CX Passport

The one with the convergence of clarity and surprise - Jared Fink of Siegel+Gale E105

February 21, 2023 Rick Denton Season 2 Episode 105
CX Passport
The one with the convergence of clarity and surprise - Jared Fink of Siegel+Gale E105
Show Notes Transcript

🎤Get beautifully designed Customer Experience in “The one with the convergence of clarity and surprise” with Jared Fink of Siegel+Gale in CX Passport episode 105🎧  What’s in the episode?...


🥰"Designing something people love"

👩‍🎨Humans are messy. How design for humans?

✈️What makes a great travel lounge - from chaos to calm

🔬"Beautiful simplicity is really hard to do"

💹A great in-store retail experience WILL generate business results

😍Moments of joy a great design can bring

💡What impacts a board room? That real, in-home immersive customer research


Hosted by Rick Denton “I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport”


💭“ But a lot of the work that's really enlightening, the stuff that shifts a boardroom, the stuff that really gets people to feel it is when you actually go and spend time with [people] and document it.” - Jared


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Episode resources:

Website: https://www.siegelgale.com/

All social media: @SiegelGale

Sushi documentary - Jiro Dreams of Sushi: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/

Rick Denton:

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we’ll talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. What does experience design mean? We hear the phrase all the time and passes through our minds, often without a thought. The same goes for a brand or strategic design. Beyond knowing what they mean in a practical way, how do they influence business, more specifically, business results. Today's guest Jared Fink, Group Director of experience at Siegel+Gale brings a perspective on all of these and uses that perspective to help brands build meaningful growth. Note A key point I'm hammering home here results. Too often the world of customer experience brand experience design, they're associated with the esoteric the theoretical or forgive me listeners for using a favorite crush phase of mine fluffernutter. Jared has mastered the art of blending strategic design and utopian experiences to create real results, real real results across multiple brands. He's known for his unique process that integrates products, services, and relationships to create transformative customer journeys. We're talking about digital, we're talking about physical, we're talking about human Yep. the messiest part of any design, good ol humans. How do we get to great experience design with all the above? Let's find out today with Jared Jared, welcome to CX passport.

Jared Fink:

Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. Love that intro.

Rick Denton:

I always get a kick out of writing these I have a lot of fun, trying to figure out how best to capture Jared. So Jared, it is very true. But you know, Jared, by design, pun intended, I am a dad, you know, I throw a bunch of phrases all over the place there in the interest. So let's just start there. What does experience design mean to you? How can getting it right? Create business results?

Jared Fink:

That's such a great question, you know, experienced design for the way you know, we think about it, I'd say gonna Gail is really like a method of planning and crafting the interactions people do have with the world around them, whether again, as you mentioned, like products, services, environments, people, but the key is designing it to create a positive and memorable event. That's where the heart of brand comes into the heart of experience design. So really, we look at it as orchestration, by design, pulling that all together, really helps commercial leaders think about people in the context of how it's really lived. And there's a lot of variability within that. We try your best to kind of design and apply these kind of methods of really putting people at the center of your decision making, to craft things that people really care about. And for us, that's a lot about unlocking what the purpose is of that brand, that organization and making people really feel it but it's delivered. And doing that in a really requires planning it out in a way that uses a lot of really good intelligence, but ultimately, designing something that people

Rick Denton:

I think are going to end it right, they're designing something that people love, your answer had a bevy of things that I actually want to pull out a little bit and one of them you talked about the I'm not gonna get the phrases exactly right. But you're talking about understanding what the individuals want, what they want as far as and then how that ties to the brand promise. I mentioned the messiness of humans in the intro. So I've got to imagine one of the complexities around experienced designers when you're talking about at that human layer. So how, how have you gone about, I guess, understanding how to create things that people love, when we're just so bloomin messy as humans?

Jared Fink:

You know, we really are, but a lot of things come down to just really simple truths about people. So a lot of the things we do is really living in the shoes of the customers and ultimately the other people that influence a lot of those interactions that they happen to have. So yes, you know, a lot of the things we do is really about doing some really deep let's quantitative understanding, understanding the performance of how something may have worked in the past, what results came out of a lot of those interactions, whether they happen to be transactional, whether they happen to be purely emotional or whether they happen to be really just loyalty drivers to keep you within that brands lane. But a lot of the work that's really enlightening the stuff that she Have some boardroom, the stuff that really gets people to feel it is when you actually go and spend time with them and document it. So a lot of the ethnographic work is spending the time documenting. And I've been in some really interesting, awkward, delightful, beautiful, silly moments when researching these people, but you actually find how people live because a lot of times, it's the blend of that, you know quant and qual and bringing in that emotive and that rational together, that gives you that insight about what they actually think about your company, how they actually use it alongside other brands. Sneaky surprised, your brand doesn't stand on an island a lot of times. But yeah, talking about travel, but it's true, it's we can kind of blinded by a lot of these business norms, you want to understand how it all fits together. So that immersive research really helps pull, pull on that core of the user experience design.

