John: Andre Kakos studied nutrition in Lebanon, became a science teacher, and then a journalist. He landed on his feet in Sydney when he was appointed an online producer just as the digital age was dawning. He’s been designing and delivering cutting-edge digital experiences ever since, both agency-side for clients and in-house at places like Microsoft during that company’s positive pivot to engage the internet age. Since 2013, Andre’s led Komosion’s Digital Experience team, helping clients meet the challenges of another new era: the age of the customer. Andre, welcome to Customers Matter.
Andre: Thank you.
John: What was the first digital project that you were involved in? Can you tell us a bit about it? For a lot of people listening to this podcast, it might seem inconceivable that there was something happening even two decades or more ago.
Andre: Well, I don’t know if I can remember that far back. It’s been a long time, but I’ll tell you about what I did in my first job working at AOL here in Australia when they first branched out and set up shop. This was a time when the online space, as AOL saw it, was a “walled garden” of curated content and sponsored information that led into the whole network of AOL information, content, and functionality.
John: It’s almost like they’d created an online Westfield, and to get the information, you had to go past all the different shops, no ifs or buts.
Andre: And you had to use them to get onto the internet. You’d get your CD in the mail, plug it in, and hear that modem whizz before you’d get online; that was your window to the world. I joined back in 1998, and that’s when I started working with them on the Lifestyle channel, creating content, entertainment guides, and city guides. I even helped be part of a duo that delivered relationship advice to people—a bit of an agony aunt.
John: Now you mentioned the modem. For many listeners and viewers, they would have little understanding of what it was like in the early days to actually access the internet. You mentioned you had to be a subscriber to America Online, but what was that modem experience like?
Andre: For the people that don’t know this, you had to have this little device, which has now been replaced by the router, but back then you had to use your phone line. You would dial up and hear this screeching sound, much like a fax machine. It took a minute or two before you were connected, and it was a very slow connection compared to what we’ve got today.
John: And probably pretty crude designs compared with what we’ve got today?
Andre: Absolutely. Back then, the way AOL operated was to confound you with layers and layers of what they called windows. You popped up in a little window, and then on top of that, another window. That allowed you to go through this rabbit warren of information and access chat rooms where you started to talk to people.
John: So that was then, and this is now. What do you think have been the most profound changes over the 20 years since those early days when you were first learning how to be a digital producer at the dawn of the internet age?
Andre: Well, the web just grew exponentially and really quickly. It opened up a whole world of different content and a number of different channels that diversified the media. Media diversification is the most profound change that has happened over those years. With Facebook, Twitter, and social media platforms, the democratization of publishing occurred. This is where everybody had a voice to express an opinion, share thoughts, and share their lives in a much more open space. If I compare that to the time I worked at AOL, there were things like IRC Chat. You still had that chat capability from the early days of the internet, but that was very private and within specific groups. You had forums, which still exist of course, where you could get quite deep into a particular topic. But now, Twitter is a whole different world, as are Instagram and Facebook.
John: It’s interesting. In a way, the early world of the web was very much about HTTP and a web address, whereas now you’re describing an ecosystem.
Andre: Absolutely. It’s just much wider, with more options for you to find people and find tribes to develop an online identity. I think that’s another part of it; you’re developing another level of identity that you probably didn’t have before.
John: What do you mean by that?
Andre: Looking at the negative part of it, social platforms allow you to have a persona that is probably not a true representation of who you are.
John: So you can have better abs?
Andre: Better abs! It is the whole “face bragging” as opposed to Facebooking. Everybody’s got an amazing life until you find out somebody has committed suicide, and you wonder what just happened. That is the dichotomy between real life and your persona online.
John: When you think about the process of designing digital experiences, what do you think is the difference between the digital experience today and how it was in the early days? How do you guide the creation of a digital experience now versus then?
Andre: Back then, it was much simpler. You built a site, and that was your window to the world representing who you were. But now, we have to think of a wider ecosystem of how people find you, on which channel, and on which advertising platform. Because of the democratization of media channels I mentioned, a customer or user can be in multiple different channels at different places and times. This makes getting information out to people a challenge because you’ve got to be where they are.
John: So you’re really designing around a whole digital journey, not just an individual website? Is that the thrust of it?
Andre: That’s exactly it. You’ve got to think about the whole ecosystem and work out what that experience is. If somebody found out about you on Facebook, how did you represent yourself there? Once they are driven to your site, what is the expectation there as well?
John: Obviously, back in the day, there was no talk of agile, stand-ups, or backlogs. The actual mechanics of the way people go about doing things have changed, and the great platforms have changed the way everyone works.
