Mike Bifulco: This is Tiny Improvements.
I'm Mike by ko
As winter is turned into spring this year,
I've been doing a whole lot of walking.
Most days I do a steady four or five
mile lap around my neighborhood.
It's a great way to get some fresh
air, get some exercise and get some
mental space to balance out the hours.
I spend sitting at my desk.
It's also a fantastic time to listen
to some podcasts and audio books.
And I got to tell you, one book in
particular has taken hold of me.
I can't stop thinking about it.
It's called unreasonable
hospitality by will.
Guidara.
Guidara is a restaurant or
in a hospitality expert.
He's known for his work at 11
Madison Park, a three Michelin
starred restaurant in New York city.
Get are also, co-founded make it nice.
A hospitality group that includes
several other restaurants and
bars that you may have heard of.
In the book, you'd already talks about
the principles of hospitality that
he's learned over the course of his
career in the restaurant industry.
He talks about the importance of listening
to customers and anticipating their needs.
Guitars teams are the best in the world
at providing a memorable experience.
They look for the small details
about their guests that they can
use to make them feel special.
They go above and beyond to make sure
that every guest has a great experience.
They do this while trimming
away the unnecessary of the
superfluous and the extraneous.
They're not just about
making people feel special.
They're about making people
feel unreasonably special.
One thing I love about the author is
that despite working at some of the top
restaurants in the world, he describes
himself as more cheeseburger than caviar
that hits home with me.
Although unreasonable, hospitality's
largely about restaurants.
It's not just for people who work in
food service it's for anyone who wants
to create a welcoming, inclusive, and
memorable experience for their customers.
In other words, it's for everyone who
works in product design, if you're reading
this, that almost certainly includes you.
From his time in the restaurant
industry, he talks about the importance
of creating a welcoming environment,
making people feel special and going
above and beyond to make sure that
every guest has a great experience.
As a designer, I found myself
nodding along with a lot of
what the author had to say.
The principles of hospitality
that he talks about.
Like making people feel welcome,
anticipating their needs and creating a
sense of community our common to some of
my absolute favorite end user experiences.
The most memorable products I've ever
used have gone out of their way to make me
feel like I was part of something special.
Here's some examples.
How we feel.
The gorgeously designed how we feel.
App is a mood tracking in journaling
tool that is pleasant to use
visually appealing and has just
the right amount of instruction.
The first time I fired
it up to log my mood.
I was immediately struck
by how nice it felt to use.
The app lays out a huge number
of selections for current
mood on a two dimensional axis
from left to right is
unpleasant to pleasant.
And from top to bottom is
high energy to low energy.
It's a simple, intuitive way to
distill a complex set of feelings into
a satisfying two dimensional grid.
The real magic comes after the first
few times you log your mood, the app
gently and progressively presents,
short, thoughtful videos to help
you understand your feelings better.
it's Like having a therapist in
your pocket and it's so well done.
I'm hooked.
Next is to pool.
My team uses Tupelo for
remote pair programming.
The app is fast, reliable,
and beautifully designed.
You can feel that it's been made for devs.
And it helps my team to work more
closely together, even though we're
spread out across the country.
So what stood out to me about tubal?
Well, at the end of most calls, you're
presented with a UI asking you to rate
the call on a scale of one to five
with an open text field for notes.
In my experience, most calls are a perfect
five out of five, but if I ever have
a less than perfect call experience,
which is a vanishingly rare occurrence.
At this point, I'll leave a short
note about what seemed to go wrong.
Here's the thing.
The tuple team has never failed to
follow up with me about my feedback.
Their reps are friendly,
helpful, and so knowledgeable.
Good customer service is such a
difference maker and to pull nails it.
Designing for hospitality.
So how can we apply the principles
of hospitality to our design work?
Here's a few ideas.
Do an experience audit.
Take a look at your product from
the perspective of a new user,
what's the onboarding process?
Like how is it easy to find
the features they need?
Are there any pain points
that could be smoothed out?
Are there moments that you wish you could
show them a better experience based on
what you might already know about them?
Next, take a look at your competition.
What is the typical experience look
like for your competition's users?
How can you differentiate yourself
by offering a more welcoming,
inclusive, and memorable experience?
Is there a way to identify a
niche in the market that you can
serve better than anyone else?
Finally talk to your users.
You just can't beat conversation.
Reach out to a variety of your users to
see what they like about your product.
Talk to your best users, ones
who may be at risk of churning.
And if you're able ones who already have
churned take note of any commonalities
and differences in the conversations
you're having with these people.
What can you learn from them?
Now, take the idea and go parabolic.
Once you've done your research.
I think it's helpful to ask a
more pie in the sky question.
In a perfect world.
What would you do to
blow your users' minds?
What would make them feel like
they specifically are being seen?
Write down these ideas in as simple of
a format as you're able to a sentence or
two is fine, then ask yourself, honestly.
How close can you get to these ideals
with the resources you have available?
Move the needle as much as
you can and keep iterating.
You'll know when you've hit the
mark, your customers will too.
Check the links in the description of
this podcast to get yourself a copy
of unreasonable hospitality by will.
Gadara.
Tara.
I think you'll freaking love it.