Rick Denton:

Okay, that immersive part of it. I'm gonna give you some time, Jared. So I'm going to wait until later in the episode, but I want to hear some of those. I mean, she's insightful stories, but they could be entertaining, they can be shocking. There's an old retail book, man, I wish you remember the title of it. And remember, he was talking about doing something similar going out and living in, maybe not living being in the customer's homes. And it was a particular thing with a pest control product. And he said, the number one thing we realized is that people use way too much of our product, because they would watch them when they'd see the roach come across, they'd use half a can on it. And so, but that would be nothing they would ever determine by a survey, nothing they would ever understand about understanding mass of people. But by being there with the one person seeing, we've got to help people understand one debt, one little dab and that roaches dead. I do think when we're talking about humans, there's a lot of complexity there. And you had said something to me when you and I were talking before the show. And it said you had this motivation to simplify the world around you. That's something I really want you to unpack because this world beyond humans, but we're messy, we're complex. How does that desire for simplicity influence your approach to experience design?

Jared Fink:

Yeah, I think it's beautiful. Simplicity is really hard to do. Really hard to deliver against. And also sometimes the process of getting to something simple, can be a little messy to the organization I love and work at Siegel and Gale, we are this simplicity company. And we think about it in this way. It's the convergence of clarity. And surprise, when those two things come together, you create this unexpected moment that builds on to another moment that ultimately builds a whole new identity of how this organization this brand sits in your mind and how how you want to interact with them. And so for us, it's not a reductive exercise, such as purely about eliminating friction, but it's just about seeing like what people really expect. And what's kind of left on the table when you start looking out into the rest of the world. And seeing like, Oh, this is what in a different adjacent category, someone's done to drive that kind of unexpected Ness. And that really got you to say like, wow, this is not only easy to do or easy to use, but something that's really really unique and special.

Your CX Passport Captain:

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Rick Denton:

I love that phrase the convergence of clarity and surprise, you may have given us the show title already here in the first 10 minutes. But that that convergence where you got clarity, I'm expecting it or I understand what I'm getting. But then that just pop of delight that is there's something special there. Jared I had this isn't my house sort of way back past about four or five years ago, I had spent some time consulting with a luxury audio brand. And at the time, we were working to reimagine that in store experience. And this was one of my first real deep exposures to some really great designers this intersection of beautiful and I use that word purposely. And then creative physical design. But they didn't stop there. Yeah, the store could look pretty but it was combined with experience design and digital design. It was all weaving together to create this overall brand impression that elevated the customer interaction and the goal for us was going from a transactional. I want speaker give me speaker Selmy Speaker I walk out with speaker to an experiential one where I feel the brand and I'm a part of the brand. So that I know that was a long intro to the question but I know that whole concepts a key part of your work there and Siegel and kale, how do you weave all of those together? What are some of the great stories from your experience design history?

Jared Fink:

One One thing to know is that we like to think about it as this new kind of mindset of organic retail organic retailers, you should be assuming that the space around you is a living instrumented space, you can take this to any space really retails the heartbeat of this and why we're gonna see so much change in it. But a lot of brands that I've worked with, and we've worked with in the past have taken advantage of it and exciting ways. So when you do when you instrument a space, you can actually know who walks into your space, you kind of interact with them before you can sense what they're looking for. And it's kind of starting to pull on that kind of profile of information of getting some relevant thoughts. But also knowing that the people in that retail space are really smart, you know, and the ones who do a really well speaking of humans, but they other experts in that space representing that brand, are the best embodiment of it and can draw you in and get really good soft cues, and pull you in. So when we've worked with brands before in athletics, right athletic space, you want to try shoes, you want to know how it's going to work in your spin class, you want to know like, hey, are these you know, Hammer pants appropriate for the cycle? Or do I actually need something a bit more form fitting, I'm still rocking my Hammer pants, but maybe not a good idea. But the idea is that your that is your demoing. And for that it was actually getting it wasn't a retail space wasn't a transactional hub, it was actually a demo environment. It's a space where you come to play. And it's a space where you come in, and you're going to have actually an abbreviated leaderboard like session that's connected to your phone with the bike that's connected, and the apparel that's best fit for you with the person who helped instrument that all together. But not only that, we just ship it right to your home, when you're ready to go, you don't need to carry out the bag of gear because you're probably doing something else exciting. And home, home furnishings, they've been doing this really well. But now tech is starting to play a more interesting role, where they can actually start to change the space of the showroom. It's actually using this background infrastructure technology to have like this modular show room, where if you come in, we want to show you like, Hey, this is your bedroom. But now we're going to actually magic swap the wallpaper. We're having a conversation about what what is happening in your life, why do you need to actually go off and change this up? That's so interesting, so that they can connect that need to another need, which ultimately helps drive the commercial results?