Andre: That’s absolutely right. Once the cloud opened up and started delivering services online, it grew quickly. That’s when agile started to gain traction. I think agile started back in the early 80s when the manifesto for agile development was put together, but everybody knows about it now because the online cloud services space has matured. To be able to deliver a competitive experience online, you have to deliver it in chunks. You have to deliver it iteratively, always testing and learning to do better. You can only do that if you work in bite-sized chunks and are quick to market.
John: I guess bandwidth has changed a lot as well. In the early days of the web, there was a real debate over how rich a design could be and whether to use Flash. What has happened in the world of design? What’s possible now that wasn’t then, and how do you still understand where the constraints lie versus the opportunities?
Andre: That’s a really good question. Back then, when we were publishing video, it was common for people to sit and wait for it to buffer over and over again before watching a two-minute clip. Now, that is inconceivably frustrating. I worked on a few projects where the whole online experience was built in Flash, and it was acceptable at that time to wait two minutes for the experience to load. I built something like that for Coca-Cola, and that was the norm then. But now that’s impossible because you’ve got to think about three seconds or less. If a page or an experience does not load in three seconds, the customer gets frustrated. Furthermore, they don’t have to wait because they know someone else offers a very similar service. To add to that, Google search penalizes you for having a slow experience. You’re not ranked as well if you’ve got a slow site, and if you’re not ranked, you do not exist.
John: I mentioned you were involved in a pretty interesting time at Microsoft as the company pivoted. You mentioned the cloud opening up, and I think the thing that would be most surprising to people who knew Microsoft in the past is how successfully it has managed to pivot both with new products like gaming and its Azure cloud services. How did that change happen in such a massive business?
Andre: It’s that whole drive to the cloud. It went from delivering software on a CD or a DVD to delivering it to you faster. It goes back to getting to market faster and being more agile. It opened up subscription-based setups where you’re not just buying a perpetual license for a piece of software; you are now buying a subscription. For instance, with Office 365, that allowed for the iterative delivery of new features, as opposed to sitting on a product that was published in 2006. They had to pivot like that to be more competitive. Amazon pushed the cloud agenda quite hard, and Microsoft picked up on that. They knew that with the challenge from Apple hardware—which they couldn’t compete with as easily—they had to carve out their space and focus on delivering software and solutions faster.
John: Super interesting. How do you think about digital in relation to designing experiences around the customer? When and how did that become a “thing”?
Andre: Designing for the customer is not absolutely new. If you go back through history into industrial design or even the design of the very first touchpad on a phone, those needed user experience design to work out the easiest pathway for a person to use the device. It’s not a new thing, but it has become an important piece of art and science because there is now an ultra-competitive market. Brands have to compete and demonstrate a value proposition over and over. If we don’t design and demonstrate that value for each brand, they don’t stand a chance in that marketplace.
John: Now, what is this buzzword “atomic design”? What is that all about? We hear this jargon and a lot of people would be wondering what that is.
Andre: Atomic design, from a scientific perspective, acknowledges that an atom is made up of particles. You combine atoms to get a molecule, molecules to get a compound, and then an organism. The reason for taking that approach is to help with delivering services through the cloud. When you have to design and build services—Salesforce is a prime example—they cannot afford to create something entirely new and push it in because that would throw everybody off. To do that properly, you have to have a design language that is thought through well from the beginning and evolved over time. Google, for instance, has their “Material Design” language that they apply to all of their apps. You build it so that a button is an atom, a button in a form becomes your compound, and the form sitting within a bigger page is the organism.
John: So it’s essentially about creating design standards in some respect, is that right?
Andre: Absolutely. Once you’ve got those design standards, you decide which interactive elements you need. They are standardized on the web, and you design them to represent your brand in the best way.
John: We’ve gone to atoms and particles, but what about the relationship between digital and the physical world? How do you grapple with that?
Andre: I tend to think that digital is always an enabler of our physical experiences; it augments them. With so many different channels, it also helps designate your attention span. That is exactly what we consider as part of the design experience: how is that digital experience enabling your physical experience? If I find something in a shop that I really like, say a pair of shoes, how do I find this in this store online? What is the connection?
John: I’m probably wanting to comparison shop if I’m looking at a good pair of shoes in the store, I’m guessing?
Andre: Exactly. And if we understand how people shop for shoes—whether they look at boots before slippers, and so on—it helps us understand how we design the online space to help people focus their search. This helps them find stuff quickly so they don’t get frustrated by their short attention span.
John: So to some extent, you’re saying you need to design digital experiences in context?
Andre: Yes, absolutely.
John: What opportunities do big trends in digital experience design present for organizations and their customers?
