Interview with Ken Fry: Feeds in the Future
Trying something a little different here. I wanted to do an interview, and thought it would be great to garner some wisdom from one of our Directors, Ken Fry, to talk about feeds today. Below is a copy of the transcription. Enjoy!
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Thank you everyone for joining us today. My name is Kevin Wong, a researcher in the field of user experience design. Today I would like to introduce a colleague of mine, Ken Fry, one of the design directors at Artefact.
Ken has been involved in a number of projects, ranging from community driven web services, to innovation workshops with companies such as Intel. Today, we’d like to focus our conversation on feeds and data streams. This concept has been growing in popularity amongst businesses looking to further increase value to their customers by providing a place for news updates and a personalized view of changes that are important to them.
So thank you Ken, for sparing a few minutes with me and talking with me about Feeds.
Alright, thank you Kevin.
So I have been hearing a lot about feeds lately. Not the kind that animals eat out of, but the kind that helps people view web pages and desktop software in a certain way. By your definition, what is a feed?
You know, it’s funny that you bring up the animal analogy there. I think feed is a derogatory term. It sort of implies that you’re putting a feed bag on somebody and forcing them to take in content you come up with. When you go to a social networking site, and you see this deluge of information fed to you, it’s sort of the beauty and curse of a feed. What we call a feed today is probably what we used to have as dashboards of the past, or tickers of the past. I actually think a feed today is evolving into something different. Maybe streams are a more accurate way to stretch the analogy. Streams are something I can dip my toe into without having to be force fed all this information.
So what are the key attributes that make up a feed or a stream?
I think there are a few that are really important and that are unique to the way feeds are today. First of all, it’s dynamic. That’s the benefit unlike dashboards of old. I can be assured that - generally speaking - things will be dynamically updated. It’s going to be fresh and new to me.
I think another thing for users is that there’s a personal aspect to it. So hopefully the feed that I’m getting is the most personal information I could possibly get.
The third element I would suggest is that it’s social. Although feeds can certainly be about other kinds of content, I think feeds have become popular within the realm of social media. So there has always been a social component to it. Just like this flow of dialog between you and me, a feed is a flow of information between people online. That social aspect is an essential quality.
Do you have an example of a successful feed?
So certainly Facebook and Twitter are great examples of feeds. They are dynamic, they are social and they are personal. Even the clients we talk to at Artefact, half of those people are asking for some sort of feed or social media component. Even things like Facebook are at risk at not being so successful. Part of it has to do with the fact that after 500 or a thousand friends, it’s not so personal anymore. It’s still dynamic and social, but it’s less personal. So I think those successful things, they’re successful because they fulfill some of those criteria I talked about before.
Getting back to e-commerce, for it to be successful, it really needs to be specific to those kinds of social goals that’s a part of being in e-commerce. It may not be interaction between people in a very direct way like Facebook or Twitter does it, but maybe interactions in an abstract way such as with a product. I can imagine information about consumer products the same way a sales person might provide that information.
So there’s a lot of responsibility on the retailer side to understand what the users have to say?
Yeah, exactly. There are examples where you and I talked about before, there are examples of businesses out there that monitor these feeds going on in.
Within Facebook for example, businesses have to monitor that because everything is so transparent now because of the way social media and feeds have operated. If I have a complaint about my local cable company, I can say that on Facebook and that doesn’t look good for that business. So it has to be this open dialog, this two way dialog so that people are responding to each other’s needs.
What would the future feed look like?
I think the future feed is less feed like. Going back to the original analogy, the future feed isn’t about force feeding information, but its really about giving people exactly what they want, when they want it. It’s sort of like the paradox of choice, or the experiences in the retail store where they’re inundated with all these products to choose from, when in fact, all they care about is the one thing they want to get. I imagine the way feeds will evolve will happen in the same sort of way. It becomes more about exactly what I need. So it becomes much more personal in the future. I think the social aspect was such a huge revolution. The social aspect of feeds were a really important thing to have in the last 5 years. But, I think that with the personal aspect, we’re starting to lose touch with that a little bit. I think that’s one of the ways it will evolve over time.
With the future feeds and feeds today, how will this impact the relationship between retailers and customers.
We talked about this a little earlier. I think the transparency aspect for sure is one outcome of that. Already you’ve got online shopping and it has become a huge part of brick and mortar business for people. I think the way it impacts is it becomes a more personal experience, it becomes a much more dynamic experience and it becomes a more convenient experience for people. Just like today, I can buy something on Amazon and I can actually get a somewhat personal experience based on what Amazon knows about me - assuming I’m a regular shopper at Amazon. But maybe it becomes more personal in the sense that, now I can actually understand what other people feel about this product, or understand more about what Amazon thinks of this product.
Let me share a little story: I like to buy music. I buy tons of music on Amazon and it’s really cool and I can see music that’s recommended to me based on what I’ve bought before or based on what other people bought. That’s pretty cool but you know what? The thing thats missing with Amazon is that I’ll never get that unexpected delight. I’ll always get those things that are filtered for me based on averages. But, I can go into my Sonic Boom record shop, an independent chain in Seattle, and I can go in there and talk to the guy who is working the cash register. He can say, “well check this out!” or I can go to those little sitting stations and get that same experience. That’s the future. As socially enabled technologies and services evolve within e-commerce solutions, maybe what I can get is a more personal experience. The experience I get when I’m at Sonic Boom Records and less of what I get from collaboratively filtered results from Amazon. That very personal, tailored, unexpected delight.
That’s really interesting, especially the part about the unexpected component of it. That’s a lot of the excitement. It brings back the sense of discovery.
Yeah, exactly.
So if not feeds, then what might the audience at Practical Ecommerce, and other businesses out there in e-commerce, what might be an alternative way to provide the same kind of value to customers without using feeds.
I’m realizing as I’m talking, in a way, we’re not talking about feeds so much, but what are those elements in feeds that are really powerful? That dynamic nature, that personal nature, that social nature, whatever that thing is that you deliver customers to enhance the shopping experience. Doing what you can do to enhance all three of those in the best way you can whether it’s a feed or not, that’s really the goal that you are after.
If Ken Fry had a feed, what should we expect?
Haha, if I had a feed, it’s definitely one where worlds would be colliding. My work world, my social world and you’d be a little convoluted, but it would be a lot of fun.
Well thank you again for your time, Ken. Hopefully our listens have learned a little bit more about feeds and even more about the benefits of developing personalized, dynamic and sometimes unexpected surprises.
This post is filed under Tools, Tips and Suggestions and has the following keyword tags: ecommerce, social media, technology.