Rick Denton:

Yeah. Well, and how do you find out if I interacting with them getting to and you you brought the theme at the beginning you into that? Well, and that is, but now we're driving business results. This is the sometimes the customers friend said oh, well, we just want to be nice, or we want and CFOs can get hung up on I don't care about that experience stuff. Show me you know, actual result? Well, there you go. By having that experiential moment by being able to swap out what the room design looks like. And being able to have that, that allows that salesperson to be able to interact deeply and generate more sales. You also you talked about, I like the idea of the journey doesn't end inside the store. And those of us in this world know that. But especially in New York City, especially in Manhattan, I don't want to be lugging a bunch of crap around. And so being able to have a say, no worries, it's going to show up at your place. Or if I'm a tourist, hey, it's going to show you I'm gonna have to put it in the plane and it's going to ship it back home. I love all that that's going to give me a good vibe. And it's that word vibe, that word feelings that I want to ask you about next. That's at the heart of experience design. So tell me what are some of those expected moments of joy that you've had that only a great design can bring?

Jared Fink:

Yeah, moments of joy, you know, don't you wish it could be every moment. But for us, when we start to think about designing for those, it's really about the small touches moving forward, we're actually thinking about those, the more unexpected moments. So like it, let's give it a travel context for some of the work that we've tapped into in the past. Sometimes it just feels I have one tear really nice when you walk up. And let's say it's we've used technology to do this, like let's hope a customer has their mobile app on when traveling. But when you just get recognized and hospitality, that little moment without having to give a lot of information. Or sitting away or stand in line and someone just kind of comes up to you recognizes you and let's say you have status, then that's like, that's perfect. So we've designed those little moments, but the technology behind it's actually kind of gnarly, but then you kind of go up a tear. And then you start to say like, well, I'm starting to get a sense in using this hospitality context, that you may be on this bigger journey of bleacher business and leisure. Right You know, you're trying to do some stuff for yourself. You may You want to see someone else. But you may also have a real anxiety inducing business pitch. So when we've done those little moments, where we actually set up your setup your room, to be instrumented to have your business, but also kind of give you those nice recommendations on a note, with some a little basket of the goodies that helps you enjoy the leisure part, but also the goodies to help you with the business part. And then when you start to level it up a little bit broader and deeper, that's when you get into more, let's say luxury or your you start to have really high expectations of these moments of joy. Well, what about when you start to think about these on unknown examples of you're in a destination where you don't know what's going on? It could be Dayton, Ohio, or it could be London could be something in between. And when someone's actually giving you a kind of fast pass to something you didn't know existed, and got you those seats. And also, maybe I've taken care of a lot of other extras for you of getting there. Guess what the Ubers already booked, then you start to really have these really immense moments of joy.

Rick Denton:

Jared, I think the tearing of the joy there. Absolutely. And I liked that you brought in the travel example. Yes, the Dayton, Ohio, the London travel can have its moments of joy, but it can have its moments of absolute exhaustion. And it can be quite a bear and so it can be nice to stop down in the lounge. And that's what we're going to do here. We're joined me here in the first class lounge. So move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Jared Fink:

100% South of France Cannes

Rick Denton:

Okay, yeah, I think you may be my first to offer that when it what's special about that one.

Jared Fink:

To me, it was definitely the premium nature of that trip was something I was really looking for.

Rick Denton:

Excellent. But when you do get a premium vibe on a trip it can be something spectacular. There's there's a place for you know, my greedy backpacking, where it's the anti premium to man, it's nice to have premium as well. Absolutely. So what's a dream travel location? You've not been to yet?

Jared Fink:

I have never been to Tokyo. And if I've taken probably 50 Different where should you live quizzes in my life, and Tokyo's like 95% of them. And that's definitely on the dream list.

Rick Denton:

Holy cow. Well, Jared, we're not going to consume too much podcast time on this. I just got back from there. Like last Tuesday, my family got back from a trip to Japan. Tokyo was the first part of a Kyoto was the second half of man it was it was phenomenal. Fantastic. So I'm glad that that as a drink travel occasion I've been to yet what is a favorite thing to eat.

