Posts

Showing posts from 2018

The Ultimate Subway Ticket Vending Machine

Image
I haven’t written for a while, it is simply because I am busy with both working and traveling. Still working in Shanghai and traveling around Asia. This weekend I was visiting Hangzhou and while waiting for the train I was brainstorming with myself for improvements at "ticket vending machines". Those ticket machines you see often in subway stations. The past weekend, I had to wait in so many lines to buy a “single journey” ticket at the subway ticketing machines, it made me realize that these machines probably have never been user tested and that there is not any analytics used to test and optimize them. For here I use an example of a ticket machine in Hangzhou, China as here is the headquarters of Alibaba , so they should be able and eager to develop solutions for the users of these machines in this city, but it is not limited to here, the UX of subway ticketing machines is dramatic all over the world. I always surprise myself about how horrible these systems are. Bu

Book review: kloteklanten 3.0 --> Damn those Customers 3.0 --> how do you become the most customer friendly organisation?

Image
Usually I post screenshots and short summary's of books I read here at this blog, just for my own convenience, if I need to review something I can quickly find the things I need. Of course if I like these reads, others might also find it useful so that's also why I share it. Sometimes I make extensive summary's and sometimes just some "picture screenshots". Currently I am reading the book "Kloteklanten 3.0" roughly translated as 'Damn those customers 3.0" written by Egbert Jan van Bel, the author also lectures at Beeckestijn Business School and he has inspired me a lot when I attended his classes a few years ago. Don't be fooled by the title of the book. It is a real inspirational book about customer centricity. The subtitle of the book is: how to become the most customer friendly business of the Netherlands. The book is in Dutch, and as I usually write in English at this blog, I will roughly translate some pages since this is a good

Technology in daily life in China : a view from an expat

Image
Since january 2018, I live and work now in Shanghai, China. Of course I had traveled to China a lot before, but now living here, makes you really experience life in China. I am really happy I got the opportunity to work here for a great company. I am learning so many new things, enjoying China and I let myself be amazed everyday by the technology and transportation advantage they have here. It is so impressive, they are way ahead of Europe and even the US. Here in China, I really experience how technology and design thinking can make life much more easier. Alipay Take a look at Alipay, an app, I use almost every day and this app makes life so much more easy for me.I will explain some functions I use regularly. Screenshot of my Alipay app In the Netherlands (or Europe) we are used paying with "debit cards'' or sometimes a credit card. Here in China, I also have a debit bank card. But I used it only once and that was for connecting my bank account to Alipay

Understanding Amazon, a linkdump of Amazon related article's video's and pdf's

Image
A few months ago, I did some research about marketplaces (in specific Amazon). I did a lot of reading, asked friends and collegues and watched a lot of webinars. This blog post has no intention to be complete, it is just my personal linkdump for video's, PDF's and some other info that I might need again in the future and that I like to share with others. If you want to be succesful at marketplaces you have to understand marketplaces. This blog post helps you in that. Also it helps (at least it helped me) in gerating idea's to make your own webshop(s) better in terms of customer experience. First of all I like to share this presentation (it is in Dutch) about marketplaces in cross border ecommerce. Highly interesting presentation about marketplace metric's, the choice between a marketplace or a webshop in a country and more. I saved this presenation at my dropbox and not youtube so it is not embedded. Just click here . This article (PDF) explains how Amazon work