Human centric designing and social media

Hello dear readers!

Let's start it honestly, my head's empty and I don't know what to write! I have pages of notes that I've done during my school days.. but don't know what to say. Maybe I start telling about my weekend instead. Well Friday was kind of basic, I had Russian lessons in Leppävaara and after that I somehow ended up to a shopping marathon in Sello. Not so that the lessons would make me feel so desperate that I fall for shopping. No, I really like Russian lessons, our teacher is so inspiring and supportive, and students as well are so motivated to learn the new language. Hope that I will learn a lot of it during the semester. I meet so many Russian people in my work every week, that it seems kind of important to be able to speak even something in their language.

On Saturday I had a work shift, after which we headed to Itis Party with a couple of my co-workers. Itis Party is organized only for Itis shopping center's employees and there is served a lot of good food and drink. This year we were entertained by rap artists Karri Koira and Seksikäs-Suklaa. I knew in advance that Karri Koira would be there, but Seksikäs-Suklaa with him was a happy surprise! I like them guys. Afterparty was in Maxine, but afterall I didn't go there. Free drink tickets made their duty. All in all very successful night. It's always as much fun to party with co-workers, and it was also so nice to get to know some employees from other stores of the mall.

Social media marketing

On Monday Anna held us a lecture about social media marketing. I found it kind of interesting, and I especially liked the example emotional advertising videos that we watched. In fact, most of advertising campaings are made to be emotinal. And a simple reason to it is that 31 % people's purchasing decisions are based on emotion. 26% are based as much on emotion as on logic. Only 16% percent of purchasing decisions are made completely for rational reasons. This supports well also what author & marketing guru Seth Godin have said: "People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.

Maybe this is the thing that makes marketing so interesting. You every time have to get inside the consumers' heads and know what they feel. If you don't know what are your target group's values and what they feel and think about the world, marketing is waste of time. You need to convince them why will your product or service make exactly them happy, smart, good looking, desirable or whatever your target group wants to be. In general, however, people are seeking a better life. Better relations and easy solutions for their problems. They also want  that purchasing provides them good experiences. That's why fluent communication with the customers in every step is the key to success. You have to stand out from from your competitors by being the easiest, most effective and most available option. To win consumer's on your side, your company's brand and values also have to match your target group's values. 

Thanks to social media, today's communication with the customers is much easier than before. It have enabled InBound marketing, in which the communiaction is interactive and two-way. Using InBound marketing marketers often seek to entertain or educate, which definitely provides added value for the consumers. This kind of marketing is much more productive than "old styled" OutBound marketing. In OutBound marketing communication is one-way, pushes products or services on customers and provides just a little added value.

 Service designer Anu K. Nousiainen from Futures Fit and senior lecturer Anna Ikonen from Laurea UAS.

Human centric designing and value creation

After Anna's lecture we got a guest speaker, future and value designer Anu K. Nousiainen from Futures Fit. Anu wanted to emphasize that it's a relief and a challenge that services are never ready. That we always have to be thinking what benefit does the company provide to the customer. What is the story behind it? What thoughts does it provoke? Is it easy to use, or does it make artistic or delightful feel? What is the real practical value that your service provides? What is the company's strong vision?

Anu mentioned about being omnipresence in digital and physical world. Being omnipresence means also that a person has two different behaviors of consuming. That's why the better you know the person, the better. To get to know a person, use proper tools of design like interviews, researches and personal descriptions. To understand consumers better, stand in the position of a critic and a dreamer and think "What do I hate, what do I love? What could be better or easier?"

Empathy map helps to see your service through  the customers' eyes, With the map you'll find out what do they say and do, what do they see, think and feel, what do they hear? And ask often; why? According to Futures Fit, today organizations invite people into their production processes while they should try to find their role in people’s value creation processes – every day. Value network map is a good tool in this. There you at first ask "Where, by whom and how meaningful value is created and co-created?" and secondly "What is our organisation's role in the big picture? What opportunities do we have?"

Anu told that in human centric design personas are keys to meaningful and valuable solution design. Keys to a successful human centric design are briefly to:

1. Understand people's every day life and value creation.
2. Identify value networks around personas.
3. Visualize service experience in the contexts of everyday life.

Work progressing

Of Thursday's guest speaker's lecture I didn't get so much. But what I remember from it is that we should spend more time on LinkedIn than Facebook. In case of job searching, I really don't question it.

After the lecture our team showed to Anna and our digi coaches what have we done. We had therefore made SSM's company analysis almost ready, excepting trends and key factors. Next we'll go on to the customer survey/analysis and creating specific buyer personas. This far I'm very proud for the good teamwork, so looking forward to the upcoming tasks!

Here some motivational music for the new week!➷