Andre: Let’s talk about some of those trends. We can talk about automation, for instance, from marketing automation to automating information on a page.
John: You mean like a chatbot or something?
Andre: Marketing automation is about assessing how many times you’ve landed on the site and building a profile for you as a user. We learn from your usage what you’re looking for and then present the most relevant information for you. This brings in elements of personalization so that your journey is a bit more focused.
John: And in a way, the service is coming to you?
Andre: The service is coming to you, absolutely.
John: And there are triggers based on your behavior that are anticipating your needs?
Andre: Yes, it makes your journey a little easier and more pleasant because it shows that we understand who you are and are suggesting things that meet your needs. Artificial intelligence is another part. When I talked about automation and personalization, machine learning is already part of that because you’ve got to have a machine learning-enabled system to pick up on those behaviors and build a profile. With artificial intelligence, chatbots are really the entry-level experience. Currently, there is a proliferation of these chatbots on a number of channels.
John: The way I think about it—tell me if I’m right—it’s like “Frequently Asked Questions” on steroids?
Andre: That’s exactly it at this point. It’s about automating a logical set of menial tasks or processes to support customer service people. When customers have a question, they are guided along a logical decision tree before they find an answer. Think about the automated voice recognition response on the phone when you call someone like Telstra; chatbots can help with that as well.
John: So that’s where we are now. In terms of the way the digital experience is being designed for tomorrow, what do you think is going to change?
Andre: It’s going to go further. If we’re thinking about chatbots at this base level, let’s look at what Alexa can do.
John: So voice is going to be important?
Andre: Voice is important. Having a digital assistant that gets more intelligent, understands conversation, and picks up on language nuances can make your life easier. I think that will open up the world to simplify menial tasks and give you more time to focus on creativity and inventing new things.
John: You touched on how reality can be augmented. Do you see voice and augmented reality coming together in future experiences?
Andre: Yes, of course. Virtual reality is currently sitting behind a set of goggles that makes you unaware of your surroundings. Microsoft and Google have played around with multiple different devices, but imagine if, in a few years, it is no longer about heavy goggles. Imagine an assistant that can pick up and understand not only your spoken word but also your body language and movement. If that is portable and you can go places with it, imagine what that’s going to be like, especially with advertising.
John: I’ve just suddenly had a vision of myself as a better surfer aided by a pair of waterproof goggles that are correcting my take-off! Super interesting. In terms of the projects you’re currently working on, how is all this thinking informing the way you and your team deliver for clients at the moment?
Andre: I’m working on an information architecture project for a government organization. We’re pushing it beyond just structuring content on a site. We are structuring content based on personas or user profiles and anticipating their needs. We work out the navigation pathways so they can get to policy information as quickly as possible.
John: Which sounds fairly standard and baseline stuff?
Andre: The design thinking goes into putting yourself in the end user’s shoes and empathizing with their needs. We don’t just deliver the right piece of information; we give them tools to help them find their way. We’re also looking into functional elements where the search is driven by artificial intelligence. It learns from the different searches performed on the site and feeds the most accessed pieces of information as you’re starting to search. We are also building a dashboard space for each persona so they can gather the information relating to their specific function within local government.
John: What about the idea of information coming to you rather than you having to go to it? Is that starting to emerge?
Andre: I think it’s getting to the point where people want to turn it off. Think about all the notifications you get. As the web progresses into things like progressive web apps, you’re starting to have functionality in a browser that was only available on a phone—such as notifications that a friend just posted a photo.
John: Right, so we’re going to get spammed by some of these things.
Andre: You are going to be spammed.
John: Some of these things are really useful. If I’ve got to get to an airport, I like to be reminded in plenty of time. It’s all about utility rather than just uniqueness. You’ve got to have a context for doing it that’s appropriate.
Andre: To give you a personal experience, I’ve got a number of chat apps on my phone. Between Slack, Skype, Hangout, email, SMS, LinkedIn, and Facebook, I receive work messages on all of them. I’m being “pinged” all the time. At some point, it becomes a bit deafening.
John: You almost need a funnel down which everything can flow and be prioritized.
Andre: That’s exactly it.
John: Last question. If we were to have this conversation again in another 20 years, what do you think the world will look like? Will we still be talking about the digital and physical worlds, or will they have become one and the same?
Andre: I don’t see them being exactly the same; digital becomes an augmenter or an enabler. I think we will tear through the noise and focus on how to have authentic experiences and be more creative in our output. If people blend the two together too much, I think they’ll start to lose a little bit of their humanity.
John: Andre, thanks very much.
Andre: Thank you.