Jared Fink:

I'm going to I'm going to build off of my Tokyo example and a great documentary. And I'm not going to rip the name but Jared Dreams of Sushi is a real a real example. And I can eat out every day. And that documentary was also really awesome.

Rick Denton:

Okay, I'm gonna have to check that out and maybe get that into the show notes as well. That sounds interesting. I'm gonna have to get a hold of that one. Now, let's go the other way. Jared, what's the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid?

Jared Fink:

Oh, 100% Oatmeal total texture thing. I'm a total texture person, with life with people all about the texture. And this one did not agree with me.

Rick Denton:

Oh, I love this question. I'm gonna have to send them video podcasts so that people can see the vision, the facial reaction to that question. I absolutely love it. Jared, what is one travel item not including your phone, you will not leave home

Jared Fink:

I've had the same moleskin for a while. And it's my my dream journal as I joke about, but I love to document. All my best thoughts actually come when I'm not thinking about work or if it's a personal thing when I'm just living through it when I capture that I love to read

Rick Denton:

Jared that's great. Now, I'd love to see that. But I imagine that is the private moleskin journal that does not see the light of day and is not shared that that would be interesting to see that we just exited the first class lounge. And I did mention the travel can be quite the bear, right. But I as a frequent traveler as those of the listeners that are frequent traveler. A good lounge really does bring that wonderful moment of respite in what is the chaos of travel. And so I know you've got experience in that space. So what makes a great lounge design? Those of us that experience, just feel it. But what is it that makes a great lounge design? What are some of the favorites from your past?

Jared Fink:

I love lounges. I've worked on them. I've been in them and I'll tell you what, it's one of the best benefits you can have. Because what on its best day when services humming every Things stocked, the space is not too crowded, maybe you had some smart travel planning. It transports you literally from chaos to calm, its real goal to me is to center you in however you prefer to do that. So you're going to see a lot more optionality in these lounges moving forward, have different strategies, little deploy to have people kind of transport they're mentally, even a little bit physically. But there's a couple of things that they do really, really well to help a you know, remove barriers of this chaotic airport environment, even the best airports have a little bit of noise around them. And on its best day, while getting there feels like you're somewhere else in the world. So the things that we've worked on and helped, you know, innovate and plan around, I've been thinking a lot about how you not only find this space, the space lounge, but also the first connection you have to that person sitting at the desk or standing, walking around with a tablet, whatever the use case of the service members happen to be in that lounge. That's super important. Because sometimes we've all been there, there can be a line, the more the holiday travels. So once you get there, you do not want to have to go through all this process, you want to be in as quick as possible. And they want to know what you're looking for. So it's that inquiry part, the theme of a lot of what we've been talking about. But ultimately, it's about anxiety relief. And that's where you're gonna see the traditional, you know, refreshments or the comfortable seating, but actually maintaining that, like, operationally is really tough. So we've been working on a lot of different spaces that happen to have either meditative value. So actually dealing with the anxiety directly private spaces that happened to give you a transport to a new place, you are already planning to go somewhere, you may be going that you want a preview of, or maybe even somewhere that an event that you can't attend, because you're on a business trip through VR. So there's different pods being created. It used to be let's say nap pods. But now they're transport pods. So like, how do we immerse you in something that is the opposite of chaos? And pure excitement?

Rick Denton:

I want to go there. I wish where's this lounge? When is it coming? Jared, tell me I want to be in this one. Because in spite of certain premium lounges that I have access to there's there's still elements of chaos in those as they have found themselves with perhaps a little few too many people in them. Yours is the one I want to go to. So we need to find out when that one's coming live. And I want to be there. Now, Jared, I warned you about this at the beginning of the episode. Well, we're at this point, I want to hear stories. I know that storytelling is vital to getting a brand excited about experience design and influencing them that way. So you alluded to some stories earlier, what's a really kind of either intriguing, or shocking, or just beautiful tale of storytelling that you've used influence experienced design.

Jared Fink:

