurant entirely through its menu and through the psychology of the menu," Mr. Meyer said. "The chefs write the music and the menu becomes the lyrics, and sometimes the music is gorgeous and it's got the wrong lyrics and the lyrics can torpedo the music."

Tips from the experts:

• don't use the dollar sign on the menu

• try to use red and blue; avoid purple and gray

• use clever names, at least for a chain like Huddle House ("now on the test menu, instead of an omelet and orange juice, there is 'the light and fluffy Heavenly Omelet'")

• use a decoy: place an especially expensive item on the menu to make the others seem more reasonably priced

Coincidentally, I ate at Tabla just this week - a good experience, menu and all. (And no, there were no dollar signs on the menu.)

See also:

• Video of Danny Meyer at Gel 2007

• Shake Shack 1, Fast Food 0

Google has been adding so many new features to its results page, they are starting to feel like the new Microsoft.

The comments section on the page includes this very good point from one Tom Piamenta:

I always felt that hiring someone to manage your investment portfolio was dumb. In order to justify their commission and existence they have to do s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g. They buy, sell, hedge or whatever instead of just clinging to a good portfolio and letting it grow. The result is far less than optimal.

Same for Google.. even if you have an amazing simple product, what will you do with the $#I^loads of designers, programmers and consultants?... How can you just let the product rest?

One of the more amusing nuggets I've seen online in awhile: a review of "The Phantom Menace," which was the first "prequel" to the classic Star Wars trilogy.

Created by an individual user who hated, hated, hated The Phantom Menace - i.e., roughly equivalent to my feelings about the movie - the review includes clips from many movies (not just TPM) and interviews with other viewers.

The ten-minute video below is worth watching, no matter what your feelings about the movie. Bringing together customer comments and multiple media sources, with the use of inexpensive tools, it points one way forward for movie reviews - and, for that matter, company and product reviews.

Note/Disclaimer: I really could have done without the reviewer-character's jokes on suicide and murder, which get more prominent in the second video in the series. Still, it's worth watching the first video, below, to get a feel for the thing.

(Warning - some NSFW language)

(via)

P.S. Somewhat along the same lines, watch Let's Enhance:

Congrats to Danny Meyer and Randy Garutti on the NYT article on Shake Shack (emphasis mine):

...to comprehend the prudent and eccentric global-expansion vision of Shake Shack, Danny Meyer's mini-chain of burger-and-custard stands, it is useful to consider the essence of contemporary American fast food.

"The whole experience is to cram people into a cookie-cutter space, to feed them as many unhealthy calories as possible -- then get them to leave," said Mr. Meyer, the president of the Union Square Hospitality Group and the Yoda of Shake Shack. "That stripping away of human experience? That is where fast food went astray."

Danny spoke at Gel a couple of years ago - here's the video - and Randy Garutti runs a Day 1 tour (coming up again at Gel 2010) that lets attendees experience the hospitality that Danny talks about.

My four favorite buzzwords of 2009? I'm glad you asked:

Disruption. Innovation. Design thinking. Social media.

They were popular this year in the press, and publishing, and business, and many (not all!) conferences, and I suppose for good reason, since a lot of people got very excited about them.

I think it's important to know the current slate of buzzwords, to demonstrate that one is Keeping Up With The Times, but beyond that it's mainly important to know what you believe and stick with it. If your core belief happens to correspond to a current buzzword, so much the better.

I'm a hedgehog who tends to say a couple of ideas again and again in whatever ordinary language I have at hand. It doesn't make headlines - for that matter, it's not news, by definition, because this stuff is OLD. Most of the good ideas out there are old.

So the ideas behind "good experience" are old, and ordinary, and full of common sense. But they're effective as all get-out.

One of my core beliefs is this: to make something good, ask someone what they need.

That is to say, ask the person you're serving what they need, as opposed to what journalists want to cover - or what bloggers want to review - or what investors want to brag that they're involved in. Ask the person you serve what they need, then listen.

In fact, we can apply this little nugget to the buzzwords of 2009.

• Want to be really disruptive? Listen to a customer. They'll tell you things that will turn your business model upside down, if you really listen.

• Want to be really innovative? Listen to a customer. Most of the companies out there would rather do anything, try anything, talk to anyone, before they actually listen to a customer. Innovation means doing something the other guys aren't doing. Listening to customers seems to fit that bill.

• Want to pursue "design thinking"? Listen to a customer. Nothing orients you toward the needs of the customer like, well, listening to a customer. (Is there a better way to do it?)

• Want to pursue social media? Listen to a customer. They'll tell you whether the Twitter account and the social media strategy are as important as fixing the basic problems in your product or service. (They'll even tell you what those basic problems are.)

I don't suppose 2010 will bring glossy magazine articles extolling the exciting high-tech process of listening to a customer, but we don't need that anyway. You have the knowledge already. Go and listen to a customer next year. You might be surprised at how much good you create.

Yahoo just spent $100 million shouting at people... what did that buy them?

The results are in:

Yahoo launched a $100 million ad campaign on September 22 to promote its homepage and websites with the catchy slogan "It's Y!ou".

So far, it looks like the campaign isn't paying off. Uniques to the site on a weekly basis are basically unchanged since the campaign started, according to data from comScore.

Where have I heard this before... a search engine betting the farm on an ad campaign rather than investing it in the user experience?

Ahh yes!

Microsoft's Bing search engine... coincidentally, also a hundred million dollar ad campaign that has, at best, realized mixed outcomes.

Yahoo and Microsoft shouldn't feel alone, though - this strategy has been tried many times over the years. One of my most popular columns, from 2004, is Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience - about a company that tried (and, unshockingly, failed) to succeed with the gazillion-dollar-ad-campaign-leading-to-a-ho-hum-user-experience strategy.

(With an acronym like GDACLTAHHUE, how could that strategy fail?)