Results Count ... everything else is conversation.: 3 Cs of Consumer Experience

How and why tablets are so compelling with kids … from all species

Image Credit: AP Photo/J Pat Carter

The twins absolutely love their iPad. They can’t get enough time on it. In this Miami family, the teenagers also exhibit a high preference for consumer tablets. The parents and elders really don’t show much love for the technology. The main difference between your family and this Miami family is that you are a different species. The Miami family is a group of orangutans living on Miami’s Jungle Island. Yet, these orangutans are no different than your kids when it comes to the power of the 3 Cs of consumer experience. Maybe retailers need to go to lunch with the zookeepers to learn how to engage their consumers as effectively.

It’s all happening at the zoo … but tablets for orangutans?

If you are old enough to remember Simon & Garfunkel, they have a ballad that begins:

Someone told me

it’s all happening at the zoo.

I do believe it;

I do believe it's true.

Today’s zoos are amazing places of design and interaction for human visitors. One of the biggest challenges for zookeepers is to figure out how to keep the resident animals interested and engaged. The opening story comes from an Associated Press article describing how zookeepers are using iPads to engage some of the larger zoo residents.

18 month old twin granddaughters, who think they each need an iPad! They don't want to share for the experience of "touch and do"!

As it turns out, the orangutan twins in the Miami zoo are not all that different than my 18 month old twin granddaughters. As we posted in a previous blog, children very quickly adapt to a touch interface, even before they can speak. Miami Jungle Island is one of several zoos that have started using tablets, and they have found that touch devices greatly enrich the living experience of the hominid residents in a number of ways:

Enabling them to watch content they choose
Learning to use icons to communicate wishes and needs
Being trained to respond to simple questions
Learning to identify objects and make “comments” about them
Monitoring health by enabling them to show where it “hurts”
Expressing themselves by drawing and “painting”

Turns out that there was a good reason that iPads were built with “gorilla glass”!

Tablets unleash potential to interact when there is no language

Why are tablets so compelling? The simplicity and clarity of “one touch” technology enables the 3 Cs of user experience without any requirements for verbal language. The magic of the tablet interface does not require the finger dexterity needed for typing or using a mouse. Much of the software used with the orangutans was originally designed for helping kids with autism. Through a nonverbal interface of touch with visual images and objects, it is possible to have an interactive experience the user controls, without the “handicap” of language.

Image Credit: AP Photo/J Pat Carter

An orangutan works with an iPad at Jungle Island in Miami

Zoo managers are already exploring how to use tablets to enable orangutans to communicate directly with human visitors. Instead of staring at each other across the moat or through the glass, imagine what it would be like if you could ask an orangutan a question, and he/she could answer! Wonder what questions they would ask us …

3Cs of Compelling Experience: Consume, Communicate, AND Create

Historically, technology devices were focused on a specific function or purpose: MP3 players for music, DVD players for videos, TVs for streaming content. All these devices are focused on “Consumption” – enabling the user to choose what they want to watch.

The tablet touch interface is putting all 3 Cs literally at your finger tips:

Consumption – If you want to see how compelling consumption can be, watch toddlers with no verbal skills at all, find photo albums and flick through pictures, or find their favorite book or video on a tablet.

Communication – Consumption of media is great, but it is passive. After teaching toddlers where the Skype icon is on “their tablet”, it is often their most preferred … even more than Mickey, Elmo or Big Bird.

Creation –Zookeepers have found that one of the most preferred activities of their residents is letting animals have a brush to “paint”. Show the apes, or your toddlers the icons to a paint program, and they become immersed in “drawing” through touch.

Of course, computers can provide an interactive experience for all 3 Cs … IF you know how to type, write and/or use a mouse. Works fine for most humans, not for orangutans, pre-language toddlers or people with some disabilities.

Maybe retailers need to go to the zoo to discover the raw power of the 3 Cs

As I shop retailers around the world, I continue to be amazed at how retailers are stuck in the ruts in merchandising products, not the experience. Most products, including tablets, are lined up on racks with a “fact tag” emphasizing specs and price. If they are turned on, the screen is most often used to advertise the store or a promotion. The assumption is that the shoppers know what the devices are, what they do, and how to use them.

Is this consumer experience at its best?

For crying out loud, if zookeepers can enable consumption, communication and creation with orangutans, how hard can this be in store? It will be VERY difficult if retailers look through the traditional lens of product centric merchandising by category. And, to my friends in Seattle, the “metro” interface doesn’t stand a chance in retail stores unless they can give humans the same quality of experience as orangutans on Miami Jungle Island!

Waiting for a retailer to turn the store into a “zoo”

Simon & Garfunkel were not forecasting the 3 Cs of why tablets excel on interactive experience, but the ending lyrics to their song are a good synopsis for retailers.

Orangutans are skeptical

Of changes in their cages …

It’s a gas. You gotta come and see at the zoo

The shopkeepers need to be more like the zookeepers to test what is possible when you let consumers experience the 3 Cs on tablets. If it can happen in the zoo, why can’t it happen on the store floor? Results count… all of this is very testable and measureable. I’m waiting for a breakthrough retailer to try something like the following:

Check out tablets to consumers explore and shop in store
Give moms an opportunity to see what kids can do with a tablet capable of all 3Cs
Enable consumers to Skype a friend on a tablet and show them a product in store
Enable an app where people could visualize store products in their home
Let consumers watch web cams from exotic locations around the world

Know of any retailers enabling all three 3Cs on their floor in store? I can think of one, and they have room for improvement. If you know of retailers, please leave us a comment.

In the meantime, give a toddler a tablet and show them how to find their favorite video, music, photos, and Skype … and then try to pry that tablet from their grasp!

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Sources:

Associated Press: Orangutans using iPads to communicate; By David Fischer

Photo Sources:

Orangutans, Associated Press; J Pat Carter
Twins with iPad: Courtesy of Brian Johnson
Apple Store: Courtesty of Chris Petersen

Comments

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Really good post! Don’t know if I can come next time, but I really appreciate what you wrote.

Posted by: Jane Wang | January 25, 2013 at 01:15 AM

As always Jacqueline, we appreciate the comments.

My daughter gets credit for the photo of the twins with iPads. It is a very real story. I can't go anywhere near them with an iPad without them clamouring to use it.

The 3Cs are very powerful at age 18 months!
Chris

Posted by: Chris Petersen | July 10, 2012 at 05:12 PM