So interesting category, I wish it was something that I would have expected but I didn't so working in the financial services world a lot that I have people 10 People like big decision makers in these organizations love to think of investors or traders as these real high performance suit and tie rockin powerplay players even at different levels of investment, right? They're super serious. Well, we have to go investigate how people really look at money. Just how do you look at money not investing and trading? Just how do you think about money in your life? asking different questions. We went on a really immersive ethnographic expedition to the homes of 20 or so different folks around the country. And one of the stories that was the most interesting was there was in my head, I call him the prodigy. He was a mid 20s person who happened to accumulate over 500,000 and wealth from working a pretty I would say entry level kind of position, cut the hacks the life hacks that this person made, so that they could have the investable income to get where they want to be 30 years from now was wild. We documented them in their house, which was not their house. It was their parents house that they still lived in with their fiancee and other family members and plenty of pets. So we walk into this environment and you would think that this person's got really nice cars, their own cool condo, this whole trading setup, and they don't have a PC. They do have everything off their phone, an old gen like a first gen smartphone. All right, which and as we're talking to them to understand like, how do you think about money? How do you think about saving? How do you think about spending or investing, the parent is walking through in the background crawling on their hands and knees asking us if we need anything. And they were talking about, then they would break character and talk almost and talk about how much their family means to them. And then they start connecting the dots about the reason we do all these things. And I didn't, they didn't get their own condo, or set up a different lifestyle was because the long term family unit was what really mattered is that for this specific segment of the population, that this brand was really interested in winning over family is what mattered to the money making agenda. And those were the goals didn't matter if the goal was like, I need to make $100,000 In five years, the so what are the four what was for whatever our family needs, and they just happen to be the conduit to making that happened. So learning about it was incredibly awkward. Having someone sneak around you, the Father sneaking behind you whispering in your ear, you need a juice, but you guys have close these people are and the power of money for them was making sure everyone was comfortable and taken care of.

Rick Denton:

I like that it's an example of another case of you wouldn't have gotten that from just pure. I mean, technically what you had was data because it's information, but the idea of you know, just some sterile survey or persona, but really understanding that. And then the beauty of what it is, is I will not forget that story, right, I'm going to have that story in my head, I'm going to remember that story. That story clearly had to have had some impact on that brand, as they then better understood their customers when they were then influenced to design experiences. And I imagined for a brand. That's really what it kind of comes down to is even perhaps for that family unit, it was about family. But for a company, assuming it's a for profit, one, its business results. And I mentioned at the beginning. And so I want to kind of close with sort of a challenge that does exist in that world is these exciting ideas, the the transportation pods and trying to get people the convergence of clarity and surprise, all of that falls flat. If it's not tangible. It's got to go from idea to function to reality. So knowing when I've worked with creative folks in the past, there can be this just unbounded visionary aspect of them. And I love it. It's exactly what we need. But how do you balance that unbounded visionary, and blend it with the need for implementation? Let's close there.

Jared Fink:

It is the perfect storm and the magic that makes everything really work for a great brand. And a lot of the brands that Segal the other word cherish to work with. Partner with us because we bring a lot of smarts to that creativity and design. And part of it is that it's not just about having, let's say, a big long Design Thinking expedition mapped with an agile mapped with this. It's about figuring out for the kind of cultural anatomy of this organization, how do you make decisions and what drives those decisions? So sensing that out really, really early is critical, because we need to understand what are the drivers of impact? What's actually beyond, let's say NPS, what are the top line and bottom line needs that we need to address very early on before we even assess this landscape that we need to partake in. So for us the most important thing that we do in the research, and before we get to the ideation part of it is understanding what do people actually see value in? Where would they actually drive preference and where they want to spend their time and then asking a lot of good follow up questions about, well, if this were to happen, would you buy it? You know, would you actually do that? So asking all those questions, not just needs assessment, but almost what ifs, right? What if this sort of happened in putting that scenario planning part into it? And then you do need a really healthy envisioning timeline now. So that's the part where sometimes with certain organizations, it can last a very long time, but what we try to do is simplify that down into the core activities you need to do to get to the right kind of purpose and vision and strategic areas you know, are going to drive the growth that you need.

Rick Denton:

I like it very insightful. Now. How can people get in touch with you with Siegel and Gale to learn more if they were intrigued by this? How can they get in touch

Jared Fink:

so feel free to connect with us? Siegelgale.com is an easy way to see a lot of our work that I was kind of referencing you can start to see a lot of that beauty and then you could follow us on All of our socials that just at SiegelandGale.

Rick Denton:

Hey, folks, I'm going to have that down in the show notes. Like always scroll down, don't even leave the episode, click the link and you'll be able to access and get a chance to learn more Jared really enjoyed the conversation today didn't quite know where I was gonna go. And I kind of had some fun with the road that we were on. I'm still remembering the phrase. And like I said, it may be the show title, the convergence of clarity and surprise, but the idea of transporting from chaos to calm this idea of experience design, it's very attractive. It's it's fun to talk about. It's fun to think about. I do love how you close this out, though and helped us understand. Yeah, it's great to think about but here's how we make it practical. Here's how we make it real Jared. It was a lot of fun having you on the show today. Thanks for being on CX passport

Jared Fink:

Pleasure being here. This was a blast.

Rick Denton:

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.