Fransgaard's lifestream

The original version of this article can be seen at the award-winning Capgemini – Capping IT Off blog.

In the previous article User Experience Design in a Social Enterprise Environment: Connecting The Dots I covered how to look more holistically at the building blocks of a Social Enterprise to make it a single coherent experience.

In this article I will be looking at how to create consistency that extends beyond the corporate firewall and into the public web.

An equal brand experience for all

A difficult aspects of all social media initiatives is keeping a consistent brand experience in customer-facing environments. One of the more visible proofs of failure are employees posting something unfortunate via their personal social profiles or even via a corporate account.

But there are more deep-rooted issues as well:

• How can the visual identity be delivered through a Facebook page that only allows a minimum of graphic changes?
• How can a customer be sure the corporate Flickr account indeed IS the official account?
• How can customer expect the same consistent experience every time they get in contact with the company?

Brand education and corporate values are there to provide support to the marketing, PR and other customer-facing professionals so they can communicate the right message and shape the right brand perception, but it is no longer enough.

Today we all work in PR

Historically this type of brand training/ support was only relevant to people expected to interact with customers, but the world has changed and today every employee represents the company, not just the ones with job titles that say they do and not only during work hours.

It is the future of how we work. The lines of when we are at work and when we are not are increasingly being blurred and representing the company we work for everywhere we go is becoming part of our lives.

Some companies require employees to state on their personal social profiles that they represent personal opinions and do not represent the company, but this legacy clause do not face the reality: Everything an employee writes reflects on the company, disclaimer or not.

But without a sufficient understanding of the brand and the corporate values, how can employees be expected to convey the brand message accurately and consistently?

A brief introduction to the corporate values during the induction is no longer enough.

The Social Enterprise as the brand tutor

The Social Enterprise, being an ambient entity, can facilitate brand education like no other organisational structure can on an on-going basis. But in order to do so it is important to create a consistent user experience that conveys a unified company:

• Don’t settle for the default interface designs of the different systems. Modify it to create a coherent user experience across all systems.
• Apply the corporate visual design uniformly as much as possible across all systems.
• Ensure the design looks profesisonal and that it is consistent with the customer facing web presence of the company.
• Reinforce the corporate values, not just by slogans, but by getting senior management engaged with the employees. A simple “like” on a post from a VP or the CEO is a powerful steer.

Ongoing brand awareness education across all levels of the organisation is key to a great customer experience because all employees are familiar and comfortable with the corporate identity and can convey the brand in an accurate and confident fashion.

But what do you think?

Please share your thoughts and feel free to suggest a subject for the next article on how to make a desirable and productive user experience across the social enterprise.

I’ve just finished an amazing book called “Hi! My Name Is Loco and I am a Racist” a very honest book about all aspects of racism and about facing and knowing yourself. It is a very good book!

However, this article is not a review of the book but rather a guide to get the full story out of the book using social media.

I first encountered the books author Baye McNeil AKA Loco on Instagram as I actively seek out people taking photos of Japan, my favourite tourist destination. I followed and commented on his photos and he reciprocated.

As he also had a Twitter account I connected with him there as well but it was dormant relationship in the beginning as our common ground was the sporadic relationships Instagram nurture. The fact he had a blog actually escaped me for quite a while.

One day Loco posted the cover of his upcoming book on Instagram. I had no idea what it was about at the time and even if I knew I would never had bought it as it wasn’t fiction or work-related.

But this was an “IGer” so when it was released I bought it straight away for my Kindle app.

I responded to his post, Loco replied. I tweeted about his book, Loco thanked me in an honest way that few bigger companies can do… so far I probably haven’t told you anything you haven’t heard before; A small company/self-employed using social media to promote their services.. yada yada yada.

But the book was not the full story

As I started reading the book I learned the content was fueled by Loco’s blog, which I had previously been oblivious to the existence of. The book seems to be a coherent narrative of his individual blog posts.

Many of the aspects of the book were foreign to me. I knew next to nothing about youth gangs in 80s New York or racism on an industrial scale in Japan.

But some of the book’s themes were uncomfortably familiar to me and brought back unpleasant memories. With the new world of social media I was able to share these memories with the author himself via Twitter DMs. Suddenly I felt part of the story in a very real way.

The online sequel

Blog, Tweets, Instagram all lead up to the book, but the story continued afterwards, not only with me spamming Loco with Twitter DMs, but in a much more profound way.

One day I saw this tweet from Loco which sent a chill down my spine:

For those of you who have read #himynameisloco the most AMAZING thing has just happened! I just got an email from #WhiteBoyChris !!! #JOY

— Loco  Gaijin Hero (@Locohama) January 24, 2012

I won’t spoil the book, but White Boy Chris has played an important part in Loco’s young days to the point where the book has a whole chapter dedicated to him. Unfortunately Loco and Chris lost touch a long long time ago.

How often have you seen something on the telly, in a newspaper or even in a book where you end up with this “I wonder how this turned out…” feeling stuck in your mind?

The Internet can continue the story. In fact, why stop there? My Kindle version of the book is digital. Shouldn’t it be possible to update it with a little footnote just like you would in a blog post where new information has surface?

Please share your thoughts on digital storytelling… and yes, I can recommend “Hi! My Name Is Loco and I am a Racist”.

Rapid Design Visualisation (RDV) is a Capgemini methodology for creating simulations that brings a concept to life. RDV prototypes differ from regular prototypes in that they are much less details as they focus on the overall concept.

Traditional prototypes also tend to focus on a single user interface (or even just a single aspect of a single user interface). But as RDV prototypes aim to represent complete customer experiences, they are increasingly stretching over multiple interfaces and multiple devices.

And it struck me: RDV prototypes are telling a story from start to finish. This got me thinking: What do RDV prototypes have in common with traditional story telling?

So I Googled Structure of a story which led me to a website called “Daily Writing Tips” and an article called: “How to Structure a Story“. The article revolves around the author Nigel Watts’ “Eight-Point Story Arc” concept, which is the article describes as “a fool-proof, fail-safe and time-honoured way to structure a story.”

The Eight-Point Story Arc consists of the following eight steps:

1. Stasis
2. Trigger
3. The quest
4. Surprise
5. Critical choice
6. Climax
7. Reversal
8. Resolution

I won’t go into details with each one of them since the article does this brilliantly. Instead I made up a quick and simplified prototype to see how well the Eight-Point Story Arc fits a customer journey as told by an RDV prototype. This is the result: